A Boy Made Of Blocks Quotes
"We’ve basically spent our whole marriage worrying about Sam – his outbursts, his silence, the days he’d scream at us, the days he’d hide in his bed and shrink from any contact at all."
"Everything contracts around the mistakes you’ve made, the fissures of failure running back through time, like cracks in a badly plastered wall."
"I can’t cope with that and Sam. You’ve got to deal with it."
"Watching Sam clamber over the soggy tree trunks takes me soaring back, back to me and George as kids in the park near where we lived, daring each other to get to the very top of the climbing frame."
"Autism, as far as I understand it, is about not being given the rule book at birth."
"I mean, I’m not great, but I’m carrying on. I’ll figure something out."
"Transitions are bad news. Turning off the TV is usually a big one, getting ready to go out, finishing a meal, getting out of the bath – any switch in gear is a potential breaking point."
"I suppose transition can be scary for all of us, right? Getting a new job, starting a relationship, ending a relationship."
"When you lose someone, the grief comes back at you like a flash flood, tearing through all your carefully constructed defences."
"Behind the stress, the exhaustion, I know I’m doing everything wrong, I just can’t seem to change it."
"But acknowledging something is so much easier than changing it."
"Sometimes it feels like this is what we’ve spent the last eight years doing – yanking our beautiful little boy from one drama to the next."
"For eight years I feel like it’s been all about Sam – dealing with Sam, worrying about Sam."
"Whenever I try to change the subject, the conversation dies, so for most of the walk I stay in it, asking questions and letting him ramble on."
"Grief never really goes away. Time doesn’t heal. Not fully."
"I've been playing Minecraft with Sam. Online."
"There is an awful silence. I feel a weird sense of disassociation."
"You take everything on, you always have. Don’t let the world trap you in a corner."
"I want to go to London soon. I want to go, I promise."
"After a while – a few months, a few years maybe – grief retreats into the darkest corners of your mind, but it will lurk there indefinitely."
"This is two kids meeting up to play, this is not some sort of royal marriage linking two warring factions."
"But it is not regular for us. I feel as though I could punch the air with pride."
"This place seems to bring out the best in him."
"It’s a nice place. A lot of the time it feels like having friends around, rather than working."
"I decide not to tell Sam. Not today, not on his big play date."
"‘I can build with sandstone,’ he announces, apropos of nothing."
"I’m not sure. We’ll have to see when it is. It’ll probably be very loud."
"Sorry! I don’t know. Maybe fifty quid on Porto to score first?"
"I’ve tried. But I wonder, if I can pay it back quietly, maybe she doesn’t need to know."
"Well, erm, I was really into electronic music at university."
"Jamie trashed the living room last week because Horrible Histories was rescheduled by ten minutes."
"Sam knocked a TV over in PC World, so I grabbed him and ran away."
"I’ve thought about it too. I mean, Jamie is pathologically self-centred, obviously, but I don’t know if that’s because he’s autistic or because he’s a man."
"I’m sorry. I don’t know what’s going on any more. I’m completely lost."
"It’s OK, it’s the countryside. It’s the same at night as it is in the day."
"You’ve got to live. You’ve got to live. That’s what Georgie would want."
"‘I’m sorry. I don’t know what to do, I’m sorry,’ I say."
"I’m not going to give up on him, he’s my son too, for fuck’s sake!"
"I don’t know. I think we leave him for a bit, he has to get out of this himself."
"You’re doing a good job, picking him up every week. I know it hasn’t been easy."
"I don’t know. But I’m kind of sorting things out for myself."
"If I am not the one to help Sam, if this is something I can’t do, then I need him to be with people who can."
"But when we went to see St Peter’s, they said that Sam would be happy there."
"If we can’t help him ourselves, we’ll get him somewhere that can."
"But sometimes, you can’t get enough distance however hard you try."
"I’m sorry. Let’s see how it goes – for a little while longer."
"Everyone’s getting bored of all those identikit coffee chains, they want something personal."
"Sometimes it passes without you seeing it. But sometimes, if you're incredibly lucky and patient, it will come around again."
"Life is an adventure, not a walk. That's why it's difficult."
"I could do this, I could make this feel like that again, for other people. I would like to try."
"A week of struggles and tears and arguments and worry, diminished by a quarter of an hour with a coffee and a sofa and some people all around us."
"Some buildings are important because they are big, but some are important because they have memories in them."
"I have this strange urge to hug him, but fortunately I resist."
"I don’t have a lot of faith in myself. Things haven’t been working out for me, I don’t know if you’ve noticed."
"He’s got here on his own terms, combatting his own uncertainties. His grasp of our world is delicate and fleeting."
"We need to prove to him that we won’t let go. And if we do that, he’ll be fine."