6p. ...At eighteen I had no proper understanding of the ways that constituted encroachment. I had a feeling for them, an intuition, a sense of repugnance for some situations and some people, but I did not know intuition and repugnance counted, did not know I had a right not to like, not to have to put up with, anybody and everybody coming near.... - P-1
18p. ...With me too, he was uncalculated, transparent, free from deception, always was what he was, with none of that coolness, that withholding, that design, those hurtful, sometimes clever, always mean, manipulations. No conniving. No games-playing. He didn‘t do it, didn‘t care for it, had no interest in it.... - P-1
70~71p. ...It was the convention not to admit it, not to accept detail for this type of detail would mean choice and choice would mean responsibility and what if we failed in our responsibility? Failed too, in the interrogation of the consequence of seeing more than we could cope with? Worse, what if it was nice, whatever it was, and we liked it, got used to it, were cheered up by it, came to rely upon it, only for it to go away, or be wrenched away, never to come back again? Better not to have had it in the first place was the prevailing feeling, and that was why blue was the colour for our sky to be. Teacher though, wasn‘t leaving it at that. - P-1
87p. ...It was clear though, they served some purpose, some sense of ‘See! Look at that. What‘s the point? There‘s no point,‘ thus confirming for him, solacing him even, in his despair, that as things stood, as always they‘d stood, there couldn‘t be triumphs and overcomings because overcomings were fancies and triumphs were daydreams, effort and renewed effort a vain waste of time.... - P-1
90p. ...As for those living in the dark, long attuned to the safeness of the dark, this wasn‘t wee buns for them either. What if we accept these points of light, their translucence, their brightness; what if we let ourselves enjoy this, stop fearing it, get used to it; what if we come to believe in it, to expect it, to be impressed upon by it; what if we take hope and forgo our ancient heritage and instead, and infused, begin to entrain with it, with ourselves then to radiate it; what if we do that, get educated up to that, and then, just like that, the light goes off or is snatched away? This was why you didn‘t get many shining people in environments overwhelmingly consisting of fear and of sorrow.... - P-1
144p. ...It seemed, and again I liked this, that this exchange was taking place in that ‘How can we get this done?‘ manner, that same manner of maybe-boyfriend, also of teacher, not the prevalent ‘What‘s the point, nothing is of use, it‘s not gonna make any difference is it?‘ and this surprised me.... - P-1
164p. ...There was too much of risk, and besides, they were challenging the status quo while I was trying to go under the radar of the status quo.... - P-1
174~175p. ..So ‘I don‘t know‘ was my three-syllable defence in response to the questions. With it successfully I refused to be evoked, drawn out, shocked into revelation. Instead I minimalised, withheld, subverted thinking, dropped all interaction surplus to requirement which meant they got no public content, no symbolic content, no full-bodiedness, no bloodedness, no passion of the moment, no turn of plot, no sad shade, no angry shade, no panicked shade, no location of anything. Just me, downplayed. Just me, devoid. Just me, uncommingled.... - P-1
231p. ...Here, I‘d contemplate the floor – the light dust on it, the odd hair on it, the specks of my recent emesis on it – and I‘d consider the only true things in this world were these basic conditions of floor, dust and so on and that they, and only they, could sustain me forever. Sometimes though, I‘d change my mind and it would become the panel of the bath, or the toilet bowl or the friendly bathroom wall against which occasionally I‘d find myself, that I‘d consider just as dependable of sustaining me forever too. - P-1
264p. ‘...She said it was impossible, that it was perilous to focus on good things when there were bad things, all these bad things, she said, that could not be forgot. She said old dark things as well as new dark things had to be remembered, had to be acknowledged because otherwise everything that had gone before would have been in vain....‘ - P-1
269p. ...Yet they hadn‘t married because third brother had gone and done the usual unquestioned, unconscious, self-protective thing. Being loved back by the person he loved to the point where he couldn‘t cope anymore with the vulnerable reciprocity of giving and receiving, he ended the relationship to get it over with before he lost it, before it was snatched from him, either by fate or by somebody else.... - P-1
305p. ...Nevertheless, the news of this Milkman name unsettled people; it cheated them, frightened them and there seemed no way round a feeling of embarrassment either. When considered a pseudonym, some codename, ‘the milkman‘ had possessed mystique, intrigue, theatrical possibility. Once out of symbolism, however, once into the everyday, the banal, into any old Tom, Dick and Harryness, any respect it had garnered as the cognomen of a high-cadre paramilitary activist was undercut immediately and, just as immediately, fell away.... - P-1
335p. ...I stressed that, owing to a reversal of the lifeforce inside her, she was blossoming, losing that ‘life‘s over, I‘m finished with life, past it, just eking out what‘s left‘ older person‘s perspective that usually she went about in and that I hadn‘t noticed she‘d gone about in until of late when she‘d stopped going about in it.... - P-1
346~347p. ... According to his rulebook – mine too, at least before the predations upon me by the community and by Milkman – the physical and verbal aspects could be the only aspects. That meant that what was not of those trespasses – stalking without touch, hemming-in, taking over, controlling a person with no flesh on flesh, no bone on bone ensuing – could not then be happening. So it came about that of everybody who had heard of the wooing of me by Milkman, third brother-in-law was the only one who, unquestioningly, hadn‘t considered it to have taken place. - P-1
348p. ...As we jumped the tiny hedge because we couldn‘t be bothered with the tiny gate to set off on our running, I inhaled the early evening light and realised this was softening, what others might term a little softening. Then, landing on the pavement in the direction of the parks & reservoirs, I exhaled this light and for a moment, just a moment, I almost nearly laughed. - P-1
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