Black Swan Green

Secrets affect you more than you’d think. You lie to keep them hidden. You steer talk away from them. You worry someone’ll discover yours and tell the world. You think you are in charge of the secret, but isn’t it the secret who’s actually using you? S’pose lunatics mold their doctors more than doctors mold their lunatics?

Photos’re better than nothing, but things’re better than photos ’cause the things themselves were part of what was there.

War may be an auction for countries. For soldiers it’s a lottery.

The destiny of discreet neighbors is to be confused with the noisy ones next door.

Idiots labor in this misconception. Beauty is not excellence. Beauty is distraction, beauty is cosmetics, beauty is ultimately fatigue.

“This ‘Not Today’ attitude of yours is a cancer. Cancer of the character. It stunts your growth. Other kids sense your Not-Todayness, and despise you for it. ‘Not Today’ is why those plebs in the Black Swan make you nervous. ‘Not-Today’—I would bet—is at the root of that speech defect of yours.” (A shame bomb blew my head off.) “ ‘Not Today’ condem

“The sextet of Robert Frobisher.

I didn’t understand. She must sort of fancy me. She wouldn’t’ve given her only Danish pastry to just any kid who happened along. And I sure as hell fancied Dawn Madden. Fancying girls’s dangerous, though. Not dangerous, but not simple. It can be dangerous.

The world won’t leave things be. It’s always injecting endings into beginnings. Leaves tweezer themselves from these weeping willows. Leaves fall into the lake and dissolve into slime. Where’s the sense in that? Mum and Dad fell in love, had Julia, had me. They fall out of love, Julia moves off to Edinburgh, Mum to Cheltenham, and Dad to Oxford wit