Quotes from Submarine

“I love you more than words. And I am a big fan of words.”
― Joe Dunthorne, quote from Submarine

“I took a photo of us, mid-embrace. When I am old and alone I will remember that I once held something truly beautiful.”
― Joe Dunthorne, quote from Submarine

“Exercise II.

Write a diary, imagining that you are trying to make an old person jealous. I have written an example to get you started:

Dear Diary,
I spent the morning admiring my skin elasticity.
God alive, I feel supple.”
― Joe Dunthorne, quote from Submarine

“I don't know if I've come of age, but I'm certainly older now. I feel shrunken, as if there's a tiny ancient Oliver Tate inside me operating the levers of a life-size Oliver-shaped shell. A shell on which a decrepit picture show replays the same handful of images. Every night I come to the same place and wait till the sky catches up with my mood. The pattern is set. This is, no doubt, the end.”
― Joe Dunthorne, quote from Submarine

“Most people think of themselves as individuals, that there's no one on the planet like them. This thought motivates them to get out of bed, eat food and walk around like nothing's wrong. My name is Oliver Tate.”
― Joe Dunthorne, quote from Submarine

“Oh diary, I love her, I love her, I love her so much. Jordana is the most amazing person I have ever met. I could eat her. I could drink her blood. She's the only person I would allow to be shrunk to microscopic size and explore me in a tiny submersible machine. She is wonderful and beautiful and sensitive and funny and sexy. She's too good for me, she's too good for anyone! All I could do was let her know. I said: "I love you more than words. And I am a big fan of words.”
― Joe Dunthorne, quote from Submarine

“...I want to grab her collarbones as if they were handlebars.”
― Joe Dunthorne, quote from Submarine

“That's a big love letter," she says, squinting. I know what I'm going to say and for a moment I wish there was a film crew documenting my day-to-day life: "I've got a big heart," I say.”
― Joe Dunthorne, quote from Submarine

“I would never say snog. I would say osculate." She looks at me as if to say: why do you exist?”
― Joe Dunthorne, quote from Submarine

“I find that the only way to get through life is to picture myself in an entirely disconnected reality. I often imagine how people would react to my death. Mr Dunthorne's quavering voice as he makes the announcement. The shocked faces of my classmates. A playground bedecked with flowers. The empty stillness of a school corridor. Local news analysis. . . . The steady stoicism of my parents. . . . Candlelit vigils. . . . And finally, my glorious resurrection.”
― Joe Dunthorne, quote from Submarine

“Depression comes in bouts. Like boxing. Dad is in the blue corner.”
― Joe Dunthorne, quote from Submarine

“She whispers in my ear: ‘"Tell me that you wan' fuck me hard, make me sweat." In the excitement, she misses out a word. "I want to fuck you so hard that your body drips with sweat," I say, grammatically.”
― Joe Dunthorne, quote from Submarine

“I spin around on the swivel chair and look up at the ceiling; Oliver being Oliver being Oliver being Oliver. I am suddenly aware of the separation between my-actual-self and myself-as-seen-by-others. Who would win in an arm wrestle? Who is better-looking? Who has the higher IQ?”
― Joe Dunthorne, quote from Submarine

“Anger does not come easy to me. It is something I have to encourage, like a greyhound in second place.”
― Joe Dunthorne, quote from Submarine

“It is strange to hear your mother talk about being human because, honestly, it's too easy to forget.”
― Joe Dunthorne, quote from Submarine

“The next thing Jordana says makes me realize that it's too late to save her.

"I've noticed that when you light a match, the flame is the same shape as a falling tear."

She's been sensitized, turned gooey in the middle. I saw it happening and I didn't do anything to stop it. From now on, she'll be writing diaries and sometimes including little poems and she'll buy gifts for her favourite teachers and she'll admire the scenery and she'll watch the news and she'll buy soup for homeless people and she'll never burn my leg hair again.”
― Joe Dunthorne, quote from Submarine

“To us and a wonderful evening of love making.”
― Joe Dunthorne, quote from Submarine

“I bought a packet of Trojan® Ultra Pleasure Extra Sensitive condoms: ‘No. 1 in AMERICA’. They smell nothing like a positive first sexual experience.”
― Joe Dunthorne, quote from Submarine

“Old people only say that life happens quickly to make themselves feel better. The truth is that it all happens in tiny increments like now now now now now now and it only takes twenty to thirty consecutive nows to realize that you’re aimed straight at a bench in Singleton Park. Fair play though, if I was old and had forgotten to do something worthwhile with my life, I would spend those final few years on a bench in the botanical gardens, convincing myself that time is so quick that even plants – who have no responsibilities whatsoever – hardly get a chance to do anything decent with their lives except, perhaps, produce one or two red or yellow flowers and, with a bit of luck and insects, reproduce. If the old man manages to get the words father and husband on his bench plaque then he thinks he can be reasonably proud of himself.”
― Joe Dunthorne, quote from Submarine

