Page 10:I know all this is natural. I know it’s normal, but then so much of natural and normal is also disgusting and repulsive. Normal and natural doesn’t make something good.
Page 56: The thing is, no matter what people tell you – no matter what you know – at eleven our mother having sex sounds like she’s being attacked. It sounds like pain. It sounds like a sacrifice to an angry God. And the fact that your num is cuddling and kissing, purring and rubbing up against the perpetrator doesn’t make it easier – it makes it harder. More confusing.
Page 58: He was trying to pick his pants up from the front garden in the rain. Not just his pants. All his stuff. Mum had tipped it there three days earlier and it had sat on our lawn like an installation. Like a pieces of modern art titled My Boyfriend Is A Wanker.
Page 88:
Mum had this theory that email and the phone had been invented in the wrong order. She said that email should have come first and then, after a while, along would come another inventor who would promote his super new product – the phone – by saying ‘It’s just like email only now you can actually talk to each other.’ And everyone would go 'Yeah, wow, that is amazing.’
Page 166: Everyone watches in silence as I turn and leave the office. Outside, I put my face up to the inevitable rain and shout as loud as I can to an indifferent sky. ‘F$%*f$%*f$%*f$%*.’ The sky doesn’t care. How many stupid human performances has it seen? Billions upon billions. The sky has seen it all and it’s all boring.
Page 192: ‘Well, that’s the thing, Mike. You can’t trust people.’ But he’s not listening to me. Of course he isn’t. His heart is breaking.
Page 216: Later I think how wrong we are about old people. They’re not the past, they are the future, whatever the Ms Mabbuts think. Old people know where the rest of us are headed. They’re sending us back these clear, explicit messages about the dark and loveless place we’re speeding towards. But we’re just not listening. Our fingers are in our ears, our eyes are shut and we’re la-la-la-ing to drown out the bad news.
Life! Death! Prizes! © 2012 by Stephen May
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