Craig Stone · 296 pages
Rating: (102 votes)
“I want to avoid people, because there’s only one thing worse than being homeless, and that’s people who are not, knowing that you are.”
― Craig Stone, quote from The Squirrel that Dreamt of Madness
“Without the sleeping bag I'm just somebody up early in the morning, sitting under a tree. With the sleeping bag I'm nobody up early, sitting under a tree: a slight, but important difference in how I’ll be perceived.”
― Craig Stone, quote from The Squirrel that Dreamt of Madness
“Some days I am the flower beneath the machine. And the machine rolls slowly on, blocking the sun, without a care for what it tramples beneath.”
― Craig Stone, quote from The Squirrel that Dreamt of Madness
“We dream of the world we could have made, and wake up in the world that we did.”
― Craig Stone, quote from The Squirrel that Dreamt of Madness
“When we’re young nothing offends us, except adults telling us what should. Then when we become adults, nothing offends us, except we are offended on behalf of our young.”
― Craig Stone, quote from The Squirrel that Dreamt of Madness
“Nobody has to do anything wrong to end up living a life that feels like it’s not their own, all they have to do is take a step back, and hope for the best.”
― Craig Stone, quote from The Squirrel that Dreamt of Madness
“My eyes open after my mind. All eyes always do.”
― Craig Stone, quote from The Squirrel that Dreamt of Madness
“Smile sometimes: it won’t add years to your life, but it will add life to your years.”
― Craig Stone, quote from The Squirrel that Dreamt of Madness
“We used to talk and smile seven days ago when I was wearing a suit. Now I'm dressed in a beard and smell of dog shit I don’t even get eye contact. I ask her how her week is going, and she looks to her friend behind the counter as if to say: I think this creep is hitting on me. Shall we call the police?”
― Craig Stone, quote from The Squirrel that Dreamt of Madness
“Better to live dreaming, than dream of living.”
― Craig Stone, quote from The Squirrel that Dreamt of Madness
“The question should be who do we want to be when we grow up, not what.”
― Craig Stone, quote from The Squirrel that Dreamt of Madness
“Sleep doesn't come easy when a broken twig conjures images of a hulking mental patient snapping the arms off children, over by the bin.”
― Craig Stone, quote from The Squirrel that Dreamt of Madness
“The word begone is a Russian doll. A small, single word, which contains so many others; and when all the smaller words inside line up, they look like a bridge: Be Beg Ego Go On One.”
― Craig Stone, quote from The Squirrel that Dreamt of Madness
“His smile is a stranger resting on a haunted face, only coming out for poisons turning him into a ghost.”
― Craig Stone, quote from The Squirrel that Dreamt of Madness
“He brings the cigarette butt to his mouth and lights up. He breathes in, and coughs; a rattling helicopter with a broken blade crashing into a herd of trombone playing sheep falling off a cliff into a DIY shop with a discount on spanners.”
― Craig Stone, quote from The Squirrel that Dreamt of Madness
“There is nothing more deceptive, more grandeur, than the delusion of a single man.”
― Craig Stone, quote from The Squirrel that Dreamt of Madness
“Friday dusk becomes Friday evening. The park is feverish with life. A young Asian man screams into his mobile phone, not stopping to listen: a young man with his heart in his penis.”
― Craig Stone, quote from The Squirrel that Dreamt of Madness
“I wonder if I'm being paranoid. I tell myself I'm not, and then ask myself how I can be so sure? I don’t know the answer, so I go back to wondering if I am.”
― Craig Stone, quote from The Squirrel that Dreamt of Madness
“I don’t want to wake up. I can’t feel the cold of life. I can’t feel fear in my dreams. When awake we are green and red bits glowing under a machine, lights turn off and on, and people of science convince themselves they know what’s going on. Backs are patted, hand are shaken. Test, record, collect. They tell us what we already know. We are all dying, dying slow. When awake, there is a feeling of impending doom, and if you can’t feel it, close your eyes, or open them further. When we’re in a box underground, heaven is finally above us, but it’s not in the sky. Heaven is the planet we lived on, and all of the angels are people. Here, in a dream, it’s just me floating in the back of my mind, among parts we don’t fully understand.”
― Craig Stone, quote from The Squirrel that Dreamt of Madness
“Blobfish, the guy who snapped a hamsters neck, myself, the homeless guy who has never thrown a punch (but has killed a fox) and Dickface, the man obsessed with trees and touching himself in public, follow an arrogant midget into the home of a pale creature I am certain will kill us all, to save the life of an ungrateful bastard parrot called Madness.
The temperature drops further.
A cold night for heroes.”
― Craig Stone, quote from The Squirrel that Dreamt of Madness
Craig Stone
Born place: London, The United Kingdom
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“Stop trusting your eyes and start listening to your heart. It sees more than you ever will.”
― Gena Showalter, quote from Firstlife
“I wish I hadn't cried so much!”
― Lewis Carroll, quote from Alice's Adventures in Wonderland
“She did the "we have mysterious hand gestures that make us giggle" thing.”
― Elizabeth Scott, quote from Love You Hate You Miss You
“It was as if some magnetic repulsion, which before had kept our two carriages from meeting and passing, had now been reversed, and so sucked me inexorably forward, drawing me towards something my heart made clear I feared - or should fear - utterly, in the way some people are fatally attracted towards an abyss while standing on its very edge.”
― Iain Banks, quote from The Bridge
“I am a reader, a flashlight-under-the-covers, carries-a-book-everywhere-I-go, don't-look-at-my-Amazon-bill. I choose purses based on whether I can cram a paperback into them, and my books are the first items I pack into a suitcase. I am the person who family and friends call when they need a book recommendation or cannot remember who wrote Heidi. My identity as a person is so entwined with my love of reading and books that I cannot separate the two.”
― Donalyn Miller, quote from The Book Whisperer: Awakening the Inner Reader in Every Child
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