In A Dark, Dark Wood Quotes
"I always start my morning the same way. Maybe it’s something about living alone – you’re able to get set in your ways, there’s no outside disruptions."
"Having a routine is important. It gives you something to hang on to, something to differentiate the weekdays from the weekends."
"I knew, as soon as I woke up, that it was a day for a park run, for the longest route I do, nearly nine miles all in all."
"Don’t think we’ve met. Well, it definitely wasn’t Clare then. I took a deep breath and followed her down into the hallway."
"I dream of blood, spreading and pooling and soaking me."
"I don’t do that. But I hold a mantra in my head, and I run until I can’t hear it any more above the pounding of my heart and the pounding of my feet."
"I remembered sleeping over on her bedroom floor aged maybe six, my first time away from home."
"I took a deep breath, pulled up the original email from Flo, and began to type."
"I don’t think pumping and dumping’s going to sort that one out."
"I’ve no wish to force my rather expensive drugs on people who don’t appreciate them."
"Here’s to a great hen weekend, for the best friend a girl could ever have."
"The only tools I have yelling at me are the kids in Victoria Park."
"We both think Clare’s the centre of the fucking universe."
"It’s like being back at school – bitch fights and sniping and everything."
"I try to be completely non-judgmental – not pushing for secrets, not repelling confessions."
"You’d think people would be wary of spilling to a writer."
"Sometimes the brain suppresses events that we’re not quite ready to deal with."
"The brain doesn’t remember well. It tells stories. It fills in the gaps, and implants those fantasies as memories."
"It’s hard to know when to stop, you know? You see a gap in the narrative, you want to fill it with a reason, a motive, a plausible explanation."
"I’ve never been the kind to turn people’s heads – not like Clare, whose beauty is hard to ignore, or Nina, who’s spectacular in a lean, Amazonian kind of way."
"But it’s the fact that if it hadn’t have been for the snow, we’d never have known."
"The James I remembered, with his head shaved at the back and a scraped-up top-knot, his ripped school tie, the James who’d got drunk on his dad’s whiskey and climbed on the school war memorial at midnight to shout Wilfred Owen poems to the night sky, the James who wrote Pink Floyd lyrics on the head teacher’s car in lipstick on the last day of the summer term … That James, I couldn’t imagine in a dinner jacket, kissing Clare’s mother and laughing dutifully at the best-man speech."
"If there’s one thing I dislike more than being hurt, it’s being seen to be hurt."
"There is a lightness about that knowledge, but also a terrible weight."
"He is gone – and, just when I need it most, so is the rage I have nursed all this time."
"Perhaps if I say it often enough, I will start to believe it."
"There’s a kind of focussing effect that happens when you’re very ill."
"I knew him so that if I touched his face in the dark, I would know it was him."
"I have not spoken to him for ten years, but I thought of him every single day."
"If you're innocent, you have nothing to fear. Right?"
"I walk slowly, shivering, round the corner of the building and there, at the sign saying ‘Taxi queue starts here’, is a single cab, light on."
"‘What can I do you for, love?’ he asks. He is a Sikh, his turban a smart black, with a pin in the centre with his taxi company’s logo on."
"‘Thank God. I manage a smile, though my face feels like it is frozen, and might crack with the effort."
"‘Sorry,’ I say, as he glances back to make sure I’m buckled up. ‘Sorry. I’m nearly there.’"
"‘It’s all right.’ I rub the sleep out of the corners of my eyes and feel in my pocket for the money."
"‘No thanks,’ I say. I grit my teeth, trying not to let them chatter. ‘I’m fine. Thanks. Goodbye, now.’"
"I remember the run, when I met Clare halfway up, my legs tired and aching and my skin cold."
"What has happened to my muscles in hospital?"
"‘No.’ The voice comes from somewhere outside me."
"I will not die because someone has to do this – has to get to the truth of what happened."