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1 " Once upon a time Sister Mary Margaret had answered a loud knocking at the door of the orphanage. It was very early one morning, before the city was awake. All the pigeons had their heads tucked under their wings and all the rats were curled up tight behind the dustbins. All the cars and lorries were asleep in their garages and depots, and all the trains slumbered on their tracks at Connolly Station. All the boats bobbed gently in the harbor, dreaming of the high seas, and all the bicycles slept leaning along the fences. Even the angels were asleep at the foot of the O’Connell Monument, fluttering their wings as they dreamt, quite forgetting to hold still and pretend to be statues. "
― Jess Kidd , Himself
2 " For the dead are always close by in a life like Mahony's. The dead are drawn to the confused and the unwritten, the damaged and the fractured, to those with big cracks and gaps in their tales, which the dead just yearn to fill. For the dead have secondhand stories to share with you, if you'd only let them get a foot in the door. "
3 " It is the smell of a million mould-blossomed pages, of a thousand decaying bindings, of a universe of dead words. "
4 " My sister said that when the tide was out you could walk all the way to America; the waves pulled back that far. So far that the starfish forgot there ever was an ocean and stiffened with dismay. So far that the seaweed wept itself dry on the rocks with nostalgia. "
― Jess Kidd , Mr. Flood's Last Resort
5 " It’s the hottest April in living and dead memory. So hot that the crows are flying with their tongues hanging out of their heads. "
6 " Words are capable of flying. They dart through windows, over fences, between bar stools and across courtyards. They travel rapidly from mouth to ear, from ear to mouth. And as they go, they pick up speed and weight and substance and gravity. Until they land with a scud, take seed and grow as fast as the unruliest of beanstalks. "
7 " Memory is like a wayward dog. Sometimes it drops the ball and sometimes it brings it, and sometimes it doesn’t bring a ball at all; it brings a shoe. "
8 " Stories, particularly the bad ones, are told in their own time. "
― Jess Kidd , Things in Jars
9 " women should have the uncontested right to enter the medical profession, being, as a general rule, notably less stupid than men. "
10 " The moon knows; she sees all. "
11 " It is a truth universally unacknowledged that when the dead are trying to remember something, the living are trying harder to forget it. "
12 " Follow the fulsome fumes from the tanners and the reek from the brewery, butterscotch rotten, drifting across Seven Dials. Keep on past the mothballs at the cheap tailor’s and turn left at the singed silk of the maddened hatter. Just beyond you’ll detect the unwashed crotch of the overworked prostitute and the Christian sweat of the charwoman. On every inhale a shifting scale of onions and scalded milk, chrysanthemums and spiced apple, broiled meat and wet straw, and the sudden stench of the Thames as the wind changes direction and blows up the knotted backstreets. Above all, you may notice the rich and sickening chorus of shit. "
13 " He has the look of someone whose soul got up and walked away in disgust a long time ago. "
14 " An interview with Quinn is like fighting a yellow snake in a sandpit.’ Desmond "
15 " This is a practical woman, or at least a woman who finds it practical to be able to fit through doorways, climb stairs, and breathe. "
16 " She's put him out like a cat a million times, but like a cat he has a habit of slinking back and curling up into the warm corners of her mind. "
17 " For the dead don't change or grow. They're just echoes of the stories of their own lives sung back in the wrong order: arsewards. They're the pattern on closed eyelids after you turn away from a bright object. They are twice-exposed film. They're not really there, so cause and effect means nothing to them. "
18 " Those we have lost return to us in their own time. "
19 " You must never watch a leaving friend out of sight, else you'll not see them return. "
20 " My creative juices only flow freely in the dark. My mind is like a mushroom: if you shine the light of the one true church on it, well then, inspiration may not spore at all. "
