Great Throughts Treasury

"The behavior you?re describing?reading your emails, going through your Internet browser history?you describe all this as though it is commonplace, as though it is normal. It isn?t, Megan. It isn?t normal to invade someone?s privacy to that degree. It?s what is often seen as a form of emotional abuse."

"The clouds that menaced this morning did so all day, growing heavier and blacker until they burst, monsoon-like, this evening, just as office workers stepped outside and the rush hour began in earnest, leaving the roads gridlocked and tube station entrances choked with people opening and closing umbrellas."

"The holes are permanent in life. You grew around these holes, like the roots of a tree growing looking space between the concrete; you have to conform to the space that you leave."

"The holes in your life are permanent. You have to grow around them, like tree roots around a concrete; you mold yourself through gaps."

"The job itself is utterly beneath me, but then I seem to have become beneath me over the past year or two. I need to reset the scale."

"The last thing I need is rest."

"The memory doesn?t fit with the reality, because I don?t remember anger, raging fury. I remember fear."

"The more I go over it, the less sense it makes, and I can?t stop going over it."

"The need to flee is becoming overwhelming. At night, I can hear in my head low but relentless and incontestable whisper: 'Get away. '"

"The more I want to be oblivious, the less I can be. Life and light will not let me be."

"The sense of shame I feel about an incident is proportionate not just to the gravity of the situation, but also to the number of people who have witnessed it."

"The thing about being barren is that you?re not allowed to get away from it. Not when you?re in your thirties. My friends were having children, friends of friends were having children, pregnancy and birth and first birthday parties were everywhere. I was asked about it all the time."

"The pain is solid and heavy, it sits in the middle of my chest."

"The police think I?m a rubbernecker. They think I?m a stalker, a nut-case, mentally unstable."

"The reality is that women are still valued the only two things: their appearance and their role as mothers. I'm not beautiful and I cannot have children. What does that make me? Someone useless."

"The train stops. We are almost opposite Jess and Jason's house, but I can't see across the carriage and the tracks, there are too many people in the way. I wonder whether they are there, whether he knows, whether he's left, or whether he's still living a life he's yet to discover is a lie."

"The track at the end of the garden with its trains, always taking someone else to somewhere else, reminding me over and over and over, a dozen times a day, that I?m staying put. I"

"The truth is, I never felt bad for Rachel."

"The windows of number fifteen, reflecting morning sunshine, look like sightless eyes."

"Then I wait. Times and dates, mostly. Not dates. Days. Monday."

"There are familiar faces on these trains, people I see every week, going to and fro. I recognize them and they probably recognize me."

"There can be no more suffering, nothing can be more painful than not reach never know what happened."

"There is something wrong. I feel the moment I dropped the bed had disappeared from under my body."

"There is a pile of clothing on the side of the train tracks. Light-blue cloth?a shirt, perhaps?jumbled up with something dirty white. It?s probably rubbish, part of a load dumped into the scrubby little wood up the bank. It could have been left behind by the engineers who work this part of the track, they?re here often enough. Or it could be something else. My mother used to tell me that I had an overactive imagination; Tom said that, too. I can?t help it, I catch sight of these discarded scraps, a dirty T-shirt or a lonesome shoe, and all I can think of is the other shoe and the feet that fitted into them."

"There is a rotten seed planted deep inside me"

"There can be no greater torment, or something more painful, for lack of knowledge."

"There was a time when I thought he could be everything, he could be enough. I thought that for years. I loved him completely. I still do. But I don?t want this any longer."

"There?s nothing so painful, so corrosive, as suspicion."

"There?s something comforting about the sight of strangers safe at home."

"There's nothing so painful, so corrosive, as suspicion."

"They wouldn?t even recognize Megan the happily married suburbanite. In any case, I can?t risk looking backwards, it?s always a bad idea. I?ll wait until the summer is over, then I?ll look for work. It seems like a shame to waste these long summer days. I?ll find something, here or elsewhere, I know I will."

"They?re a match, they?re a set. They?re happy, I can tell. They?re what I used to be, they?re Tom and me five years ago. They?re what I lost, they?re everything I want to be."

"Those dogs, the unwanted ones that have been mistreated all their lives. You can kick them and kick them, but they?ll still come back to you, cringing and wagging their tails. Begging. Hoping."

"This is what marriage is?safe, warm, comfortable."

"Tom?s whole life was constructed on lies?falsehoods and half-truths told to make him look better, stronger, more interesting than he was."

"Tom said about Scott and Megan came from Anna, and no one knows better than I do that she can?t be trusted."

"Tom didn?t feel the way I did. It wasn?t his failure, for starters, and in any case, he didn?t need a child like I did. He wanted to be a dad, he really did?I?m sure he daydreamed about kicking a football around in the garden with his son, or carrying his daughter on his shoulders in the park. But he thought our lives could be great without children, too. We?re happy, he used to say to me. Why can?t we just go on being happy? He became frustrated with me. He never understood that it?s possible to miss what you?ve never had, to mourn for it."

"Usually, I would pretend to be nice, but this morning I feel real, like myself. I feel high, almost like I?m tripping, and I couldn?t fake nice if I tried."

"We don?t talk about anything substantial, it?s just the introductory session, the getting-to-know-you stuff; he asks me what the trouble is and I tell him about the panic attacks, the insomnia, the fact that I lie awake at night too frightened to fall asleep. He wants me to talk a bit more about that, but I?m not ready yet. He asks me whether I take drugs, drink alcohol. I tell him I have other vices these days, and I catch his eye and I think he knows what I mean. Then I feel as if I ought to be taking this a bit more seriously, so I tell him about the gallery closing and that I feel at a loose end all the time, my lack of direction, the fact that I spend too much time in my head."

"We. Us. Our little family. With our problems and our routines. Fucking bitch. She?s a cuckoo, laying her egg in my nest. She has taken everything from me. She has taken everything and now she calls me to tell me that my distress is inconvenient for her?"

"We live together ... when we were together, Ben and me. We were not afraid of anything."

"What bothers me most is that I haven?t got to the end of my story, and I can?t start over with someone else, it?s too hard."

"When did you become so weak? I don?t know. I don?t know where that strength went, I don?t remember losing it. I think that over time it got chipped away, bit by bit, by life, by the living of it."

"Well, I can, I do, I want to, I don?t want to, I try not to. Every day I tell myself not to look, and every day I look. I can?t help myself, even though there is nothing I want to see there, even though anything I do see will hurt me."

"When everyone is out and about, being flagrantly, aggressively happy. It?s exhausting, and it makes you feel bad if you?re not joining in."

"What if the thing I?m looking for can never be found? What if it just isn?t possible?"

"What does it feel like, Anna, to live in my house, surrounded by the furniture I bought, to sleep in the bed that I shared with him for years, to feed your child at the kitchen table he fucked me on?"

"When I close my eyes, my head is filled with images of past and future lives, the things I dreamed I wanted, the things I had and threw away."

"What happened to you, Rachel? he asked me. When did you become so weak? I don?t know. I don?t know where that strength went, I don?t remember losing it. I think that over time it got chipped away, bit by bit, by life, by the living of it."

"When I look at Tom, I thank God that he found me, too, that I was there to rescue him from that woman. She?d have driven him mad in the end, I really think that?she?d have ground him down, she?d have made him into something he?s not."