Quotes from Craig Silvey

Life might be easier if you give in a little, but it's better if you hold onto something so hard you can't give it up.

And so I think I got married because I thought that a ring would lock that love in forever, because it's very scary when it is just your feelings holding you together

I don't understand a thing about this world: about people, and why they do the things they do. The more I find out, the more I uncover, the more I know, the less I understand.

My point is this: the more you have to lose, the braver you are for standing up.

Life might be easier if you give in a little, but it's better if you hold onto something so hard you can't give it up.

I never understood why you would ever feel the need to shoot the fish in the barrel. I mean, they're in a barrel, you've already caught them. The hard work's done, they can't escape. So if you want them dead, just drain the water out. Why bring guns into it?

You need to understand that truth is stranger than fiction. Listen: people are willing to swallow any old tripe as long as you say it without flinching. They want to be told stuff. And they don't want to doubt you either. It's too hard.

Well, see, I think it's that most people don't like that lonely feeling. People don't like looking up and feeling small or lost. That's what I think prayer is all about. It doesn't matter which stories they believe in, they're all doing the same thing, kind of casting a line out to outer space, like there's something out there to connect to. It's like people make themselves part of something bigger that way, and maybe it makes them less afraid.

Still, there is something emboldening about being awake when the rest of the world is sleeping. Like I know something they don't.

Batman doesn't have any superpowers. He's not superhuman. He's not super. So therefore he can't be a superhero.

How strange and abandoned and unsettled I am. Like a snowdome paper weight that's been shaken. There's a blizzard in my bubble. Everything in my world that was steady and sure and sturdy has been shaken out of place, and it's now drifting and swirling back down in a confetti of debris. (p30)

Sorry is a question that begs forgiveness, because the metronome of a good heart won't settle until things are set right and true.

What kind of lousy world is this? Has it always been this way, or has the bottom fallen out of it in the past couple of days? Has it always been so unfair? What is it that tips the scales so? I don't understand it.

And I realize I've been betrayed by the two vices that fiction promised me I'd adore. Sal Paradise held up bottles of booze like a housewife in a detergent commercial. Holden Caulfield reached for his cigarettes like an act of faith. Even Huckleberry Finn tapped on his pipe with relief and satisfaction. If sex turns out to be this bad, I'm never reading again.

Every instance in my life, I've felt like the exact opposite of Superman. Except this time, this moment right now. I don't care. I don't feel like a weak, insipid sissy. Because right now I know I would save the girl. I know that I would rather risk the planet than let harm befall Eliza Wishart. I would save her in a second. Because I can imagine her and me huddled safe together while the earth falls under evil designs, but I can't imagine the world without her in it.

Holding something doesn't make it yours. You realize at some point you're just keeping it back for yourself, because it's pulling away with equal force. You've got to cut the string from your finger and leave that wispy thread, like a baby spider on the breeze.

I can wade through the dark, but I can only see as far as the guttering candle allows me.

With things like this, when people don't really understand what has happened, they'll assume the worst long before they have to. It's a little like when people are afraid of the dark. Often it's not the darkness they're afraid of, it's the fact that they don't know what's in it. And because they can't see, because they're not sure, they start to imagine there are more sinister things afoot than there ordinarily would be.

And it happens like that. Like when you first realize that there is no such thing as magic. Or that nothing actually answers your prayers, or really even listens. That cold moment of dismay where your feet are kicked from under you, where you're disarmed by a shard of knowing.

Jasper Jones fell out of this world and nobody noticed...And they'll notice now because something has been burned. Now they'll look for Jasper Jones.

And so I think I got married because I thought that a ring would lock that love in forever, because it's very scary when it is just your feelings holding you together

My brain is a vast, barren, jokeless plain where wolves howl at the moon over rocky overhangs and the wind kicks up twists of sand and tumbleweed.

I'd sneer and tell him he's got the cerebral finesse of an amoeba and delight in his squint of confusion.

My exit from the window is a little like a foal being born. It's a graceless and gangly drop, directly onto my mother's gerbera bed. I emerge quickly and pretend it didn't hurt.