Swing Time Quotes
"It was the season of sex, yes, but it was also, in all the vital ways, without sex itself—and isn’t that one useful definition of a happy girlhood?"
"The closest I came to anything like that was the music store room and I did not come very close at all, and I have historical luck to thank for that."
"You had to work out what you wanted while the door was still open, pinpoint its location, and then, if the item was not in arm’s reach, let the door shut and carry on in darkness."
"The space was typical of such schools at the time: chaotic, too small, windowless, many ceiling tiles missing."
"The status in our class was peculiar: despite his condition, whatever it was, he was tall and handsome."
"The invitation said a trip to the cinema—but who’d pay for this ticket? The guest or the host?"
"Don’t they look nice?" said Lily’s mother, again, and walked out, leaving us to it.
"Tracey felt herself to be quite free. She kept up her commentary throughout, ridiculing the plot and the songs."
"Lily—always gracious, always friendly, always kind—took all her guests to her room and showed us her toys, old and new, whatever we fancied."
"To Aimee poverty was one of the world’s sloppy errors, one among many, which might be easily corrected if only people would bring to the problem the focus she brought to everything."
"She hated meetings and long discussions, disliked considering an issue from too many angles."
"She put her faith instead in the power of her own decisions, and these she made with her 'heart.'"
"She was motivated by something else: impatience."
"Nothing bored her more than 'on the one hand this' and 'on the other hand that.'"
"She believed in her own good timing, in timing itself, as a mystical force."
"But I knew Aimee herself had no abstract interest in power."
"In the comparison, as it turned out, Aimee came out a little ahead."
"But what happens with this—that will never matter, not in this culture, not for these people, so all you’re doing is playing their game by their rules."
"All that matters in this world is what’s written down."
"But as soon as she’d said it she saw her own mistake: it was an admission, this was exactly the time of my life when I could finally take a step away from her."
"I wasn’t ready to release her into her new life."
"She smiled, slung her dance bag over her shoulder and said: 'Let’s go.'"
"I knew she had her legitimate reasons, she was busy preparing for her stage-school audition."
"But I wasn’t going to give her the video to take home, I knew better than that, I knew when I had collateral."
"In the past I had always had to wait for one of the rare gaps in my parents’ decade-long argument, into which I would then try to insert myself."
"Only my friend’s judgment counted, now more than ever."
"I was not really like my new friends, not especially self-destructive or reckless."
"It was the visual, literal confirmation of the 'urban nihilism' of which she had often spoken."
"We are kin now," he told me, "They seem to have decided we're family."
"No one is more ingenious than the poor, wherever you find them."
"I think every place has its share of beauty, thanks be to God."
"I am not of her world, that's clear. But I am here so that if she gets bored—"
"I don’t see anything ingenious about poverty like this."
"It’s just for me an interesting example of follow-through. Or of not following through."
"My job is to make sure something of use is left here, on the ground, whatever happens."
"Deal with the drops when you can see the ocean."
"Together we entered this new space that now opened up between people, a connection with no precise beginning or end."
"Most e-mails sent in the mid-nineties tended to be long and letter-like."
"She got the hang of it at once, sending multiple two- or three-line messages a day, mostly unpunctuated, and always with the sense of something written at great speed."
"My mother was one of the first people I knew to understand this and exploit it fully."
"It’s hard, when you’re at a loose end yourself, to be happy for others."
"My rented mortar board was barely returned before kids who had seemed not so different from me began announcing that they were leaving for London."
"But power does that everywhere. The world is saturated in blood."
"People like us, we can’t be nostalgic. We’ve no home in the past. Nostalgia is a luxury."
"The importance of labor was a view he held as strongly as my mother held her belief that the definitions that really mattered were culture and color."
"I was about to look for a taxi when, for 'fun,' he stepped off the curb and waved down a passing pedicab."
"You want to believe there are limits to what money can make happen, lines it can’t cross."
"The truth is most of my colleagues don’t even remember what the real Left is, and believe me they don’t want to remember."
"Men are so ridiculous. But it turns out so are women."
"Sometimes I wonder if people don’t want freedom as much as they want meaning."
"Maybe nothing is easier to get used to than money."
"Luxury is the easiest matrix to pass through."
"I had a lot of balls in the air, that’s how it felt to me, and—"
"People like you think you can control everything. But you can’t control me!"
"Sometimes girls say they will marry someone and they do not. It’s common."
"Earlier in the week, watching a costume fitting—in which Aimee, Jay and Kara were being dressed up to resemble Asante nobles—I’d hesitantly brought up the matter of appropriation."
"I wish you would understand that it was not easy raising you, I was not in an easy situation."
"You were lucky, you had this wonderful father. She didn’t have that."
"You can call it by any fancy name you like, love: there’s a system, and you and your fucking mother are both a part of it."
"I was twelve years behind her but I, too, felt my age among all those scandalously young girls."
"I had not seen or heard of Estelle since the children left and had presumed—if I even thought of her at all—that her services were no longer required."
"You’re still young. Time’s on your side."
"It must be a truly strong feeling you have for him, to risk so much. So much."
"Finally, shame. A suspicious emotion, so ancient."
"The world was not especially curious about logistics, as it turned out."
"A monumental amount of money, in local terms."
"The baby redeemed all kinds of deadening situations."
"The baby was starting from the beginning, the baby was uncompromised."
"Can you believe we live here? It was like bile."
"It’s a shadow life and after a while it gets to you."
"I wasn’t so much angry with Fern as annoyed at myself for not better predicting the timing."
"By contrast, the baby was innocent, the baby was guilt-free."
"The desire to be on the side of innocence is so strong."
"The time had come to 'do something' about Tracey's family."
"But I know for sure your father was very good, very good."