Spare Quotes
"How beautiful it all is, I thought. And also how sad."
"You have to know when it's time to go, Harry."
"Obsessively, she once confessed to an interviewer."
"Light, pure and radiant light, and how can you really describe light?"
"Please, boys—don't make my final years a misery."
"I leaned back. I couldn't believe what I was hearing."
"Rain was grass, rain was fat. Rain was money."
"I could barely make out the reporter through the sudden red mist."
"Unfortunately it’s been a long time now, um, not for me but for most people, it’s been a long time since she’s died."
"All we could do, they both said, was issue a united condemnation."
"The trick was never letting a chase last too long."
"I don’t recall how I learned about the first man trying to sneak onto the farm."
"But it all greatly enhanced my sense of joy and relief at running away. Again."
"I wasn’t sure I could endure this kind of hot."
"The harder I worked, the less I felt the heat, and the easier it was to talk—or not talk—around the supper table."
"Even my father reminds me that unfortunately Willy and I can’t be normal."
"Poverty, disease, orphans—death. It rendered everything else rubbish."
"I believe that was also the night I smoked an entire shopping bag of weed."
"Hard to be precise when it comes to a shopping bag full of weed."
"I’d met someone years earlier, a girl from South Africa. At the Berkshire Polo Club."
"Unlike so many girls I met, she wasn’t visibly fitting herself for a crown the moment she shook my hand."
"She seemed immune to that common affliction sometimes called throne syndrome."
"I had no talent—so I’d been told, again and again—and thus all reactions to me had nothing to do with me."
"I’d always wanted to know what it might be like to meet a woman and not have her eyes widen at the mention of my title, but instead to widen them myself, using my mind, my heart."
"She probably didn’t even know about my mother; she was likely too young to recall the tragic events of August 1997."
"Africa does offer moments like that, if you’re ready. If you’re worthy."
"She and Mike were the first people ever to cherish whatever wildness was still inside me, whatever hadn’t been lost to grief—and paps."
"The press would cost me another person I cared about."
"Parents divorced? Mum’s dead? Unresolved grief or psychological trauma? Step this way!"
"I was either a crypto Nazi or else a mental defective."
"You’re still growing, still becoming, still learning."
"He condemned my actions... placed my stupidity in historical context."
"He urged me not to be devastated by my mistake, but instead to be motivated."
"The Army had been the one healthy outlet I’d found."
"A prince in the ranks was a big public-relations asset."
"My existence narrowed to one interesting task."
"The heroes are the guys on the plane. Not to mention the guys still back at Delhi and Dwyer and Edinburgh."
"I’d always assumed I’d be the first to be married, because I’d wanted it so badly."
"I felt, in many ways, that I’d been bag-flying for years."
"It wasn’t just the memories of Mummy’s funeral. More than three thousand bodies lay beneath us, behind us."
"Weddings were joyous occasions, sure, but they were also low-key funerals, because after saying their vows people tended to disappear."
"Each new identity assumes the throne of Self, but takes us further from our original self, perhaps our core self—the child."
"I’d never worn it before and hoped not to wear it again anytime soon. It had huge shoulder pads, and huge cuffs, and I could imagine people saying: 'Who’s this idiot?'"
"But in my gut I couldn’t help feeling that this was yet another farewell under this horrid roof. Another sundering."
"What was the universe out to prove by taking my penis at the same moment it took my brother?"
"The truth is, I road-tested a few lines on JLP, but mostly I winged it."
"Mummy: How she’d have loved to have been here."
"Upon reaching the top of the world, the four wounded soldiers uncorked a bottle of champagne and drank to Granny."
"My penis was oscillating between extremely sensitive and borderline traumatized."
"It was hard seeing Chels at Willy’s wedding."
"The southwest. I spent a week or so hovering over a bleak place called Gila Bend."
"Much of what they did to us was illegal under the rules of the Geneva Conventions, which was the goal."
"I also had my first taste of cow-foot soup, which had more of a kick than the homemade alcohol."
"I met India Hicks, Pa’s goddaughter, one of Mummy’s bridesmaids."
