Annabel Pitcher · 240 pages
Rating: (10.5K votes)
“I stared up at the sky and raised my middle finger, just in case God was watching. I don't like being spied on.”
― Annabel Pitcher, quote from Rollercoasters: My Sister Lives on the Mantelpiece Reader
“In fact she was quite bad and according to Jas she was naughty at school, but no one seems to remember that now she is all dead and perfect.”
― Annabel Pitcher, quote from Rollercoasters: My Sister Lives on the Mantelpiece Reader
“If guilt was an animal then it would be an octopus. All slimy and wriggly with hundreds of arms that wrap around your insides and squeeze them tight.”
― Annabel Pitcher, quote from Rollercoasters: My Sister Lives on the Mantelpiece Reader
“If envy is red and doubt is black then happiness is brown. I looked from the little brown stone to the tiny brown freckle to her huge brown eyes.”
― Annabel Pitcher, quote from Rollercoasters: My Sister Lives on the Mantelpiece Reader
“My sister Rose lives on the mantelpiece.
Well, some of her does.
A collarbone, two ribs, a bit of skull, and a little toe.”
― Annabel Pitcher, quote from Rollercoasters: My Sister Lives on the Mantelpiece Reader
“She said Halloween is a British tradition and it has nothing to do with being a Christian. I almost said Why do you celebrate it then 'cos I always forgot she was born in England.”
― Annabel Pitcher, quote from Rollercoasters: My Sister Lives on the Mantelpiece Reader
“I got you this. I held out the brown, fluffy bear. To replace Burt. I pulled his eyes off and everything.”
― Annabel Pitcher, quote from Rollercoasters: My Sister Lives on the Mantelpiece Reader
“We meet again, Spider-Man she said.
And I replied How many people have you saved today, Girl M.
She pretended to count on her fingers. Nine hundred and thirty-seven she shrugged. It's been a quiet day. We started to giggle. How about you, Spider-Man.
I scratched my head. Eight hundred and thirteen I said. But I started late and finished early. We exploded into laughter. We do the same joke every single day and it never ever gets boring.”
― Annabel Pitcher, quote from Rollercoasters: My Sister Lives on the Mantelpiece Reader
“I swallowed all the doubt and all the disappointment and all the anger and they were almost too big, like vitamin pills that are difficult to get down even with water.”
― Annabel Pitcher, quote from Rollercoasters: My Sister Lives on the Mantelpiece Reader
“Nonna dice sempre che la gente è verde d'invidia, ma io non sono d'accordo. Il verde è calmo, fresco, pulito e piacevole come il dentifricio alla menta. L'invidia invece è rossa. Ti brucia nelle vene e ti accende un fuoco nella pancia.”
― Annabel Pitcher, quote from Rollercoasters: My Sister Lives on the Mantelpiece Reader
“La tua forza mi dà il coraggio di volare.”
― Annabel Pitcher, quote from Rollercoasters: My Sister Lives on the Mantelpiece Reader
“When we were leaving London, Dad spent about an hour trying to push his wardrobe through the bedroom door. He turned it on its side. He tried it upside down. He tilted it one way and then the other but it just would not fit. Words like "Mum" and "Affair" and "Dad" and "Drinking" were just like that wardrobe--too big to get out. No matter what I did, I couldn't fit them through the space between my teeth.”
― Annabel Pitcher, quote from Rollercoasters: My Sister Lives on the Mantelpiece Reader
“When Mary Shelley took a local legend based on truth and crafted fiction from it, she’d made Victor a tragic figure and killed him off. He understood her dramatic purpose for giving him a death scene, but he loathed her for portraying him as tragic and as a failure.”
― Dean Koontz, quote from Prodigal Son
“I am in the zone, the perfect balance between manic and drunk, I am mellow, I’m cool, cool as cats. I’ve found the answer, the thing that takes the edge off, smoothes out the madness, sends me sailing, lifts me up and lets me fly.”
― Marya Hornbacher, quote from Madness: A Bipolar Life
“The bastard—no other name was necessary, from now on the man formerly known as J.D. would simply be called The Bastard, The Prick, or The Shithead.”
― Julie James, quote from Practice Makes Perfect
“But now she could not bear the way she sounded. She was not a person anyone could love.
...
And thus fled to her room. There she wept, bitterly, an ugly sound punctuated by great gulps. She could not stop herself. She could hear his footsteps in the passage outside. He walked up and down, up and down.
'Come in,' she prayed. 'Oh dearest, do come in.'
But he did not come in. He would not come in. This was the man she had practically contracted to give away her fortune to. He offered to marry her as a favour and then he would not even come into her room.
Later, she could smell him make himself a sweet pancake for his lunch. She thought this a childish thing to eat, and selfish, too. If he were a gentleman he would now come to her room and save her from the prison her foolishness had made for her. He did not come. She heard him pacing in his room.”
― Peter Carey, quote from Oscar and Lucinda
“Things opposite unite and appear to disappear. The potential for both remains. That is one of the greatest principles of the causes of things.”
― Gene Wolfe, quote from The Urth of the New Sun
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