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21 " It seems to me that part of the true function of a mystery is precisely that it remains unsolved. The world would be far too neat a place if the things that puzzled us were always, eventually, explained. We need unanswered questions at the edges of our lives. In fact, I’d go further. It’s important not to think we can understand everything. Not to understand. The humility that can come from that. The wonder. "
― Rupert Thomson , Divided Kingdom
22 " Her smiles were blurred, as if seen from a moving train. Her eyes always creased at the edges by dreams of leaving. "
― Rupert Thomson , Dreams of Leaving
23 " Jed was used to isolation. His face was like some kind of cul-de-sac. It said NO THROUGH ROAD to most people. Confronted with him, they always turned around, backed away. "
― Rupert Thomson , The Five Gates of Hell
24 " Sometimes it seemed as if he'd always been very old. People said that time lasted for ever when you were young. That was lies. Lies and rosy spectacles. His spectacles were steel frames and time was those tattoos on Vasco's arm. They were more like time than anything else. Once, in the Empire of Junk, he'd seen an hour-glass. Now that came closest to the truth. Except you could turn it upside down and start again. So that was lies too. The sand should run out the first time, run right out. Once, and once only. Time wasn't outside you, it was inside. [...] Time was something that went bad, like fruit. To be used before it was all used up. Though, for most people, the only way to live was to deny that. "
25 " There's love and everybody talks about it, but not all of us come close to it - or, if we do, it's not in the expected way. "
― Rupert Thomson
26 " Perhaps there comes a time in your life when you lose the ability to command attention, when the world starts to ignore you because it no longer believes you can have much of an effect on it. With "
― Rupert Thomson , Secrecy
27 " It was as if Jed had moved from one dimension to another. His original dimension hadn't reported him missing, and his new dimension didn't acknowledge his presence. Maybe what he'd really done was end up somewhere between the two. Some days he almost felt invisible. "
28 " The sun snagged on his crooked skin. "
29 " He thought of his old tapes, the ones he'd had for years, the ones he'd used over and over again. Their silence was always different to the silence of a new tape: it was loaded, prickly with things recorded and erased; a silence that was like ghosts. That house was an old tape masquerading as a new one. It had recorded and erased, but it was pretending it had just come out of the cellophane. It had ghosts, but it wasn't owning up to them. "
30 " At first he didn't know where he was, whose voice it was. He must have been asleep. And waking suddenly, like that, you woke in a thousand different places that you'd never been. "
31 " Il Museo delle Lacrime significava molto di più di quanto il suo nome potesse suggerire. Non si trattava solo di file di bottigliette di vetro identiche, malgrado già questo, se ci pensavi bene, diceva molto sull'uguaglianza. Si trattava di persone che tastavano di aggrapparsi alla felicità che avevano conosciuto. "
32 " He woke early the next morning. It was still cool, but he opened the window and, leaning on the ledge, looked down at the river. A ship slid by. Then another. Years later, in exile, he would watch the railway tracks from his hotel and it would sink a well in him, and he would taste the same calm water. "
33 " They say a heart breaks, but it doesn't. It goes on working, mute and stubborn as a mule. "
― Rupert Thomson , Never Anyone But You
34 " Sometimes the person you're closest to is the one you understand the least. Sometimes, when you're that close, everything just blurs. "
