Quotes from Olivia Sudjic, Sympathy

The sharp, superficial pain at being spoken to unkindly had obscured the deeper pain, which had not yet turned into something hard and heavy.

I began to cry but maintained my shouting through it, like a wind through sheets of rain.

I felt the nauseous shiver in my stomach—everything from rage to empathy to morning sickness—that I had grown used to and now thought of as being love.

I was on the sidewalk, buffering, wondering if it was okay to follow people in real life.

No order, no pattern, just chaos. Lots of little universes separated by invisible screens . . .

I couldn't decide what kind of person she was, whether she was one of those insects that look exactly like wasps but aren't . . . I just wanted to know if she would sting.

Man with goatee. Man who looked like a Beatle. All the Beatles at once. Woman wearing newspaper hat. I'd grown used to how weird New Yorkers were, and I could fit them into types.

She was limp and pathetic and woozy and I loved her, I realised, even more because I knew how completely it was doomed.

Yeah!' I said again, widening my eyes and nodding slowly but emphatically to show that she had seen into my own symmetrical soul.

To me, it was clear proof of the existence of supersymmetry, the idea that every particle has a partner. She was mine.

Well, then, what's the plan now? You can't stay here forever.'My plan was indeed to stay there forever.

My ability to make up lies on the spot chills me as much as it saves me.

The messages must be stuck somewhere in the tube of light underneath the ocean that connects London and New York.

Email is the scourge of our age, ' said Silvia. 'Email and cancer.

Suddenly I had to laugh. It was like realising you definitely need to projectile vomit when you thought you had it under control in some imprisoning form of public space.

It never ceased to amaze me how she just had the facts always, in her head. It occured to me that if, or when, she died, a whole load of facts, a body of knowledge, might disappear without a trace.