A Terrible Kindness Quotes
"To be honest, I feel the same when the Beatles come on. I can’t stand them."
"My job in life, William, is to love you like no one on earth, and I have to say, I think I’m doing a pretty good job."
"You’re special, the college choirmaster said so. You’ll be singing solos before you know it."
"If you’re on the way to a whacking, nick a handkerchief from here."
"Trust me, William, he’ll leave you alone now."
"You came dangerously close to getting a cracked old soap on a rope he once gave me for Christmas."
"Think of the blanket as a big hug from your dear dad (and me) whenever you need it."
"Lessons are hard. The other boys seem to have a bottomless pit of knowledge, general and specific, that he simply doesn’t."
"As soon as the piano plays, and Phillip’s graceful hand invites him to sing, everything but his breath, his voice and the music, is forgotten."
"Sometimes, something happens to this gang of boys, who fart and burp and pick their noses, when they know that what they produce is bigger and better than they are."
"The dry dollop of mashed potato thuds onto his plate. Usually he’s ravenous by morning break, let alone lunchtime, but he doesn’t feel hungry today."
"She’s like a fairy godmother," Martin says, "She’s beautiful, she’s strong. She’d do _any_thing to make you happy."
"Martin’s pale cheeks have gone a little pinker. ‘Probably.’"
"Wrapped up in coats and scarves, William and Martin are sitting in adjacent apple trees with their legs dangling over the unkempt grass."
"‘I’m worried I won’t be any good – in the play.’ William rubs his finger along the fissured tree bark."
"‘That doesn’t matter,’ Martin says, ‘Aren’t you pleased?’"
"There won’t be any cousins, so it won’t be quite such a big deal."
"He wonders what the other option is, if not to help with a real embalming. What’s the alternative? To play around and then throw them away?"
"He wonders if he’ll always be reminded of uncooked chicken at this moment."
"Somebody loved this man and even if there’s no one left to mourn him, he’s still a person, and embalmers have to believe that people matter."
"He feels an urge to reach up and pluck the lower leaves off, to bring them to their inevitable end more quickly."
"The thrill of the bed hop to the humiliation of a beating. The kindness of Martin to the cowardice of William’s betrayal of him."
"It seemed every good thought in his head had to lead to something bad."
"The beauty of the ‘Miserere’ to the shock of his mother’s spite."
"He wondered if his father might have preferred him to have made choices that aligned him to his mother instead."
"He's not a fan of beer, and he doesn’t want the Finches to smell it on him when he returns."
"He knows that this cocksure manner is only to save face and that when he goes back to his bedsit it’s another story."
"He knows full well how quickly it will spread. How easy for all of them to believe that this is what their friendship has really been about these four years."
"No performance, no audience, no humiliation."
"As the distance between him and his chorister days increased from days and weeks to months, his future as an embalmer acted as an anchor for his present and some kind of hope for his future."
"It mattered. Somebody loved this man and even if there’s no one left to mourn him, he’s still a person, and embalmers have to believe that people matter."
"What means most to them is the part you played."
"He’s lived with Robert and Howard since that nightmare Ash Wednesday, when he refused to even finish his final year."
"I’m not sure I like you describing it as bad news."
"What drives me crazy is that you can’t bear anything to be more than one story."
"You’re scared of getting help, because of what else it will uncover."
"You can choose not to be a father, but you can’t choose to stop being a son."
"You’re a tyrant who hurts everyone who gets close to you."
"There’s a madness that comes with grief. For a good few years after your father died, I had a layer of skin missing."
"What a terrible mess we can make of our lives. There should be angel police to stop us at these dangerous moments."
"So all we’re left with, my precious son, is whether we can forgive, be forgiven, and keep trying our best."
"For the first six months I changed the bed in the spare room every week, so it would be fresh if you turned up."
"When we go through impossible things, someone, or something, will help us, if we let them."
"You’ve realized people change; in fact, they couldn’t stay the same, even if they wanted to."
"What you did here, that terrible job, made unbearable moments bearable."
"And in our darkest days, William, you helped us. Now, at some point, God forbid, you might need help. And I believe you’ll get it."
"I think I’ll visit the graves, but it’s a bit of a climb. Do you want to sit in the car, or on that bench in the playground?"