Great Throughts Treasury

"Mac saved me. He took me in, he loved me, he kept me safe. And he wasn?t boring. And to be perfectly honest, we were taking a lot of drugs, and it?s difficult to get bored when you?re off your face all the time. I was happy."

"Maybe I?ll want to run again, and again, and eventually I?ll end up back by those old tracks, because there is nowhere left to go. Maybe. Maybe not. You have to take the risk, don?t you?"

"Maybe if I?d done all that, I wouldn?t have ended up here, not knowing what to do next. Or maybe, if I?d done all that, I?d have ended up exactly where I am and I would be perfectly contented. But I didn?t do all that, of course."

"My sense is ashamed of the incident proportional to the number of people who witnessed, not only with the nature of the situation"

"Never understood how people can blithely disregard the damage they do by following their hearts. Who was it said that following your heart is a good thing? It is pure egotism, a selfishness to conquer all."

"Maybe the courage I need has nothing to do with telling the truth and everything to do with walking away."

"Now look what you made me do."

"Nothing at all would be a step up from my conversations with Anna. God, she?s dull! You get the feeling that she probably had something to say for herself once upon a time, but now everything is about the child: Is she warm enough? Is she too warm? How much milk did she take?"

"Now, I think he might be dead."

"Now they?ll see. She?s much more than just the girl on the train."

"No matter how much I love him, it won?t be enough."

"On its side, someone has painted: LIFE IS NOT A PARAGRAPH. I think about the bundle of clothes on the side of the track and I feel as though my throat is closing up. Life is not a paragraph, and death is no parenthesis."

"Nobody warned me it would break us. But it did. Or rather, it broke me, and then I broke us."

"Once I?ve made my mind up, I?m a force to be reckoned with."

"On the train, the tears come, and I don?t care if people are watching me; for all they know, my dog might have been run over. I might have been diagnosed with a terminal illness. I might be a barren, divorced, soon-to-be-homeless alcoholic. It?s ridiculous, when I think about it. How did I find myself here? I wonder where it started, my decline; I wonder at what point I could have halted it. Where did I take the wrong turn?"

"On the way back down the road, he passes me in his car, our eyes meet for just a second and he smiles at me."

"One for sorrow, two for joy, three for a girl, four for a boy, five for silver, six for gold, seven for a secret never to be told."

"On the train on the way home, as I dissect all the ways that today went wrong, I?m surprised by the fact that I don?t feel as awful as I might. Thinking about it, I know why that is: I didn?t have a drink last night, and I have no desire to have one now. I am interested, for the first time in ages, in something other than my own misery. I have purpose. Or at least, I have a distraction."

"One minute I?m ticking along fine and life is sweet and I want for nothing, and the next, I can?t wait to get away, I?m all over the place, slipping and sliding again."

"One for sorrow, two for joy, three for a girl? Three for a girl. I?m stuck on three, I just can?t get any further. My head is thick with sounds, my mouth thick with blood. Three for a girl. I can hear the magpies?they?re laughing, mocking me, a raucous cackling. A tiding. Bad tidings. I can see them now, black against the sun. Not the birds, something else. Someone?s coming. Someone is speaking to me. Now look. Now look what you made me do."

"Only I?m not sure that I am doing it just for him, and I don?t really have a plan."

"One more day of drinking, perhaps, and then I?ll get myself straight tomorrow."

"Pain harsh heavy... It is in the middle of my chest."

"Over a long time since one touched me a little tenderness."

"People you have a history with, they won?t let you go, and as hard as you might try, you can?t disentangle yourself,"

"Revealing not easy."

"Parents don?t care about anything but their children. They are the center of the universe; they are all that really counts. Nobody else is important, no one else?s suffering or joy matters, none of it is real."

"Scott the other night: the dream was just my brain picking all that apart."

"She has no past, no future. She exists purely in the moment. Drunk."

"She finds it funny or whether she?s trying to appease him."

"She has her fingers curled tightly around his forefinger and I have hold of her perfect pink foot, and I feel as though fireworks are going off in my chest. It?s impossible, this much love."

