rebellion

• We learned to whisper almost without sound. In the semidarkness we could stretch out our arms, when the aunts weren’t looking, and touch each others hands across space.
• Thought must be rationed
• Thinking can hurt your chances and I intend to last
• It’s those other escapes, the ones you can open in yourself, given a cutting edge.
• A distorted shadow, a parody of something, some fairytale figure in a red cloak, descending towards a moments of carelessness
• She was then a woman who might bend the rules. But what did I have, to trade?
• such moments are the rewards I hold out for, like the candy I hoarded as a child… such moments are possibilities, tiny peepholes
• Attaching a name attaches you to a world of fact, which is riskier, more hazardous: who knows what the chances are out there, of survival, yours?
• Sometimes I repeat the words to myself. they give me a small joy.
• Ignoring isn’t the same as ignorance, you have to work at it
• We lived in the blank white spaces at the edges of print. It gave us more freedom. We lived in th gaps between stories.
• They’d peck themselves to death rather than quit
• He [the tv presenter] tells us what we long to believe
• We have ceremonies of our own, private ones
• I believe in resistance as I believe there can be no light without shadow
• You’re just a backlash. Flash in the ban. History will absolve me
• I didn’t want to be the model offspring, the incarnation of her ideas
• We too need our orgies
• this is freedom. an eyeblink of it
• laughter boiling up like lava
• Whatever is silenced will clamour to be heard, though silently
• I said I was in love. She said that was no excuse. Moira was always more rational than I am.
• I was living with my head in the sand
• Luke said it would be futile and that I had to think about them , my family
• It’s more like a telegram, a verbal semaphore. Amputated speech.
• There is something powerful in the whispering of obscenities
• Aunt Lydia Sucks. It was like a flag waved from a hilltop in rebellion.
• She is frightening me now, because what I hear in her voice is indifference, a lack of volition.
• I want gallantry from her, swashbuckling heroism, single-handed combat. Something I lack.
• I would like to be ignorant. Then I would not know how ignorant I was.
• Because I’m telling you this story I will your existence. I tell therefore you are.
• The crimes of others are a secret language among us. Through them we show ourselves what we might be capable of.