Crosstalk Quotes
"If everybody minded their own business," the Duchess said in a hoarse growl, "the world would go round a deal faster than it does." — Lewis Carroll, Alice in Wonderland
"Let me not to the marriage of true minds admit impediments." — William Shakespeare, "Sonnet 116"
"I didn’t ‘snag’ him," Briddey said, "and he didn’t propose."
"You’re the only person I can talk to around here, and if you’re a vegetable—"
"Yes, well, wait till it blows up in your face," he said.
"Relationships need less communication, not more."
"If people really wanted to communicate, they’d tell the truth, but they don’t."
"Our whole evolutionary history has been about trying to stop information from getting communicated—camouflage, protective coloration, that ink that squids squirt, encrypted passwords, corporate secrets, lying. Especially lying."
"You don’t want to know. Trust me. Especially what guys think. It’s like a cesspool in there."
"And you know who people lie to the most? Themselves."
"Oh, and I suppose he told you that. And when did ever a word of truth come out of an Englishman’s mouth, I’d like to know. Lyin’ brutes they are—"
"It doesn’t matter who Trent’s descended from," Kathleen said. "It’s the person that counts."
"Is it so wrong to want a boyfriend who doesn’t leave you stranded at a convenience store in the middle of the night?" she thought.
"Of course you are, childeen," Aunt Oona said. "’Tis well past time for tea."
"Live in fragments no longer. Only connect…" —E.M. FORSTER, Howard’s End
"I can call spirits from the vasty deep." "Why, so can I, and so can any man;/But will they come when you do call for them?" —WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE, Henry IV, Part I
"Please tell me I’m dreaming," Briddey thought.
"Well, if I called the wrong number, why did you answer the phone?" —JAMES THURBER, The Thurber Carnival
"Tell me, he begged. Did you go down to the lobby?"
"Everything’ll be okay, C.B. said. I promise."
"It isn’t the anesthesia or brain damage, Briddey thought. It’s real. And so is telepathy."
"I thought they’d never leave, C.B. said. Are you okay?"
"You’re lucky your boyfriend called," the nurse’s aide said. "You could have been down there for ages. We didn’t even know you weren’t in your room."
"You’re right," she said, even though she’d just begun to warm up. "Thank you for—"
"Because, as you told me yourself, people don’t believe telepathy exists, and even if it did, the EED doesn’t make people telepathic."
"The best thing you can do is get lots of sleep."
"If you want proof, I can drink a glass of water and talk at the same time."
"You don’t have anyone else who could give you a ride?"
"Hospital rules. We have to take you down to the lobby in a wheelchair."
"And you’d better do something about that bruise from the IV, too."
"You don’t realize how lucky you are that you hooked up with me."
"You really think Jay Z and Beyoncé would keep something like that to themselves?"
"If people found out telepathy was real, they’d go nuts. The government, Wall Street, the media…Just think, no more having to hack phones or follow celebrities around with a telephoto lens. People could read their minds and know where they’re going. And they could read their political opponent’s mind, too, and the DA’s. And the jury’s. Not to mention what the NSA and the military could do with it. Everybody’d want a piece of them. So they’re not telling anybody."
"Acting crazy’s a bad idea. It can get you locked up. Or burned at the stake."
"But what if they weren’t? What if they were talking to an ordinary person and what they were experiencing wasn’t a religious vision but telepathy? And they just interpreted it as a holy voice because that was the only way they could make sense of their experience? Or the only way they could keep from getting burned as a witch?"
"Fourth Rule of Lying: Keep your stories straight."
"Don’t worry, nobody heard that," C.B. said, pulling away from the curb. "Everybody’s asleep. Except people who are lying to their boyfriends."
"If you’re going to make a career of lying, you’ve got to learn to do it with a straight face."
"‘Fine airs and fair faces are all very well,’ I said, ‘but ’tis a good Irish lad you should be wantin’.’"
"‘Kathleen,’ I said to her, ‘if there aren’t times when you’re wantin’ to break his head in, then ’tis not love you’re in, ’tis only a romantic dream.’ You lasses shouldn’t be wantin’ a man who’s ‘compatible,’ but one who’ll be there when you need him."
"‘Has he a generous heart?’ That’s what you should be askin’ yourselves. ‘Would he be willin’ to risk life and limb for me? And would I be willin’ to do the same for him?’"
"That when a leprechaun is after offering you a pot of gold, sure and there’s a trick in it somewhere."
"Once you let the cat out of the bag, there’s no getting it back in."
"The more empathetically sensitive the patient is, the more complex the connection and the form the emotions take: tactile sensations, sounds, words—"
"Definitely. There are any number of factors that could interfere with connecting."
"It’s impossible to say. There are so many variables."
"No stress, no anxiety, and no thinking about connecting. Just let it happen naturally. Which it will,"
"You’ve obviously been hearing these other voices long enough to have figured out all sorts of things about them."
"No, I can’t...listen, I have to talk to you. Something’s happened."
"Trying not to only makes you think about them, like when somebody says, ‘Whatever you do, don’t think about an elephant,’ and then that’s all you can think about."
"Mental white noise. Inhibiting one set of signals by focusing on another, like when you’re working on a report and don’t hear your phone ringing."
