Sue Townsend · 272 pages
Rating: (34.9K votes)
“There's only one thing more boring than listening to other people's dreams, and that's listening to their problems.”
“8.45 a.m. My mother is in the hospital grounds smoking a cigarette. She is looking old and haggard. All the debauchery is catching up with her.”
“Adrian Mole's diary
Easter
Poor Jesus, it must have been dead awful for him. I wouldn't have the guts to do it myself.”
“I used to be the sort of boy who had sand kicked in his face, now I'm the sort of boy who watches somebody else have it kicked in their face”
“I have a problem. I am an intellectual, but at the same time I am not very clever.”
“My skin is dead good. I think it must be a combination of being in love and Lucozade.”
“Had a note from Mr Cherry asking me when I can resume my paper round. I sent a note back to say that due to my mother's desertion I am still in a mental state. This is true. I wore odd socks yesterday without knowing it. One was red and one was green. I must pull myself together. I could end up in a lunatic asylum.”
“Mrs O'Leary said, 'Tis the child I feel sorry for', and all the people looked up and saw me, so I looked especially sad, I expect the experience will give me a trauma at some stage in the future. I'm all right at the moment, but you never know.”
“I asked her about my Family Allowance today, she laughed and said she used it for buying gin and cigarettes.”
“said he ‘would rather go without’.”
“Measured my ‘thing’. It was eleven centimetres.”
“My grandma let the dog out of the coal shed. She said my mother was cruel to lock it up. The dog was sick on the kitchen floor. My grandma locked it up again.”
“Just measured my thing. It has grown one centimetre. I might be needing it soon.”
“She is just straight all the way up and down, including her nose and mouth and hair.”
“He was standing very still with his arms folded, staring with poached egg eyes.”
“I had my first wet dream!”
“I have a problem. I am an intellectual, but at the same time I am not very clever.”
“The moment Eve bit into the apple, her eyes opened and she became free. She exposed the truth of what every woman knows: to find our sovereign voice often requires a betrayal.”
“Rosy waited as long as she dared then sat forward and let her eye rove Franny’s lounge, up and down the shelves, looking for something, not even sure she could bring herself to act if she saw it again, already convinced this was her worst ever idea”
“She thought her ears would light with fire, her cheeks burn to ash, but the moment passed, as even the worst moments do.”
“because we have two legs and travelling on foot is the right speed for human beings. Walking sorts out your problems and anxieties, and calms your worries. Living from day to day, from inspiration to inspiration, much of what I have learned as a Jain has come from wandering. Sometimes, even my dreams are of walking.”
“It’s just how love gets described in the movies. Like in Sleepless in Seattle . . .” This is the movie they showed us last night. “Tom Hanks’s character is musing about why he fell in love with his dead wife, and he says that it was because she could peel an apple in one long strip, or something like that. And I was reading something similar in a book recently, only that was about peeling an orange . . . anyway . . . I’ve just never felt like the way someone peels fruit would be a reason to spend the rest of your life with them.”
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