Sebastian Faulks, Engleby Quotes
Have you ever been lonely? No, neither have I. Solitary, yes. Alone, certainly. But lonely means minding about being on your own. I've never minded about it.
Gradually the feeling wears off, and I feel swamped again by the inexplicable pettiness of being alive.
One thing about London is that when you step out into the night, it swallows you.
The best thing is the combined effect of nicotine with alcohol, greater than the sum of the two parts.
I'd never chosen to be alone, but that was the way things had turned out, and I'd grown used to it.
The thought of all that happiness was hard to bear. What's the point of happiness when all it does is throw the facts of dying into clear relief?
We all operate on different levels of awareness. Half the time I don't know what I'm doing.
I never for a moment considered killing myself, because it wouldn't have achieved anything.
A bit of the vagueness of music stops you going completely mad, I imagine.
It's only after the change is fully formed that you can see what's happened.
I breathed and breathed and did feel some calmness enter in, though it was, as always, shot with a sense of loss. Loss and fear.
That sense of happiness just out beyond my reach - I'm not sure I'd grasped that exactly, but I'd got something close to it, contentment maybe, or at least a functioning routine with regular rewards.
How grand, to be a Doctor of whatever and to weigh up and decide people's future.
All reality about me now appeared to be in tatters, taken down and reduced to the civil war of its particles. I held on very, very tight indeed.
Until we can navigate in time, I'm not sure that we can prove that what happened is real.
