65
" Erik left the church and walked back out through the streets. The people coursing through them did not frighten him any more because he realized their movements and the sound of their thousand voices were notes in a vast piece of music, a story made of sounds, sometimes dissonant - like the shouts of men trying to sell bits of meat, or old, rusty tools - and at others sweet and pure, like mothers fondly calling their children, or greeting their neighbours. What he'd heard in the church, along with the realization that these things did not just come out of the mind of God, but could be born in the fingers of men, changed him forever. "
― Michael Marshall Smith , Hannah Green and Her Unfeasibly Mundane Existence
72
" How many times have you tried to talk to someone about something that matters to you, tried to get them to see it the way you do? And how many of those times have ended with you feeling bitter, resenting them for making you feel like your pain doesn't have any substance after all?
Like when you've split up with someone, and you try to communicate the way you feel, because you need to say the words, need to feel that somebody understands just how pissed off and frightened you feel. The problem is, they never do. "Plenty more fish in the sea," they'll say, or "You're better off without them," or "Do you want some of these potato chips?" They never really understand, because they haven't been there, every day, every hour. They don't know the way things have been, the way that it's made you, the way it has structured your world. They'll never realise that someone who makes you feel bad may be the person you need most in the world. They don't understand the history, the background, don't know the pillars of memory that hold you up. Ultimately, they don't know you well enough, and they never can. Everyone's alone in their world, because everybody's life is different. You can send people letters, and show them photos, but they can never come to visit where you live.
Unless you love them. And then they can burn it down. "
― Michael Marshall Smith , Only Forward
77
" You know when you've got nothing in particular to do, nothing to stay awake for? When your life is just routine and it doesn't feel like it belongs to you, how you feel tired and listless and everything seems like too much effort?
Well, it's like that, but it's much worse, because everything is much worse these days. Everything that's bad is worse, believe me. There are whole Neighborhoods out there where no one has anything to do all their lives. They're born, and from the moment they hit the table, there's nothing to do. They clamber to their feet occasionally, realize there's nothing to do and sit down again. They grow up, and there's nothing to do; they grow up, and there's still nothing. They spend their whole lives indoors, in armchairs, in bed, wondering who they are. "
― Michael Marshall Smith , Only Forward
80
" What you have to understand is that sometimes things are the way they seem. By that I don't mean that they aren't the way they might be thought to be, beneath what you see, necessarily, what I mean is that. . . Christ: I"ll start this again.
Sometimes, things are not the way they seem. You look at something and it seems straightforward, and you think you understand it, and it's only later you realize that the truth is different.
Okay: no prizes for observation so far.
Sometimes, on the other hand, you look at something and you know already it's not the way it seems. You know because you understand what you"re seeing, you"re aware of the context and you realize that appearances are being deceptive.
But sometimes, and this is the important sometimes, that's wrong.
Sometimes, when you think you"re being deceived, you"re not. Sometimes things are the way they look, however surprising that may be. And sometimes that can make all the difference in the world.
Let me put it another way. Why does a journey always seem quicker coming back? "
― Michael Marshall Smith , Only Forward