Best 11 quotes of Edward Carey on MyQuotes

Adults, I understand, have many faults, they are not perfect—even though they have lived longer, even though they offer themselves as examples to children. They are larger, that is certain, and size has an unearned authority. But they are easily influenced, and they can be easily swayed.

Another human being, yet another I had never seen before. What did this one know? Was he happy? Was he cruel? Did he worry? The more I stared at his face, the less I understood him. This is not unusual, the same procedure happens whenever I examine a person either on photograph or in reality: in my first glimpses I always think I can read someone fairly quickly, that the snap judgements I make are surely accurate, but the more I observe the less I understand, the more I realize how difficult the art of judging a person is.

A woman's death is a simple enough thing perhaps; women will always be dying about the place; no doubt several women have died as I have been writing this sentence; only this one woman who concerns me now, this one woman tied up to the rafters, unlike all the others in the world - this woman was my mother. Before, I had always had Mother to hide behind; now I was exposed. Her death was not a quiet, thinking-death like Father's had been, her death was about business; it was all hurried action; Mother had jolted herself out of life.

I collect the walks of my life. Some people have asked me if I have walked so very far to merit such an activity, but I say to them, it's not about how far you have walked, but how thoroughly.

I put myself away. I came up with the great vanishing system, in which I could retreat so deep within myself that, though I might still appear the same creature, actually I was very different. I thrust all thoughts and feelings into the depths of me, where they were safe, but in an outward way I became something like an automation.

«Ma come hai fatto capirlo, Clod?» si erano stupiti i miei parenti. «Come hai fatto a capire che la spilla da balia era lì?» «L’ho sentita gridare,» avevo risposto.

Per questo, nel giorno della maniglia perduta, indugiavo con la faccia accostata alla finestra rotta, fantasticando su tutta quella gente dall’altro lato dei cumuli, chiedendomi se sarei mai riuscito a spingermi fino alla città laggiù, Forlichingham, a Londra, immaginando che ci fosse qualcuno dietro tutta quella gente, qualcuno che potesse apprezzarmi. «C’è qualcuno,» sussurrai, «c’è qualcuno lì? Chi sei? Come sei fatto?»

She was always struggling over what was the best way to react. There were so many contradictions between what she was told and what she saw that she could only hesitatingly move forward, lacking, as she did, power and knowledge. She was a girl trying to make her way.

These were desperate times, the two men agreed; it was easy to stay at home and pull the bedcovers over your heads, but if nothing was done, someone would rip the bedcovers from your face and tug you naked into the street.

This little box, this chapter, ends here, sealed tight from those others that surround it, so that those other people of different chapters may not come in here and disturb, so that its vault may be sealed up, never spilling beyond its boundaries but kept tight shut and precious, and Godly and triumphant, and wonderful too.

Why was she always so cruel, I wondered, even after I had worked so hard for her? Perhaps she needed someone beneath her to know for certain that she was not on the bottom rung. Perhaps being cruel was proof of her success.