“I dinnae get people, like they all want to be watched, to be seen, like all the time. They put up their pictures online and let people they dinnae like look at them! And people they’ve never met as well, and they all pretend tae be shinier than they are – and some are even posting on like four sites; their bosses are watching them at work, the cameras watch them on the bus, and on the train, and in Boots, and even outside the chip shop. Then even at home – they’re going online to look and see who they can watch, and to check who’s watching them!”
― Jenni Fagan, quote from The Panopticon
“As specimens go, they always get excited about me. I'm a good one. A show-stopper. I'm the kind of kid they'll still enquire about ten years later. Fifty-one placements, drug problems, violence, dead adopted mum, no biological links, constant offending. Tick, tick, tick. I lure them in to being with. Cultivate my specimen face. They like that. Do-gooders are vomit-worthy. Damaged goods are dangerous. The ones that are in it cos the thought it would be a step up from an office job are tedious. The ones who've been in too long lose it. The ones who think they've got the Jesus touch are fucking insane. The I can save you brigade are particularly radioactive. They think if you just inhale some of their middle-classism, then you'll be saved.”
― Jenni Fagan, quote from The Panopticon
“I want to cry and hit my head off the wall—and scream until I pass out, but I gave that up for Lent.”
― Jenni Fagan, quote from The Panopticon
“The watching feeling is getting worse.
I am not an experiment.
I am not a stupid joke, or a trippy game, or an experiment. I will not go insane. Something bad is gonnae happen, though. I can feel it. It’s in the way that crisp bag has faded from the rain. I am not an experiment. If I keep saying it, I’ll start believing it. I have to try. I am not an experiment. It doesnae sound convincing. It sounds stupid.
Try it in German. Ich bin nicht eine experiment. My German’s shite. Inhale slowly to the count of four, look hard at the tip of my nose and try again. This time I go for an official BBC broadcaster circa-1940 accent.
Today, one finds one is not, in actual fact, a social experiment. One is a real person. This is real actual skin as seen containing the bodily organs of a real actual human being with a heart and soul and dreams.
It’s true that I came from real people once too, and they were a jolly old sort, with no naked psycho-ess in any way.
I, the young Miss Anais, understand wholly that I am just a human being that no one is interested in. No experiment. No outside fate. I am not that important, and that is just fine by me. I propose a stiff upper lip and onward Christian soldiers, quick-bloody-march! This is Anais Hendricks, telling the nation: to be me is really quite spiff-fucking-spoff, lashings of love, your devoted BBC broadcaster since 1938.”
― Jenni Fagan, quote from The Panopticon
“I dinnae say I might paint when I grow up. I dinnae say I’ll learn French, so I can read every book in the main library in Paris one day, including encyclopedias and obscure manuals. I dinnae say I’ll volunteer to help some old lady with her shopping, and her cleaning, and if I’m really fucking lucky she’ll take me under her wing and get tae like me and feed me apple pie and gin—and tell me all her stories about the good old days. Those urnay the things I say. We stop at the traffic lights. There’s a bunch of girls about my age standing there, but they dinnae look like me. They look young. I turn the music up, sneakers off, feet on the dash. I light a fag and look out the window at one of the girls. She’s got great legs, really slim but nice. She turns around, laughing tae her pal, and her smile is stunning. “I’d shag that,” I say, and flick my ash away.”
― Jenni Fagan, quote from The Panopticon
Jenni Fagan
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“I’m fairly certain, Captain,” she said, “that the more you discover about me, the more you will dislike me. Therefore, let’s cut to the chase and acknowledge that we don’t like each other. Then we won’t have to bother with the in-between part.”
She was so bloody frank and practical about the whole thing that Christopher couldn’t help but be amused.
“I’m afraid I can’t oblige you.”
“Why not?”
“Because when you said that just now, I found myself starting to like you.”
“You’ll recover,” she said.
Her decisive tone made him want to smile. “It’s getting worse, actually,” he told her. “Now I’m absolutely convinced that I like you.”
Beatrix gave him a patently skeptical stare. “What about my hedgehog? Do you like her, too?”
Christopher considered that. “Affection for rodents can’t be rushed.”
“Medusa isn’t a rodent. She’s an erinaceid.”
― Lisa Kleypas, quote from Love in the Afternoon
“If you believe some of the old stories, earth natives have been around in one form or another since the beginning of the world. They were the top predators then and they’re the top predators now because they change as the world changes, absorbing qualities from new species of predators without losing the essence of what they are.”
― Anne Bishop, quote from Vision in Silver
“In our time... a man whose enemies are faceless bureaucrats almost never wins. It is our equivalent to the anger of the gods in ancient times. But those gods you must understand were far more imaginative than our tiny bureaucrats. They spoke from mountaintops not from tiny airless offices. They rode clouds. They were possessed of passion. They had voices and names. Six thousand years of civilization have brought us to this.”
― Chaim Potok, quote from Davita's Harp
“But kids don't stay with you if you do it right. It's the one job where, the better you are, the more surely you won't be needed in the long run.”
― Barbara Kingsolver, quote from Pigs in Heaven
“Sharing his memories felt like handing over a sharp knife. A knife that others might handle carelessly. A knife that could be used to hurt him.”
― Matthew J. Kirby, quote from The Clockwork Three
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