"She must be very secure in herself, I suppose, in them, for it not to bother her, to walk where another woman has walked before. She obviously doesn?t think of me as a threat. I think about Ted Hughes, moving Assia Wevill into the home he?d shared with Plath, of her wearing Sylvia?s clothes, brushing her hair with the same brush. I want to ring Anna up and remind her that Assia ended up with her head in the oven, just like Sylvia did."

"So I can?t sleep, and I?m angry. I feel as though we?re having a fight already, even though the fight?s only in my imagination. And in my head, thoughts go round and round and round. I feel like I?m suffocating."

"She wanted to chat in person and I thought it might be best. I?m sorry, OK? We just talked. We met in a crappy coffee shop in Ashbury and talked for twenty minutes?half an hour, tops. OK?"

"She?s buried beneath a silver birch tree, down towards the old train tracks, her grave marked with a cairn. Not more than a little pile of stones, really. I didn?t want to draw attention to her resting place, but I couldn?t leave her without remembrance. She?ll sleep peacefully there, no one to disturb her, no sounds but birdsong and the rumble of passing trains."

"So who do I want to be tomorrow?"

"She's cuckoo, laying her egg in my nest."

"So, how do we take responsibility? You can apologize?and even if you cannot remember committing your transgression, that doesn?t mean that your apology, and the sentiment behind your apology, is not sincere. But I want to feel it. I want to feel . . . worse. It?s an odd thing to say, but I think this all the time. I don?t feel bad enough. I know what I?m responsible for, I know all the terrible things I?ve done, even if I don?t remember the details?but I feel distanced from those actions. I feel them at one remove."

"So you climbed over the fence to gain access to your ex-husband?s house? Yes. We used to . . . There was always a spare key at the back. We had a place we hid it, in case one of us lost our keys or forgot them or something. But I wasn?t breaking in?I didn?t. I just wanted to talk to Tom. I thought maybe . . . the bell wasn?t working or something. This was the middle of the day, during the week, wasn?t it? Why did you think your"

"Sometimes I don?t even watch the trains go past, I just listen. Sitting here in the morning, eyes closed and the hot sun orange on my eyelids, I could be anywhere. I could be in the south of Spain, at the beach; I could be in Italy, the Cinque Terre, all those pretty colored houses and the trains ferrying the tourists back and forth. I could be back in Holkham with the screech of gulls in my ears and salt on my tongue and a ghost train passing on the rusted track half a mile away."

"Sometimes I catch myself trying to remember the last time I had meaningful physical contact with another person, just a hug or a heartfelt squeeze of my hand, and my heart twitches."

"Some battles aren?t worth fighting."

"Sometimes I feel like seeing if I can track down anybody from the old days, but then I think, what would I talk to them about now? They wouldn?t even recognize Megan the happily married suburbanite. In any case, I can?t risk looking backwards, it?s always a bad idea."

"Sometimes, I don?t want to go anywhere, I think I?ll be happy if I never have to set foot outside the house again."

"Sometimes I want to scream at him, Just let me go. Let me go. Let me breathe. So I can't sleep, and I'm angry. I feel as though we're having fight already, even though the fight's only in my imagination. And in my head, thoughts go round and round and round. And I feel like I'm suffocating."

"That?s what he always used to say to me. Don?t expect me to be sane, Anna. Not with you."

"That was my first home. Not my parents? place, not a flatshare with other students, my first home. I can?t bear to look at it. Well, I can, I do, I want to, I don?t want to, I try not to. Every day I tell myself not to look, and every day I look. I can?t help myself, even though there is nothing I want to see there, even though anything I do see will hurt me."

"That?s what I?ve taken from the therapy sessions: the holes in your life are permanent. You have to grow around them, like tree roots around concrete; you mold yourself through the gaps."

"Surely he would call me, wouldn't she? She would know how panicked... how desperate I would be. She's not vindictive like that, is she?"

"The author claimed that blacking out wasn?t simply a matter of forgetting what had happened, but having no memories to forget in the first place. His theory is that you get into a state where your brain no longer makes short-term memories. And while you?re there, in deepest black, you don?t behave as you usually would, because you?re simply reacting to the very last thing you think happened, because - since you aren?t making memories - you might not actually know what the last thing that happened really was."