Smack Quotes
"Someone ought to give parents lessons before they allow them to breed."
"There must be limits…there must be rules."
"Her reputation is a girl’s greatest asset…"
"The only thing I regret is that I put my dad before Tar. I won’t make that mistake twice."
"That’s Tar. I christened him Tar, because he was always telling me off for smoking."
"The difference between Tar’s dad and my dad is that Tar’s dad is basically a reasonable bloke who forgets to be reasonable, even if it is in rather a big way."
"I locked myself in my room and tried to take the planet over with music."
"I played that over and over and over but I expect it was lost on my dad. He never listens to the lyrics."
"I should have guessed what was going on when he started on about how he’d been big enough to admit when he was wrong. Now it was my turn."
"You just think that I can’t be trusted but I did everything I could to make it blah-blahity…boo-hoo-hoo."
"It isn’t as though you can walk into a shop and ask for a handbook."
"Gemma Brogan’s Practical Handbook to Running Away from Home."
"I felt a bit guilty too because…he wants me so much and…People are always talking about love like it’s something everyday."
"Knowing me I’ll fall for some real shit with earrings and a loud voice. Just my luck."
"It was the best luck I ever had in my life."
"I hate my mum more than my dad, because my dad only scares me but my mum makes me feel dirty and useless."
"I didn’t feel so great about some of the things I had to do but I didn’t have any choice."
"I’m not coming all this way just to fall out with Tar about that pair of sergeant majors."
"Sometimes people call me nice but that’s just because I can make them feel happy. Inside, I just want to have a good time, enjoy myself."
"Don’t judge me. I don’t have to justify myself to anyone."
"I’ve taken two bags and zipped them together."
"I’m not, in case you were wondering. I just play up to it."
"I could spend all day making salad and hash cookies."
"She’s only fourteen, you can imagine the mess the police or the press would make of it."
"They’ll always have more guns, they’ll always have bombs that go off with a bigger bang."
"The trouble is, they obviously needed one. A mother, I mean."
"Someone’s asked me back to their place."
"You can have a one-night stand every now and then without being a complete slut, right?"
"I didn’t know what to do with people like that."
"Everyone’s screaming and shouting and dancing."
"I wouldn’t say I wanted to spend my life with him."
"I mean, he was a really special person to me, but…"
"I wouldn’t have lasted the day. But he was."
"I just wanted to be myself just as much as she was herself."
"I didn’t know if she was talking about the world or this room or just us."
"I could have anything he wanted after that."
"I just wanted to bury myself about a hundred million miles under the ground."
"A little heroin isn’t going to change you into one. You have to think like a junkie if you want to be a junkie."
"Sometimes maybe you need an experience. The experience can be a person or it can be a drug."
"You can be anything you want to be. It’s a big secret. You’re magic!"
"You’re beautiful. You’re wonderful and everything that you do is wonderful because it’s you doing it."
"I’m flying, but a lot of people end up dead inside."
"No, really, it is dangerous. Even I know that."
"I’m part of a tribe. We live behind the windows and doors."
"If I lean out of the window and look down the City Road I see all the houses and the windows and doors in them, with rooms and rooms behind the windows and doors."
"No more needles, no more for me, no more needles, now I am free…"
"You know, you build yourself up to do something and then you fail—it doesn’t help, does it?"
"You can’t make coming down feel good, you just have to go through it."
"I don’t care how bad I feel, I’m not going to crack."
"I love you," I said. And I bloody meant it too.
"But what I reeeeeeally neeeed’s the cash."
"That’s junk. We’re all the same. There’s always a reason when you want to do some."
"The feelings are there, all right. I was just so smacked out I couldn’t feel the feelings."
"I want to have Tar’s baby. Now that really is stupid, isn’t it?"
"I’m just a junkie, I’m just a junkie," he said, over and over and over.
"It’s the first time I’d felt like that. It was the first time I knew I couldn’t get by without it."
"I thought not feeling anything was being better. It was junk."
"Dandelion, dandelion. That’s what I believe in. It’s the only thing can help me now."
"I’ve been waiting for you to say that all these years," said Tar in a quiet voice.
"You keep your head down and you get on with it. That’s how you do your time."
"I’m here, let’s face it, because I’m too scared to go inside."
"I spent a few hours rolling around groaning in my cell and they let me go to the pharmacy. I was in a horrendous mess—sweating this horrid yellow juice that stung, and aching, and my teeth with this toothache that kept jumping from tooth to tooth."
"You don’t get it any purer than the hospital gets it."
"I tried to be patient and explain to her. 'Two Paracetamol won’t do anything to me. I’m a big user, I need something a little bit stronger...'"
"It was monstrous. It had to be against the Geneva Convention or something."
"That’s the way it works. You’ll eat shit or go in the ring for ten rounds with Mike Tyson—slave, hero, rent boy, pimp, master of the universe—you’ll do whatever you have to do to get your next hit."
"Gemma was the only one who seemed to be getting better."
"Ever fallen in love with someone, Ever fallen in love, In love with someone, Ever fallen in love, With someone you shouldn’t fall in love Wiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiith?"
"I liked being in love. It’s like giving part of yourself away."
"That’s one thing about being inside, you get through it, whatever it is, because you don’t have any choice."
"I’ve been clean for over three months now, for the first time in years. I might not have done it myself out of choice, but I am clean and that’s the important thing. It’s something to build on."
"He’s doing really well. He wants to go to art college, but he needs to get the O-levels and A-levels first."
"It’s so easy to think, Oh God, here I am, I’m back on methadone, I slipped up again, I’m just a junkie. Once you get a low opinion of yourself, you’ve had it."
"Your only child hates you, your wife hates you, your colleagues—ex-colleagues—despise you. All for good reasons. Everything you worked for is gone and there you are. It doesn’t feel like standing at the threshold of a new dawn, I can tell you."
"For example, I’d come back and the whole house would stink of gin and perfume. 'You stink of alcohol,' I’d yell. 'YOU stink of alcohol!' she’d shriek back."
"There was a postcard from Hereford some time later. Apparently he had friends there; he was going to do his A-levels at college. Had a girlfriend. Sounded happy enough."