"Sorry, I didn’t mean to scare you. There are ways to keep them at bay—"
"Yeah, well, I’ve had the voices for fifteen years, and they haven’t shown any sign of going away yet."
"But there are ways to control them. I’ll teach you—"
"Getting an annoying song stuck in your head can make you wish you were hearing the voices instead."
"I made the mistake of thinking that would be a good song for fending off the voices, and at the end of two weeks I wanted to kill myself and Engelbert Humperdinck."
"No, just the opposite. Everybody—or at least a sizeable chunk of our ancestors—once had it, but now the Irish are the only ones left with it."
"Never underestimate the power of a good book."
"It’s a theory that for most of human history, hearing voices was a common occurrence."
"Telepathy’s not exactly a survival trait, you know."
"Don’t worry, I’m talking about teaching you to protect yourself, he said. Your perimeter’s just the first line of defense. There are other ones."
"One of them had better be a wall that keeps me from being such an open book, she thought. Telepathy really is a terrible idea."
"We’re not spending the night here. For one thing, as our amorous friends pointed out, the floor’s uncomfortable. And with the budget cuts, they’ve been turning the heat way down. It’s worse than my lab. We’d freeze."
"Sorry, C.B. said, but we can’t leave yet. The whole place is crawling with staff locking up and getting ready to go home. We’ll have to wait till— He raised his head, alert. Shh, someone’s coming."
"The library is now closing," a voice said practically in Briddey’s ear. She jumped.
""Please proceed to the ground floor," the voice said. "The library will reopen at eleven A.M. tomorrow."
""I think they are, but thoughts don’t have GPS. Unless they’re actively thinking, "Here I am walking down Broadway toward Forty-second Street," it’s impossible to tell where they are or what they’re up to."
""It’s okay. The TA’s still in the stacks, and Marian’s singing ‘Happy Birthday.’ ""
""It’s okay. They’re all at the birthday party right now."
""It’s okay. The TA’s got five separate couples up there he’s got to dislodge. But it was obvious that C.B. wanted her to hurry."
""It’s okay. He’s got five separate couples up there he’s got to dislodge. But it was obvious that C.B. wanted her to hurry."
""It’s okay. The campus police are busy answering a call to the Sig Ep house, where some guy passed out on the front lawn, and Marian’s at home in bed, worrying about budget cuts."
""It’s okay. Those budget cuts, remember? And besides, I can read minds. Everyone’s gone,"
""It’s okay. This chair is too uncomfortable. And this idiot girl keeps talking."
"Beats me," he said, popping it into his mouth. He made a face. "The real question is, why would they put pieces of chalk in a children’s cereal and call them marshmallows?"
"Years of listening to the innermost secrets of your fellow human beings gives you such a low opinion of them, you don’t want to associate with them."
"The song was a huge hit," C.B. told her, "and people came up with all kinds of theories as to why he jumped."
"I’ve tried. That’s another reason I spend most of my time in the basement, because I’ve been trying to come up with a jammer."
"Sorry, Briddey. If I had a way to shut the voices off for good for you, I would."
"You know, going around and around in circles wondering whether you should drive back to the library to get your phone or wait till morning, or worrying…"
"And now I’ll never find out how The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire ends. Does it? Decline and fall?"
"Or have brain surgery to find out whether somebody loves you. You already know."
"Grown-ups never understand anything by themselves, and it is tiresome for children to be always and forever explaining things to them." —ANTOINE DE SAINT EXUPÉRY, The Little Prince
"You don’t have to do that, Maeve said. We can talk anyplace."
"That’s the great thing about telepathy, Maeve said. You can talk to people anywhere. And any time."
"It’s okay, Maeve said. Trent can’t hear us. I know because I’m listening to him. He’s wondering why he can’t hear you. He thinks you’re not trying hard enough. What a creep!"
"The moat and zombie gates aren’t in my safe room, Maeve said, as if that were obvious. They’re in my castle, and that’s in my secret garden, which nobody can get into without the key."
"Parents would be even worse than zombies. That’s why we have to keep it a secret from everybody."
"I know, Maeve said. Parents would be even worse than zombies. That’s why we have to keep it a secret from everybody."
"Shh, she ordered him. Trent might hear you. I think he’s calling me on the phone right now."
"He’s in Hong Kong. I know. IT’s calling hotels, so it’s just a matter of time till they find him, and when they do, they’ll call Trent, which’ll wake him up. So we need to take advantage of the time we’ve got."
"The dark night of the soul, F. Scott Fitzgerald called it."
"That’s because it’s also the time when those same insomniacs read or count sheep or watch old movies on TV to put themselves back to sleep, which turns the whole world into a library reading room. I love this time of night."
"You need to think about something else, she told herself, and downloaded "Ode to Billie Joe."
"I wish I could believe it was that simple, Briddey thought, clutching C.B.’s jacket to her against the late-night chill."
"But she didn’t need short. She needed something long that wouldn’t make her think about C.B. or telepathy."
"And anyway, he’s way smarter than Trent. He’s really nice, too, isn’t he?"
""Well, Plan A’s rubbish. What’s Plan B?" "We’re workin’ on it.""
"There's nothing so bad that it couldn't be worse." —IRISH PROVERB
"Those who have courage to love should have courage to suffer." —ANTHONY TROLLOPE, The Bertrams