"Towards the end of the visit the Bahamian children gathered around me and presented me with a gift."
"I’d represented the Crown well, according to courtiers."
"She wanted to be an actress. She was so soft-spoken and shy, acting was the last profession I’d have imagined for her."
"For the second time in my life I needed to tell a young woman I’d just met that I’d soon be going off to war."
"I’d been trained to "other-ize" them, trained well."
"Taking him meant saving British lives, sparing British families."
"I wanted to return to Britain with all my limbs, but more, I wanted to go home with my conscience intact."
"It wasn’t his fault. But I appreciated the apology."
"I decided to mark the anniversary of my arrival on Earth by traveling to its end."
"The silence was holy—not a bird, not a car, not a tree."
"Life was one long walk. It made sense. It was wonderful. All was interdependent and interconnected…"
"Use the repetitive motion, he said, use the biting cold, use that nothingness, that landscape’s unique blankness, to narrow your focus until your mind falls into a trance. It will become a meditation."
"Even when you stop being a soldier, you don’t have to stop being a soldier. Ever."
"I watched the city going past, all the houses and people, and I thought: I can’t wait for you all to meet her."
"In the morning I moved from Nott Cott to the car, without a pause in the texting. I texted with her throughout the long drive to Sir Keith’s place, continued through Sir Keith’s hall—'How you doing, Sir Keith?'—and up the stairs and into his guestroom, where I locked the door and remained holed up, texting."
"To my shock, and delight, there was nothing in that suitcase but bare essentials. Shorts, ripped jeans and snacks. And a yoga mat."
"The true me. Might seem rash, I thought, might seem illogical, but it’s true: For the first time, in fact, I felt myself to be living in truth."
"Meghan—whom I was now calling Meg, or sometimes just M—was stunned. The vivid colors. The pure, fresh air. She’d traveled, but she’d never seen anything like this."
"We were desperate to see each other again. We circled the last days of August, about ten days away, for our next meeting."
"And still it wasn’t enough. We were desperate to see each other again."
"Taking care of each other? That’s the point."
"That’s love, I thought, though I managed to keep the words inside."
"If meeting the rest of my family goes like this, we’re home free."
"I have a fuzzy memory, and a grainy video on my phone, of Charlie and me rolling on the floor while Meg sat nearby laughing."
"The wine was as good as the company, and there was plenty of it."
"I remember Euge hugging Meg, as if they were sisters."
"We agreed that if we were serious about giving ourselves a chance, a real chance, we’d need a serious plan."
"Effort. You had to fight the distance, defeat that distance."
"The alternative was not seeing me, and that, she said, wasn’t feasible. Or bearable."
"Great, I thought, laughing. I’ve been worrying about the wrong thing."
"The conversation was easy, all four of us talking at once."
"That’s the point of life, to get stuff done together."
"My deepest fear is history repeating itself... I lost my mother and now I watch my wife falling victim to the same powerful forces."
"This isn’t about wanting or needing good press. It’s about not letting people get away with abuse. And lies."
"The press was a big part of why we’d come to this crisis—their business model demanded that we be in constant conflict—but they weren’t the only culprits."
"I’d always told myself that, just because everyone in my family didn’t explicitly condemn press attacks, it didn’t mean they condoned them."
"I offered to defray the cost of security out of my own pocket. I wasn’t sure how I’d do that, but I’d find a way."
"Meg and I don’t care about perks, we care about working, serving—and staying alive."
"This seemed simple and persuasive. All the heads around the table went up and down."
"I promised her we’d get through it, we’d find a way. In the meantime, we’d find her the help she needed."
"He wouldn’t come to the phone. I soon received a long email from him saying we’d have to sit down and discuss the whole thing in person."
"I’d become emotional in front of a roomful of sick kids and their folks just after becoming a father myself—nothing abnormal in that."
"Everything suddenly looked familiar. Then I remembered. This was the corridor where I’d slept that Christmas after returning from the South Pole."
"He saw me and looked extremely sheepish…for a bee."
"A firm 'no comment' on the status of our security."
"What’s the matter with these people? What makes them like this?"