“After that, we had a short conversation about how your body can sometimes seem totally separate. She said her body can feel like a distant bureaucracy controlled by telegrams from her brain, and I said my body is sometimes like that of Mario Mario, being controlled with a Nintendo joypad. Mario's surname is Mario.”
― Joe Dunthorne, quote from Submarine

“Ever since Jordana dumpled me, I've started feeling like a middle-aged person. I think it is to do with trauma. I just walk around doing and impression of a sixteen-year-old.”
― Joe Dunthorne, quote from Submarine

“Are we making a bomb?"

"This is a trust exercise, like in drama," she says.

"Are we making a bomb as a trust exercise?”
― Joe Dunthorne, quote from Submarine

“For my last birthday, Dad bought me a pocket-sized Collins English Dictionary. It would only fit in a pocket that had been specially designed.”
― Joe Dunthorne, quote from Submarine

“Nuestro sistema solar tiene nueve planetas, siendo Saturno el más grande. Las formas de vida de Saturno son silenciosas. No necesitan boca porque se comunican a través del pensamiento, no del habla. «Quiero quedarme en mi habitación», le dice mentalmente un joven saturnino a su madre. Su madre lo comprende a la perfección. Capta el significado de lo que le dice de un modo que los monosílabos hablados de la Tierra jamás serán capaces de replicar. Sabe que a su hijo le apetece estar un rato a solas, sin que le pregunten si está bien, sin que se preocupen por él, sin necesidad de ir dejándole folletos explicativos por toda la casa.”
― Joe Dunthorne, quote from Submarine

“My mother tells me I do not chew my food enough; she says I am making it harder for my body to get the essential nutrients it needs. If she were here, I would remind her that I am eating a blueberry Pop-Tart.”
― Joe Dunthorne, quote from Submarine

“Her eyebrows were so blonde they were almost invisible, making it difficult for her to look angry, apologetic or quizzical.”
― Joe Dunthorne, quote from Submarine

“I would never say snog. I would say osculate.” She looks at me as if to say: why do you exist?”
― Joe Dunthorne, quote from Submarine

“I was camped at the same site as her: Broughton Farm. She came over to my tent and showed me her blisters. She asked me whether I knew the reason why a blister can keep on producing fluid ad infinitum. I said that I had always wondered the same thing about mucus. One of the reasons we are together is because we have similar interests.”
― Joe Dunthorne, quote from Submarine

“Problems are like top trumps. I have a pretty good card: Adulterous Mum. But Jordana's is still better: Tumour Mother.”
― Joe Dunthorne, quote from Submarine

“Thursday morning. I usually let my Mum wake me up but today I have set my alarm for seven. Even from under my duvet, I can hear it bleating on the other side of my room. I hid it inside my plastic crate for faulty joysticks so that I would have to get out of bed, walk across the room, yank it out of the box by its lead and, only then, jab the snooze button. This was a tactical manoeuvre by my previous self. He can be very cruel.”
― Joe Dunthorne, quote from Submarine

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“Hold childhood in reverence, and do not be in any hurry to judge it for good or ill. Leave exceptional cases to show themselves, let their qualities be tested and confirmed, before special methods are adopted. Give nature time to work before you take over her business, lest you interfere with her dealings. You assert that you know the value of time and are afraid to waste it. You fail to perceive that it is a greater waste of time to use it ill than to do nothing, and that a child ill taught is further from virtue than a child who has learnt nothing at all. You are afraid to see him spending his early years doing nothing. What! is it nothing to be happy, nothing to run and jump all day? He will never be so busy again all his life long. Plato, in his Republic, which is considered so stern, teaches the children only through festivals, games, songs, and amusements. It seems as if he had accomplished his purpose when he had taught them to be happy; and Seneca, speaking of the Roman lads in olden days, says, "They were always on their feet, they were never taught anything which kept them sitting." Were they any the worse for it in manhood? Do not be afraid, therefore, of this so-called idleness. What would you think of a man who refused to sleep lest he should waste part of his life? You would say, "He is mad; he is not enjoying his life, he is robbing himself of part of it; to avoid sleep he is hastening his death." Remember that these two cases are alike, and that childhood is the sleep of reason.

The apparent ease with which children learn is their ruin. You fail to see that this very facility proves that they are not learning. Their shining, polished brain reflects, as in a mirror, the things you show them, but nothing sinks in. The child remembers the words and the ideas are reflected back; his hearers understand them, but to him they are meaningless.

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