The Go-Between Quotes
"If you can’t think of them kindly, don’t think of them at all. For your own sake, don’t think of them."
"You flew too near to the sun, and you were scorched. This cindery creature is what you made me."
"Knowledge may be power, but it is not resilience, or resourcefulness, or adaptability to life, still less is it instinctive sympathy with human nature."
"A late-comer to school, I had uncritically accepted all its standards. I was a conformist."
"I was haunted by the schoolboy’s fear that my mother wouldn’t look right, do right, be right in the eyes of the other boys and their parents."
"I was the hero of the hour, and though my vogue did not last long at that high level, I never quite lost it."
"It never occurred to me, for instance, that I might get measles, and it astonished me that my mother regarded this as not only possible but probable."
"Once I had been too self-distrustful; now I was overconfident."
"I had only to wish them to serve me and they would. I had forgotten the era of persecution; I had relaxed and withdrawn the sentries."
"Success in work she would have understood... But to be revered as a magician!"
"Those early days were a time of floating impressions, unrelated to each other, making little sense, let alone a story."
"Scenes linger with me—generally in tones of light and dark, but sometimes tinged with colour."
"The hammock was a novelty that had just succeeded the corded, knotted kind that caught your buttons and dragged them off."
"The smell of harness leather—to me more captivating than the stronger horse smells."
"Wednesday 11th of July. Saw the Deadly Nightshade—Atropa belladonna."
"I stood on the threshold, not daring to go in, staring at the button-bright berries and the dull, purplish, hairy, bell-shaped flowers reaching out towards me."
"I felt that the plant could poison me even if I didn’t touch it, and that if I didn’t eat it, it would eat me, it looked so hungry, in spite of all the nourishment it was getting."
"I felt utterly out of place among these smart rich people, and a misfit everywhere."
"I was no longer satisfied with the small change of experience, which had hitherto contented me."
"In the heat the senses, the mind, the heart, the body, all told a different tale. One felt another person, one was another person."
"Grown-ups didn’t seem to realize that for me, as for most other schoolboys, it was easier to keep silent than to speak."
"What one said and did seemed to matter more, as if something hung on it, as if it was contributing to a coming event."
"The conversation of the gods!—I didn’t resent or feel aggrieved because I couldn’t understand it."
"The sense of strain and crisis grew: all sensation was sharpened to a point."
"She counts on having ’em, same as I do. It’s something that we both look forward to."
"It was a prideful and sustaining thought that whereas the spectators would throw themselves about and shout themselves hoarse, we, the players, were forbidden to show the least sign of emotion."
"I was still in the air though the scaffolding of events which had lifted me had crumbled."
"Far from diminishing my exultation, it had somehow raised it to a higher power, like the drop of bitter in the fount of happiness."
"I knew that the fate of the match had turned on me, and I felt I could afford to defy convention."
"To tell you the truth, I’d forgotten your existence, and then I looked round and there you were, by God."
"I felt that I had fulfilled my function in life, nothing more remained for me to do: I could live forever on my capital of achievement."
"Sometimes made remarks to each other across me as if I was not there."
"All except one. Marian, I noticed, didn’t look up."
"Sentence after sentence poured out, just as if he was reading it; and just as when he was reading prayers, his voice was uninflected and monotonous."
"The more clothes he put on, the less he looked himself."
"I was I. It was thanks to me that we had won the cricket match; thanks to me that the concert had been the success it was."
"I could not find a flaw in the universe and was impatient with Christianity for bringing imperfection to my notice."
"My memory and imagination would add nothing to them."
"I don’t think it would be if your name was on it."
"I’m sure I am. I’m very happy except for the errands."
"I am looking forward very much to coming home."
"But you mustn’t do that," he said, "that’s against the rules. Never point a gun at anybody, even when it isn’t loaded."
"I was shaken and frightened and did not trust myself or anyone."
"The iron curtain of secrecy, which it was my deepest instinct to keep intact, would be riddled with holes."
"I did not doubt that it would bring the telegram of recall."
"We trod a knife-edge between affection and falling out."
"In a foreign language one has to say something or look silly, even if the something were better left unsaid."
"The mysterious principle of growth is manifest in them, mysterious yet simple."
"It invited and yet repelled inspection, as if it was harbouring some shady secret that it yet wanted you to know."
"In action I was a realist for whom the end justified the means."
"A man who is a prefect at a public school told a friend of mine, and he rocked with laughter."
"It’s very hot here too, and I have often felt anxious for you, but you have always told me you enjoyed the heat."
"The weather now obeyed the rules; at all times of the day it was exactly what it should be."
"I had been so pleased with my handling of the situation at the outhouses; now I found myself wondering whether instead of whispering to Marcus, it wouldn’t have been better to have given a shout that would have warned them."
"They would not suffer at all. The other spell, Ted’s spell, would be destroyed, but they would not be harmed."
"I did not know what 'blackmail' meant, and, with all my thirst for knowledge, was too frightened to ask."
"I was prepared to dread it, but not prepared for the tumult of emotions it aroused in me."
"It’s natural for a boy of your age to want to know those things, and us older ones ought not to stand in your way."
"Time’s running on! You’re thirteen now, you’ll soon be fourteen: fifteen, sixteen, seventeen, eighteen, and every year bringing new troubles."
"It’s not raining yet, but it will before the day’s out, mark my words."
"Summer or not, it isn’t natural. Why, everything’s burnt up."
"Oh," I exclaimed, for mental derangement, like most forms of calamity, had a special interest for me."
"It isn’t only dogs go mad; it’s human beings."
"Once the various objects were separated and back in their proper place, they seemed to lose their collective power for evil."
"At school I should be one of the older boys, to whom the others looked up."
"I condemned them unheard. I did not stop to ask myself how, if they were to do again, I should improve on them."
"No little boy likes to be called a little man, but any little boy likes to be treated as a little man."
"In my attack upon the deadly nightshade I had gone a step too far, even for myself."
"But pure flower-gazing was a habit I had not acquired."
"I did not realize that this attempt to discard my dual or multiple vision and achieve a single self was the greatest pretence that I had yet embarked on."
"To see things as they really were—what an impoverishment!"
"I was too frightened to mind the storm, though it increased my wretchedness."
"The capacity for disbelief, so difficult to acquire, is equally difficult to eradicate."
"I accumulated facts: facts that existed independently of me."
"The irony of this was like an arrow in my spirit."
"I had come to blame the visit for everything, even for my vice of taking myself too seriously."
"Once a go-between, never a go-between" had become my maxim."