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The largest website for English phrases and quotes

Category: Lorna Sage

He seemed to be having trouble remembering the steps, for he was pumping my arm and counting under his breath (one, two, three), and his breath smelled like the open maws of the pub cellars that grapes on Whitchurch pavements on delivery day. Beer.

awkwardness, beer, dance

I’m not sure what the moral of the bathroom-stool story is. Perhaps this: it’s a good idea to settle for a few loose ends, because even if everything in your life is connected to everything else, that way madness lies.

life, madness, moral

This was the real thing, boys in the flesh. All the prohibitions, especially the ones that stayed unvoiced, had made boys much more exotic; it was as though we’d never met one. The whole school hummed with excitement and the headmistress’s aspect softened with anticipation, for she was about to let the dangerous genie of adolescent sex out of its bottle and tame it. She spoke in veiled, suggestive terms in assembly of freedom and responsibility, and we giggled uneasily – it was all vaguely shocking, like being tickled by a policeman.

adolescents, school, sexuality

More and more I lived in books, they were my comfort, refuge, addiction, compensation for the humiliations that attended contact with the world outside.

Did they love me? The question is beside the point, somehow. Certainly they each spoiled me, mainly by giving me the false impression that I was entitled to attention nearly all the the time. They played. THEY were like children, if you consider that one of the things about being a child is that you are a parasite of sorts and have to brazen out self-righteously. I want. They were good at wanting and I shared much more common ground with them than with my mother when I was three or four years old.

children, grandparents, wanting

The children of violently unhappy marriages, like my mother, are often hamstrung for life, but the children of happier marriages have problems too – all the worse, perhaps, because they don’t have virtue on their side.

children, happy-marriage, unhappy-marriage

Did they love me? The question is beside the point, somehow. Certainly they each spoiled me, mainly by giving me the false impression that I was entitled to attention nearly all the the time. They played. THEY were like children, if you consider that one of the things about being a child is that you are a parasite of sorts and have to brazen out self-righteously. I want. They were good at wanting and I shared much more common ground with them than with my mother when I was three or four years old.

children, grandparents, wanting

The children of violently unhappy marriages, like my mother, are often hamstrung for life, but the children of happier marriages have problems too – all the worse, perhaps, because they don’t have virtue on their side.

children, happy-marriage, unhappy-marriage