Like A House On Fire - Quotes (Whole Book)

"the quiet one"

Flexion

"feels sympathetic eyes"

Flexion

"A gracious gesture...too late...sympathy delivered...dead and buried"

Flexion

"a single spontaneous good thing"

Flexion

"It startles her

this shift...refer...so readily in the past tense"

"Let him go...all he would have wanted"

Flexion

"Lying there...sense of how it is"

Flexion

"putting this behind us"

Flexion

"his hand wordlessly

determinedly

"scared and frail...an old

old man"

"Flexion

she'd called it...keep the memory of limber movement alive in the body"

"Enervating...in her presence like this"

Ashes

"huge supernatural power emanates"

Ashes

"Both trips are still etched...powerless indignities of childhood"

Ashes

"a glimmer...something deeply dissatisfying about him"

Ashes

"live the way you see fit"

Ashes

"reminisces with a sweet

sad smile about his patience"

"he'd forgotten that moment until now."

Ashes

"It's nauseating

this revisionism; it infuriates him"

"eager

leaving my way through my allotted duties'"

"gaze...steady and desperately hopeful"

Laminex and Mirrors

"filling my own allotment here"

Laminex and Mirrors

"I don't owe these people anything"

Laminex and Mirrors

"sound of a plane door leaving without me"

Laminex and Mirrors

"caught in the high-beam...earnest gratitude...undiluted optimism"

Laminex and Mirrors

"a nonchalant girl on her way to Europe and real life"

Laminex and Mirrors

"They are eyes

it strikes me

"kill the occasion... I have poisoned it"

Like a House on Fire

"I go to the spot...like a beaten dog"

Like a House on Fire

"my entire identity focused there in a single space"

Like a House on Fire

"Something hotly molten cracking open in my back"

Like a House on Fire

"The sound of everything...echoing in the big

hollow silence under her words"

"I just can't stand all this... chaos I can't do anything about."

Like a House on Fire

"Listening...used to get along like a house on fire."

Like a House on Fire

"taken a big ceramic shard out of the box... and is stabbing it into the base of my spine."

Like a House on Fire

"Now the humiliation of helplessness."

Like a House on Fire

"So you point and click...all the time in the world now"

Cross country

"How vigilantly you try to cover your tracks

they'll be there"

"It takes a special kind of thoroughness

a particular grim determination...sever all ties"

"why they call it surfing...call it drowning"

Cross country

"Your partner leaves...don't need nurturing...you need avoiding"

Cross country

"It's amazing...the level...we'll invent what we need"

Cross country

"linked hands

connections

"felt the same deep dragging inertia he felt now"

Sleepers

"The sleepers

it was all Ray seemed to hear for the next two weeks"

"A liability

not a catch"

"never forget this one moment...their shadows swam together out of the light"

Sleepers

"It broke your heart to see it go to waste"

Sleepers

"SLOW. STOP. SLOW"

Sleepers

"He'd forgotten - they all had"

Sleepers

"Something creeping over...slow anesthetic."

Sleepers

"it's the calm progression...via range of possible distractions"

Cake

"Stay positive

but firm"

"All of them divested of toddlers"

Cake

"roars and wails of inconsolable

bereft toddlers"

"Abandoned him to a roomful of rampaging strangers"

Cake

"it's guerrilla warfare...call it a jungle gym"

Cake

"all of them functioning"

Cake

"her own boundary gates this time"

Cake

"back in the land of the living"

Cake

"mentions f***** cake again today...burst a blood vessel."

Cake

"A sad cluster of concrete pools surrounded on all sides...depicting a shinier park"

Little Plastic Shipwreck

"His imagination used to run away with him...beside her bed"

Little Plastic Shipwreck

"edgy little thrum in him

full of vibrations"

"blameless

leaving the person wired"

"they cruised past

a vegetable with fins"

"He thought about the induced coma...waking up remembering that is where you've been"

Little Plastic Shipwreck

"It was the hair that remained that killed him"

Little Plastic Shipwreck

"what they had taken out of her...when they were assuring him nothing was removed"

Little Plastic Shipwreck

"radiating from the spot"

Little Plastic Shipwreck

"After being helpless in the hands of strangers...put her in or out of a coma at will"

Little Plastic Shipwreck

"Nothing going on...and they start swimming around in circles"

Little Plastic Shipwreck

"Hell would be like that...drinking punch."

Static

"rays

one drills into the back of his skull"

"gust of weary depression"

Static

"It was like his attention had warned momentarily"

Static

"see a dot of hot

red blood well reliably up...needs proof that such things are real"

"He wants just to lose himself..big benign glowing screen."

Static

"It's like this big

loose body

The same startled

faintly incredulous look...glimpsed at him during the labour"

"She's burning with bright energy"

Five Dollar family

"The strong

confident wail of an adult child"

"a dopey

thick headed version of who she'd become now"

"Michelle can feel it - this will be the one she'll choose.

Five Dollar family

"She thought the adoration would kick in once Des saw the baby"

Five Dollar family

"I could curl up inside this soft shell and it would be like a hammock in there

all warm.‟

"I don't like being just in my pajamas when he's here. It just feels funny.‟

Seventy Two Derwents

"coloured in with the pencils that don't colour"

Seventy Two Derwents

"I‟m setting her the best example I can

which is how to get of here.‟

"He is in a mean mood...he is smiling his mouth is wrong.‟

Seventy Two Derwents

"Sometimes I dream of a wolf....coming for me...eyes are on fire...a stone inside my stomach.‟

Seventy Two Derwents

"His voice is so different...all soft and like you're best friends...believe everything he tells me.‟

Seventy Two Derwents

"if you keep turning...just one more twist.‟

Seventy Two Derwents

"they know just how to make kids feel happy...it's never what you think.‟

Seventy Two Derwents

"I felt the heavy weight in my stomach...careful of him"

Seventy Two Derwents

"it's good to write about things..make us feel ashamed or like we want to cry...don't want to write anymore.‟

Seventy Two Derwents

"all the things she

doesn't see

she will see them now...she will be too weak to stand up.‟

"Centre of the vortex...feel the current flexing"

Whirlpool

"Letting yourself be loose...the aching of the blue sky"

Whirlpool