Quotes from The Bones of You

Debbie Howells ·  313 pages

Rating: (5.2K votes)


“That's how birthdays were in our house. All hateful charades of pretty clothes, expensive presents, and ugly words . . .”
― Debbie Howells, quote from The Bones of You


“I discover, too, that grief is different to different people. Comes in many guises. In shocked silences and closed doors around our village, as people try to shut it out. That a blank face or fleeting smile can hide the worst, most private kind of agony.”
― Debbie Howells, quote from The Bones of You


About the author

Debbie Howells
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Popular quotes

“Worship me, she says, worship the mistery of the bleeding goddess, and you do it. You stop at nothing. You lick it. You consume it. You digest it. She penetrates you.
What next, David? A glass of her urine. How long before you would have begged for her feces? I'm not against it because it's unhygienic.
I'm not against it because it's disgusting. I'm against it because it's falling in love. The only obession everybody wants: 'love'. People think that in falling in love they make themselves whole? The Platonic union of souls? I think otherwise. I think you're whole before you begin. And the love fractures you. You're whole, and then you're cracked open. She was a foreign body introduced into your wholeness. And for a year and a half you struggled to incorporate it. But you'll never be whole until you expel it. You either get rid of it or incorporate it through self-distortion.”
― Philip Roth, quote from The Dying Animal


“Boys everywhere. All seven of them plus their dad, running and laughing and shoving each other around on the front lawn, engaged in what appeared to be a full-contact, tackle version of ultimate Frizbee. They were playing shirts and skins. Shirts and might-fine-lookin' skins.”
― quote from Megan Meade's Guide to the McGowan Boys


“Luxa stood up, her face paler than usual. She went to her cousin, sat beside him, and put her arms around him. Pressing her forehead into his shoulder, she said, “She will fly with you always. You know this. She will fly with you always.”
― Suzanne Collins, quote from Gregor and the Prophecy of Bane


“I emit, I hiss a rather tired and gentle word like "shit", then tear this page from the machine. it's your.”
― Charles Bukowski, quote from Tales of Ordinary Madness


“Oh! Science! Everything has been revised. For the body and for the soul,--the viaticum,—there are medicine and philosophy,—old wives' remedies and popular songs rearranged. And the pastimes of princes and games they proscribed! Geography, cosmography, mechanics, chemistry!...

Science, the new nobility! Progress. The world marches on! Why shouldn’t it turn?

It is the vision of numbers. We are going toward the Spirit. There’s no doubt about it, an oracle, I tell you. I understand, and not knowing how to express myself without pagan words, I’d rather remain silent.”
― Arthur Rimbaud, quote from A Season in Hell/The Drunken Boat


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