Quotes from Graham Joyce

You can be an aging rock star, but you can't be an aging wannabe rock star.

Fairy tales are about money, marriage and men. They are maps and manuals that are passed down from mothers and grandmothers to help them to survive. MARINA WARNER

Wonder has no opposite; it springs up already doubled in itself, compounded of dread and desire at once, attraction and recoil, producing a thrill, the shudder of pleasure and of fear.

The fey wonders of the world only exist while there are those with the sight to see them. CHARLES DE LINT

I LOVE HORSES!' shrieked the Tooth Fairy over his shoulder.

And there was Tara, again with that shy half-smile and her burgundy lips slightly puckered, that shy kink, an incomplete curlicue at the corner of her mouth; he'd seen it before many times but never noted it, and now it had him mesmerized.

Though most love songs are protest songs, when you think about it.

Jake, we haven't tried for awhile. Tried what? Just to walk out. No. Why haven't we? Because we're in a place where a horse shits rainbows. Right.

Because while the world is filled with people who just need to let their demon go, there is another group who need to find themselves one.

No one needs a first edition. Whoever wrote it; even if it was Moses.

Clive, at moments like this, had a smile like the lace in an old-style football. Anyone could be forgiven for wanting to boot it.

Anyway, I'm not one for labels: they change every couple of years like the hemlines on women's skirts.

Wir, die wir einst herrlich waren. Wir fallen immer noch aus den Wolken. ??, ??????? ???? ?????-?? ????????????. ?? ??? ??? ?????? ?? ???????. («ÃŸÃ'€Ð°Ð²Ð´Ð° ?????», ???? ?????)

You don't think nature has accidents, do you?

There are certain songs, and books, and films that are like points of high ground in the memory. Like they are even larger than your own experiences. They never go away.

The sun was up and I want to say that it was golden, but it wasn't golden, it was the color of treacle. I want to say the grass was green, but it wasn't, it was turquoise, the color of a quarry pool. The rocks were lion-colored and glimmered with quartz, and the sky I wanted to call blue was in reality lilac. And the colors were moist. It was as much as I could do to prevent myself from getting off the horse and putting my hands into these colors, to see if they would come off on my fingers.

His father had been slightly ahead, carrying sister Zoe. There were creatures looking at him from behind the blue slate rocks; they pointed their fingers and smiled cruel smiles. He felt safe in his mother's papoose (facing backwords) but was still afraid of the creatures. He was only just old enough to talk. He'd tried to make a sound but he was almost mesmerized by the creatures stirring in the wake of the family's passage.

I mean," I said, "it's not like the lake is a living thing." This was perhaps the worst thing I could have said. He looked suddenly alarmed. He put a hand, sticky as it was with gray sand, over my mouth. "Hush, darlin' girl! Hush! The lake hears your every word and knows your every thought.

Whenever he was reminded that life was a losing battle to entropy, what with light-bulbs flickering and horseshoes and nails shuffling out of neat order the moment he turned his back, he was also reminded that humor and a cheerful disposition were the only known antidotes.

Todo lo que oyes o ves o tocas o hueles está ligado a una historia, una historia que yo puedo contarte. Si dices «beicon», puedo contarte una historia. Si dices «nieve», puedo contarte una docena de historias distintas. Eso somos: una serie de historias que hemos compartido, que tenemos en común. Eso somos el uno para el otro.

Rome is a place almost worn out by being looked at, a city collapsing under the weight of reference.

If I couldn't get published tomorrow I'd still be writing. It's something to do with feeling so overwhelmed by this experience of life that you have to tell someone about it, and in a way that reorders the experience to make it manageable.

The blood in my veins is frozen but it sings of love.

Our literary culture is marinated in deep traditions of the fantastic and the supernatural, and we export those rich qualities in films and books on a spectacular industrial scale.