Last Days in Cleaver Square Quotes

“I remember what I would remind the reader. I would remind the reader that I went to Spain in 1936, where I drove an ambulance during the siege of Madrid and elsewhere. I have married a number of women (two), loved a number of – other people – (twenty-two), written a number of slim volumes of modern Romantic poetry published by reputable small presses like Hyperbole, and sustained this old house in Cleaver Square where I have raised a fine garden (now dying), and also a daughter. And when I wish to go to the West End alone at night, to attend, let us say, a concert of classical music, Schubert perhaps, Death and the Maiden – I go. So let there be no more of this clucking and wheedling. Oh, Pa, are you sure? Or: Oh, Francis, is this really a good idea? Let me be clear. I am always sure, and it is always a good idea.”
― Patrick McGrath, Last Days in Cleaver Square

“The reason I survived when others died is my business. War is rarely tidy, never clean. We all know that.”
― Patrick McGrath, Last Days in Cleaver Square

“Nobody touches you after seventy except doctors, as a rule. A sister, if you're lucky enough to have one. Undertakers.”
― Patrick McGrath, Last Days in Cleaver Square

“How has it come to this? Where once my life was populated with the living, now I seem to keep company only with ghosts and ghouls and the like.”
― Patrick McGrath, Last Days in Cleaver Square

“So let there be no more of this clucking and wheedling. Oh, Pa, are you sure? Or: Oh, Francis, is this really a good idea? Let me be clear. I am always sure, and it is always a good idea.”
― Patrick McGrath, Last Days in Cleaver Square

“For oh dear, it is a spartan business, this growing old, this cleaving to life, because it demands that you jettison so much that once had been the very zest and pith of life, and why? So that life, pithless, and sans zest, may continue, and the flesh, oh, the flesh, the sins of the flesh - they are as motes in a fading sunbeam. And how I do miss them.”
― Patrick McGrath, Last Days in Cleaver Square

“What I most fear is that they think me frail. Frail! It is a word that I hate. Call me mad, if you must; but never frail.”
― Patrick McGrath, Last Days in Cleaver Square

“She's a tall skinny old girl in a tweed jacket and brown corduroy trousers, long restless hands stained yellow, rings on every finger. Hair tied up in a bandanna and clear, fierce blue eyes like mine. You'd know us anywhere as brother and sister, lanky, beaky customers with these piercing eyes and silver hair.”
― Patrick McGrath, Last Days in Cleaver Square

“Dear God but I despair of these women who abandon their filters in age and just say whatever comes into their heads.”
― Patrick McGrath, Last Days in Cleaver Square