During 2023 I read 80
books. Following each reading, on both Twitter and Instagram, I would post a
picture of each book together with what I felt to be a pertinent quote from the
contents. As I was devising my end of year list, it struck me that putting all
these quotes together might form a short story, so - entirely without
embellishment and wholly in the order in which the books were read - here it
is. I think there's some really fluid segues! For those interested - which I
imagine to be only a few - the titles of those 80 books (together with a list
of favourites) is included in my 2023 summary of reading/watching/listening
which I previously posted here.
Untitled
And if everyone believed
that the boy was their son, of course there was no reason not to take him into
their house.
The corridor was dark and smelt of too much disinfectant for concrete.
A photograph could never hold the shape of a sound.
It takes you strange
digging up a littl dead kid like that. From so far back and dead for so long
and all the time they ever had ben jus that littl.
The story of my life was
a novel whose missing chapters included empathy and kindness and tolerance.
Maigret could not move.
He lay inert, in a puddle, at the edge of infinite space.
The flower stared at
Emily, then swayed from side to side until it seemed to haemorrhage into a
cockerel with deep red plumage and a scarlet crest.
To these young men
opportunity beckoned constantly, drawing them ever southward towards Los
Angeles and, of course, Hollywood, where, eventually, all the adolescents in
the world will be congregated.
I sobbed, and heard a
loud ringing in my ears. My entire body throbbed; I felt huge, elephantine, as
if I had become bulbous with inflamed limbs and grotesque deformities.
For good or evil you are
yourselves, poised for a brief and dazzling time between two annihilations.
We live in the void of
our metamorphoses.
You remember the urogi,
the night runner you saw. The naked woman dancing alone in the blackness, then
gone in a sprint. She could be a bad spirit.
It was such a feeble
moan, at such a strange pitch, that, although it filled the house, it was hard
to pinpoint its source, as if it were uttered by a ventriloquist.
I crouch by the wall
until the night smudges into another grey day, half hoping the wolphins won't
come. I've never touched even a sliver of wolphin meat, but how will they know
that?
“Is that it?" asked
Nicholas. “Is that your big plan? We're about to burn for all eternity and
you're going for cocktails?”
Ducrau took a step
forwards, perhaps to kiss the dead boy, but he did not do so. He seemed
frightened. He looked away, at the ceiling, then at a spot by the door.
I seemed to float not
into clearness, but into a darker obscure, and within a minute there had come
to me out of my very pity the appalling alarm of his being perhaps innocent.
Overhead, as the
darkness became complete, the aurora appeared: a long arc of reddish light
stretching from east to west, quivering, as if eager to expand.
We're not sorcerers. We
can't have started anything.
She reached into the
dress and pulled out a leaflet. It was crudely reproduced, like most of the
human population.
I might be indiscreet,
but I'll try not to offend. I may occasionally go into slightly bewildering
detail, but I'll try not to be boring.
Just then a shot rang
out, the room was filled with the smell of burnt gunpowder and a bluish cloud
hung in the sunlight.
We walk into any room,
and as expected, we catch Patty trying to bring the doll back to life.
Home was suddenly bright
in his mind. Annika, Eva, he wanted to get back to them more than anything
else.
Home was suddenly bright
in his mind. Annika, Eva, he wanted to get back to them more than anything
else.
What makes something art
is the intention behind it.
I had no idea that I'd
come to miss the decay and the danger.
He heard the whisper of
a kiss close to him. He had a taste like someone else's saliva in his mouth.
I saw her in front of me
and it was like I was speeding along a motorway with a car crash happening way
up ahead, but instead of slowing down I was accelerating into it.
Manchester already had
enough history for me, enough secret stuff buried away. Hidden rooms at the
backs of houses. Moments sinking in the quicksand of time.
Trees are like recording
devices, you just need to learn how to read them properly.
When watching foreign
films, I was convinced that the words the actors were saying didn't match the
subtitles, and that the characters had a direct message to me I couldn't
understand.
I'd wager that the only
reason he married you and spent so many years with a horror like you, with all
due respect, is because you had a hold on him.
So here I am, a ghost in
a world of zombies.
I do not know how
dangerous the dust is now or in what quantities it is drifting over the hotel.
It's night work that
lets something creep in.
Unless you have been
inside a sanatorium you do not know that madmen are made there, just as
criminals are made in our reformatories.
What do you think the
crime rate is in your neighbourhood?
She wants me to think
she gets pleasure from degrading herself.
It was an extraordinary
moment, and Maigret would never forget the taste of it
I may be wrong, but I
think in truth, we never really directly see, rather we imagine a fraction of a
second later, what extends before our eyes.
The snouts were as long
as human arms and seemed to have shapes at their ends serving as mouths.
Always dead-eyed and
looking right through the observer, they resembled a team of assassins, each of
whom specialised in a different means of killing.
Her hand, heavy with
fake diamond rings, kept landing on the knee of the inspector, who looked
glaucous-eyed at this frothing creature.
No operation could ever
improve a woman's intellectual skills.
The world stilled, and
then changed around her.
Dreams that apparently
only last a few seconds can leave their mark on us for a long time, sometimes
our whole lives.
No one had broken in.
Someone had written in my diary.
Rock 'n' roll is bigger
than just records, it's a way of life - you don't even need music to have rock
'n' roll.
I have become the swing
of the fire iron.
I got a theory a person
ought to do everything it's possible to do before he dies, and maybe die trying
to do something that's really impossible.
Burn. Burn. Burn.
…he did seem to have the
knack of framing what was essential...
It's hard to understand
other people, to know what's hidden in their hearts, and without the assistance
of alcohol it might never be done at all.
Surely a man could be
forgiven almost anything if he could do this and get it right.
But it has begun and
there is no stopping the process, which scans, unloads, associates and empties
out in a welter of fact, heresay, and invented memory.
In paradise there are no
desires, no pity, no love.
I'm milking the Zanzibar
cows.
It was strange and
barely understandable, but right here in the midst of love and hate, right at
the fracture, the balancing point, this was his place in the world.
She has rediscovered her
sharp voice and that disdainful look.
We are so often wrong
about those we love, slowly debasing ourselves,, so gradually we barely notice
we're doing it
Just then he looked at
her and wondered, without knowing why, whether she really wanted him to have
found out something.
Yes, the centre of
everything is empty. That's how it must be.
He now wished he had
started destroying people much earlier in his life.
Always the same song and
dance to begin with, the same nervousness, the clenched fists, the darting
sidelong glances...
Ginger Rogers said that
she did everything Fred Astaire did, except backwards and in heels, but I
wouldn't go that far.
Often he thought of
death, of himself gone and the great dark shoulder of the world for ever
turning away from the nothingness of him forever in the blackness.
There was the sound of a
door being slammed and the screeching of tires.
In this box-shaped
windowless room, all the girls are named Natasha.
What a lonely place.
Her first night had not
been a good one. Too many bad dreams, some of them true.
From the harbourside
follow the promontory that stretches out to sea.
I would rather not go
into details, but I noticed that there was something violently sexual about her
feelings for me.
She had a much delayed
wee: a nice yellow flow, then green, then flecks of orange. Lovely.
It was an obvious step
to go from the man commuting to his office to the man remaining in his own
environment and conducting his business through the use of advanced
electronics.
Temperatures soared in
the city and melted pear blossoms coated with frost.
Oh my God, Dahmer...what
have you done?
Hell is a man's shadow
printed on the side of a building.
Civilised men fear wild
creatures, especially wild creatures of their own kind who remind them of life
in the primeval forests of past ages.
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