“And the only sign of life is the ticking of the pen, introducing characters to memory like old friends.”
“We live in our tales of ourselves, she thought, and ignore as best we can the contradictions, and the lapses, and the abrasions of plot against our mortal souls...”
“There was a man here, lashed himself to a spar as his ship went down, and for seven days and seven nights he was on the sea, and what kept him alive while others drowned was telling himself stories like a madman, so that as one ended another began. On the seventh day he had told all the stories he knew and that was when he began to tell himself as if he were a story, from the earliest beginnings to his green and deep misfortune. The story he told was of a man lost and found, not once, but many times, as he choked his way out of the waves. And the night fell, he saw the Cape Wrath light, only lit a week it was, but it was, and he knew that if he became the story of the light, he might be saved. With his last strength he began to paddle towards it, arms on either side of the spar, and in his mind the light became a shining rope, pulling him in. He took hold of it, tied it round his waist, and at that moment, the keeper saw him, and ran for the rescue boat.”
“رحل باحثا عن نفسه، تركه خلفها، تبحث عنه، في نفسها”
“Every story needs to be worth telling.”
“Anısı yoktu ki yaşadıklarının. Bir süredir hep aynı gündeydi. Ve o gün bitiyordu sanki.”
“The story of his great-grandfather . . . was his own story, too.”
“True or not, it s important to have stories
“He was a chameleon. He could change his appearance in seconds. He was a master in disguise and he could baffle the best in the game (read CIA, FBI, KGB, etc) So, what looked like a man looking into her eyes and playing the rituals of dating, to the girl in the group, was actually the chameleon observing the entrance of the bar behind the girl, near where the group was busy celebrating. It was all in his sinister plan. To wait for Alex to enter the bar and then go for the kill!”
“Roger left the cricket stumps and they went into the drawing room. Grandpapa, at the first suggestion of reading aloud, had disappeared, taking Patch with him. Grandmama had cleared away the tea. She found her spectacles and the book. It was Black Beauty. Grandmama kept no modern children s books, and this made common ground for the three of them. She read the terrible chapter where the stable lad lets Beauty get overheated and gives him a cold drink and does not put on his blanket. The story was suited to the day. Even Roger listened entranced. And Deborah, watching her grandmother s calm face and hearing her careful voice reading the sentences, thought how strange it was that Grandmama could turn herself into Beauty with such ease. She was a horse, suffering there with pneumonia in the stable, being saved by the wise coachman. After the reading, cricket was anticlimax, but Deborah must keep her bargain. She kept thinking of Black Beauty writing the book. It showed how good the story was, Grandmama said, because no child had ever yet questioned the practical side of it, or posed the picture of a horse with a pen in its hoof. A modern horse would have a typewriter, thought Deborah, and she began to bowl to Roger, smiling to herself as she did so because of the twentieth-century Beauty clacking with both hoofs at a machine. ( The Pool )”
“He clung to the story as to a vow whose abandonment might bring down on his head all kinds of grief and misfortune. He felt very alone, on an interminable day full of evil omens, and the story, though resistant to some of his intentions, was at least a testimony to reality and coherence”
“Neither the cat nor I missed you while you were gone. It s worse than that. We danced the visitor-gone dance, flinging our feet (and paws) with particular glee. You remember the dance - the one you do after shutting the door behind a difficult visitor (like a family member)? You hold your breath for 120 seconds then deadbolt the door, race to the bed, leap on to it and jump, twirl, bell-kick and prance, singing all the while, she s go-onnne, she s gooo-oonne.”
“Then Cassie told her story. The feeling was like gathering up everything she s ever done or felt or known up to that moment and tying it into a ball and pitching it with all her might as far away as she could, and then watching to see what would happen next, what would roll back to her, what would have gotten left behind.”
“Monsters do not remain monsters forever. This is one of the revelations that stories offer us. Caught in words, transmitted through words, put forward to serve as the point of departure for reflection and dialogue, the monsters perceived beyond the pale of society s laws can suddenly be seen in all their tragic humanity, revealed not as creatures capable of monstrous acts because they are unlike us, but because they are very much like us, and capable of the same things. These are the facts, stories tell us, and these terrible events belong to our common circle of existence. These are not inconceivable, magically evil acts: they are acts of our flesh and blood, and flesh and blood can mourn them, and remember them, and perhaps (this seems impossible and yet it happens) one day even redeem them. Language has a powerful accounting capability.”
“Everyday we are writing our own story. Creating habit of smiling, being happy and content has the power to change our subconscious mind and make this happiness as reality of our life.”
“Isn t that what anyone wants, though? the girl with the cat-eye glasses asks in response. To be able to make your own choices and decisions but to have it be part of a story? You want that narrative there to trust in, even if you want to maintain your own free will. You want to decide where to go and what to do and which door to open but you still want to win the game...”
“L amore può cambiare la storia”