Andrew Barrett Quotes

No one mentioned the sad piece of tinsel, naked in places, hanging across the chimneybreast, nor that Twelfth Night was a week ago. No one mentioned the two Christmas cards on the mantelpiece. No one mentioned them because inside they were blank.

There was noise in the corridor outside Alice’s office; and though it was nothing of concern, they separated. Roger stood, fingers tucked into his waistcoat pockets, admiring prints on the wall that held no interest for him. The noise was Melanie, but her voice, a length of razor wire wrapped in a soufflé, eventually faded.

Use your intuition. Picture how things happen, why they happen. Don’t stick rigidly to first impressions, and once you’ve read the rule book, throw it away. Better still, burn the bastard.

He couldn’t read her these days; it was as though she’d been taken away from him, and in her place some alien had dropped a figure that looked like Alice, but was a cheap imitation of her with half the emotions missing or malfunctioning.

She had known it was bad, call it a mother’s instinct, but she’d known this was the knock that was going to scoop her insides out and leave her barely able to stand; merely a shell with nothing good inside anymore.

It had been more or less the same for Jilly. Except that she had her parents there to field any phone calls, to accept the flowers at the door and pick up the cards that dropped like tears through the letterbox. She sat before her dressing table mirror in bra and pants and let time drip away, watching a face she didn’t recognise and feeling raw emotions eat away at the drugs she was on. The emotions were gradually winning.

She smiled as though someone had just offered her, the oldest virgin in town, a fully functioning Kingsize Vibro vibrator and a deluxe inhibition bypass.

I am not their f*****g entertainment. And I am not a f*****g hero! Given the choice, a hero would do exactly the same again. I wouldn’t. Okay?