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The largest website for English phrases and quotes

Category: Michael Marshall Smith

Michael Marshall Smith

and only when that happens do you realise just how much silence there really is. Silence between lovers, when something really needs to be said; silence from a parent when a child needs some word more than anything else in the world; silences and in betweens and everything which isn’t an answer.

silence, unspoken-words

Michael Marshall Smith

I caught one last glimpse of her face, howling something at me.There were too many vowels in what she said, and they were in an unkind order. (“Substitutions”)

Michael Marshall Smith

When you’re a child the world forbears you, allows you your flights of imagination, your feelings of specialness. But sooner or later the privileges are withdrawn, and all you’re left with is a stunned bitterness at the realisation that you’re just the same as everybody else.

adulthood, child

Michael Marshall Smith

When you’re born a light is switched on, a light which shines up through your life. As you get older the light still reaches you, sparkling as it comes up through your memories. And if you’re lucky as you travel forward through time, you’ll bring the whole of yourself along with you, gathering your skirts and leaving nothing behind, nothing to obscure the light. But if a Bad Thing happens part of you is seared into place, and trapped for ever at that time. The rest of you moves onward, dealing with all the todays and tomorrows, but something, some part of you, is left behind. That part blocks the light, colours the rest of your life, but worse than that, it’s alive. Trapped for ever at that moment, and alone in the dark, that part of you is still alive.

growing-up, trauma

Michael Marshall Smith

I wash with the can of water I set aside the night before, and eat whatever I put next to it. The washing is not strictly necessary but, again, I have always found it a good way to greet the day. You wash after a period of work, after all, and what else is a night of sleep, if not work, or a journey at least? (“The Things He Said”)

Michael Marshall Smith

Hey presto: time travel. You don’t need a time machine, it turns out, you just need a friend to laugh like a teenager. Chronology shivers.

friends, growing-older, nostalgia

Michael Marshall Smith

Is she dead?” called Zenda.Sort of,” I shouted, “And the pizza’s completely fucked too.

Michael Marshall Smith

Cross-legged on the floor, you drink, hoping each mouthful will hurt; occasional flurries of spastic movement as you try to work out what to do with your hands. When everyone else is gone, your world is just a tiny box with the walls pressing in. Messages on the phone you can’t bear to play, much less listen to, and nothing in the apartment that you can recognize as meaningfully yours.

Michael Marshall Smith

There are times when life seems like a struggle where the only reward you get for hanging on is the chance to struggle some more.

Michael Marshall Smith

When you let it get personal, the cost becomes personal too. You’re opening your own heart here. You sure you want to do that?”“I’d do it for free. For the bullshit you are, and have always been.”“Disbelief is easy, Kane. It’s faith that takes courage, and character.

courage, disbelief, faith, unbelief

Michael Marshall Smith

Disbelief is easy, Kane. It’s faith that takes courage, and character.

belief, character, courage, disbelief, faith

Michael Marshall Smith

When you let it get personal, the cost becomes personal too. You’re opening your own heart here. You sure you want to do that?

heart, objectivity, taking-things-personally