Among The Mad Quotes
"To gain a decent job in a new country he would need to build more confidence in his work and himself."
"She ached for the milky softness of her daughter’s small body in her arms."
"If only we’d been here earlier, if only—"
"Forgetting has never been of concern to me, Inspector. It’s the remembering that gives me pause."
"I think we need to get on with it, sir."
"Had I not told him that we must bide our time?"
"I remember, see. Oh, it was all very well, sending out those watches, so we all had the same time, down to the second."
"Cry havoc and let slip the dogs of war."
"We’re hoping to retrace the dead man’s movements."
"We’ll have men at bus stops along the number thirty-six route on Monday, at a time coinciding with the commuting habits of the woman."
"The man who made the threat is expecting a response first thing tomorrow morning."
"You are on your own, but you are on our clock."
"I could recognize him in a crowd, if that’s what you mean."
"He may have seen the dead man before, know who he is, or at least have some nugget of information for us."
"They want to be caught so that they can be heard."
"The truth is, Billy, that if the man does carry out his threat, it might give us more information to work with."
"I am going to prepare my template and then see if I can fill it with a few names."
"You cannot build a higher civilization and a standard of life which can absorb the great force of modern production if you are subject to price fluctuations from the rest of the world which dislocate your industry at every turn, and to the sport of competition from virtually slave conditions in other countries."
"What I fear much more than a sudden crisis is a long, slow, crumbling through the years until we sink to the level of a Spain, a gradual paralysis beneath which all the vigor and energy of this country will succumb."
"I don’t want to shout louder, I turn back, I don’t bother. But now I have to bother. I can hear myself screaming inside my head. I can hear my voices, telling them how wrong they are, how wrong they have been. I can no longer plead in my prayers. Listen to me. Listen to me. Please, please, listen to me. But no one listens, because the man with his hand held out, the man who cannot walk as he once walked, or think as he once thought, has nothing that anyone wants to hear, not anymore. So now I have to shout. Only I no longer shout with words. There is no point. They only listen to me when I take action. Then they have to listen. So I shout with the doing, and it always comes back to what I do well."
"You know, Maisie, that when you look at one of these politicians, you’re looking at a thief, a liar and a murderer, that’s the way I see it."
"Remember, there were many cases of shell-shock recorded where the patient had been nowhere near a detonated shell, nowhere near the front line of battle. Simply anticipating a move up to the front could turn some men."
"I sometimes thought that, in my work, I was really trying to create the conditions whereby a soul might be persuaded to join a man’s body once again, thus making him whole."
"It was the memory of something I’d seen as a child... I remember going off one day with my friend, a young Masai boy, the son of one of our servants... On this particular jaunt we saw a lion take down a gazelle... It was as if something happened to the gazelle at the moment of capture, something awe-inspiringly terrible and wonderful at the same time—as if, in knowing the gazelle was to die a dreadful death, ripped apart by the jaws of the lion, the Creator had given the captive a reprieve by taking her soul before she was dead, so that no pain would be felt because the essence had gone already."
"It’s as if the suffering, the hope, the grief expended had seeped into the walls."
"I could be put into a hospital blindfold and know where I was—there’s the smell, the sounds, and if you touch the brick outside, or the plaster inside, there’s always that same sensation."
"She needs to shed her sadness, like a snake sheds its skin, and that can be a troubling process, for a snake is at its most vulnerable at such a time."
"I always knew, always, that I would die alone. That there would be no caring relative, no wife, no mother, no love to say good-bye."
"But to begin life as a foundling represented a more arduous ascent."
"Some haven’t worked for years. Years. Year after year of walking and begging for a job every single day."
"For the most part these men had been bank clerks or carpenters; they had worked on the docks and in post offices; they had worked the land, the factories and the canals."
"We are better off kept out of sight in cold, sterile wards of efficient nurses, and doctors who only know you by the notes at the end of your bed."
"I don’t think I can stand another year of invisibility, another year of being one of the unseen."
"You have no idea what it is like to be without work, what it’s like for the men and women who walk from place to place each day in search of a job."
"There will be no parties, no gathering of joyous anticipation for us, the forgotten."
"It’s such a pity, said a woman passing me on the street. I never saw her again."
"I see a sample of the powder has been sent for additional testing."
"I don’t need you to protect me, Croucher. I am able to look after myself."
"Don’t worry. It will soon be all over, anyway."
"I mean, it’s almost over. Midnight. Then they’ll see."
"I don’t want your pity, and I don’t want you telling me what to do."
"Keep your mouth shut and leave. Leave now."
"This is my last entry. I will write no more, for I will be gone."
"I am not a person, not the person I was, and I can’t remember who that person was anyway."
"They wanted me tucked away in a place where they wouldn’t have to see me ever again."
"I did what my country asked of me, I stepped forward to do my bit."
"That’s how people look, when they have seen hell through another’s eyes."
"We’re going to have to be back here first thing in the morning—early."
"Innocent? Innocent of what? Innocent of being blind toward the plight of other people."
"They always want you put away, until they need you again, until your country needs you."
"I don’t care where you take it, as long as it goes as far away from innocent human beings as possible."