Looking Glass Sound

Writers are monsters, really. We eat everything we see.

No one told me that grief would feel so much like fear.

The thing about anger is, you mustn’t let it drop or you might find out how you really feel.

You can'ŧ get to know people after they're gone. All you have are memories, moments, and that doesn't make a whole person.

There can be comfort in a disguise. Being who you are can be lonely.

I don’t think people should live by the ocean. It’s too big to understand.

As I get older I see more and more how fluid a thing time is. There are so many ways to slip in and out of it. The wonder is that we ever stick in the now.

The human heart is deep and dark with many chambers. Things hide down there.

Writer’s block isn’t being unable to write, I discover – it’s being unable to feel.

Fucked up will save you. Fucked up will set you free.

Writing things down purifies them,' he goes on. 'This world is so hard. We need something better. We need books.

I wonder when you stop marking time, as an adult – when life starts. What would I even do with it if I had the freedom – live?

It’s the kind of laughter that only comes to kids, I think. Grownups are too used to the absurdity of the world.

But books don’t work like that. They are outside time. They are everywhere.

Just doing some background reading alongside my reading,’ he says cheerfully. ‘I’ve been thinking about autofiction lately. You know, a kind of fictionalised memoir, a hybrid of a novel and an autobiography. Like this.’ He points at In Search of Lost Time.

Good and bad can feel like the same thing, I think, if they’re intense enough.

They used to call it a nervous breakdown,’ she says. ‘I like that better than any of those scientific terms. Because that’s what it feels like, doesn’t it? Like everything in you is broken.

it’s time to start the ghastly business of the day all over again.

It’s lonely being with family sometimes.

I wonder when you stop marking time, as an adult - when life starts. What would I even do with it if I had the freedom - live?

It’s all going to be part of the book. Writers are monsters, really. We eat everything we see.

You can't get to know people after they're gone. All you have are memories, moments, and that doesn't make a whole person.

You can’t get to know people after they’re gone. All you have are memories, moments, and that doesn’t make a whole person.

… but the thought of someone taking care of me is seductive in its strength.

We go up onto Pursing Hill into the cold, and it does snow, it lands in stars in his hair and lashes. Moments afterwards they’re gone, vanished in the warmth of him.

There are only two life jackets so after some argument we agree that the only solution is for none of us to wear one. ‘One dies, we all die,’ I say. It’s pleasing.