#pitchdark

“what happens, though, when it is all unsaid, is that you wake up one morning, no, it’s more like one late afternoon, and its not just unsaid, it’s gone” (9). 

“a mistake, a series of errors, first of love, then of officiousness, finally of language” (20). 

“libel actions, i knew, had always been one of the real slums of anglo-saxon law” (27). 

“as much as this is the age of crime, after all, this is the century of dislocation” (46). 

“...like so many things that were said to me in ireland, this seemed to make no sense” (48). 

“the incredibly long eyelashes of the cows” (60)

“i chose one of the irish whiskeys, bushmills” (61).

“writing is always, in part, bending somebody’s ear. as reading is. in the matter of the commas. in the matter of the question marks. in the matter of the tenses” (62).

“you remember everything, he said, you remember everything, out of context, and then you brook” (64). 

“the tense, the perfected future, is the clue” (67). 

“it is just that i’ve been too long alone” (70). 

“a reasonable expectation of life, i have found, is hardly ever quite borne out” (72). 

“she went on and on, too, of course, but only in a state of tension: drawn to the sentimental rhythm and the sentimental substance, but mocking and concealing it, reining it back” (115). 

“those for whom there was, first dimly, then more bright, then dimly again, a possibility. which, though dimly, perhaps still exists, but which they know, have somehow always known, would never come to anything. they were never, how can i put this, going to be a part of life. it is as though, going through a landscape, through the seasons, in the same general direction as everybody else, they never quite made it to the road. through the years, humanity, like a tide of refugees or pilgrims, shoeless and in rags, or in Mercedes, station wagons, running shoes, were traveling on, joined by others, falling by the way. and we, joined though we may be, briefly, by other strays, or by road travelers on their little detours, nonetheless never quite joined the continuing procession, of life and birth, never quite found or made it to the road. whose voice is this? not here. not mine” (125).