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61 " But I never did manage to tell you because I could never quite put the words together to express something so complex and sordid and exciting and stupid,. I still wonder how that conversation might have gone. "
― Nick Alexander , Things We Never Said
62 " loves it, in fact, as much as anything she has ever done. After the brain deadening years of child-rearing, she feels like she is waking up, feels as if her mind is stirring after a long sleep, spluttering and juddering into motion. She enjoys the hours spent in the red light of the darkroom too, thrills (more than she "
― Nick Alexander , The Photographer's Wife
63 " I'm just trying to explain what happened in a way that, perhaps with time, you'll be able to understand. It wasn't a choice, you see. At any rate, it never felt like a choice. It felt like...I don't know. A compulsion, maybe? "
64 " something. “Mum,” perhaps. Everyone is looking at her. Sixty people have turned to stare. Perhaps they’d "
65 " So it's a shame. They wasted precious time tiptoeing around each other when clearly all that was required was a good heart-to-heart. "
66 " I understood that I was a fairly highly strung person, that my default state was one of readiness. I had rarely felt completely comfortable in my skin or at ease with my surroundings. I was always in a state of alert, on the lookout for any kind of menace or danger, and events and people had often proved me right because, I suppose, my judgement simply wasn’t that good. I suspect much of this came from my upbringing, which had rarely felt relaxed, or even happy. "
― Nick Alexander , You Then, Me Now
67 " It reads ‘BLYTH MINERS WIVES. Thatcher snatched our milk, now she wants our daily bread. "
68 " In their family, even the most nuclear of disputes remained under wraps until eventually it dissipated, seemingly for the simple reason that no one was prepared to stoke the fire. "
69 " We get so set in our ways, you know? I mean, when you meet someone in your teens, like you two did, well, you're still growing, aren't you? You automatically adjust so that you fit together. But when you're my age, all the likes and dislikes are set in stone. That's the trouble. "
70 " sheer volume of the rooms "
― Nick Alexander , The Other Son
71 " You meet people and sometimes they’re more important to you than you are to them. Sometimes you just have to give thanks for all the ways knowing them "
72 " Much of the time, things had been neutral-- they had behaved like a well oiled machine, like a couple of partners running the business that was their marriage. And aren't most marriages like that most of the time? The good ones, at any rate. "
73 " If loving someone was reason enough to be able to stick around, then I’d still be there beside you. And if love was ever enough to save someone’s life, then yours would have saved me, too. Because no one ever gave it more easily, or more generously, than you did. "
74 " It hadn't lasted, of course, but that was no small mercy, because who could survive with such intensity of emotion? "
75 " He understood only then how you could love someone, how you could be proud of someone, simply because the were, simply because they existed. "
76 " Anyone can talk,' she said, 'but the cleverest people spend their time listening.' And that really pleased me. It provided me with an identity, a sort of camouflage, so I could sit and listen to you all and not get noticed an not be judged for not saying anything. "
77 " Even now, I struggle to convince myself that I’m a fully grown adult, doing fully adult things. I’m not sure the ageing, wrinkled exterior ever quite convinces the innocent inner child that this is the real deal, that this is what’s really happening. "
78 " politicians are the same, i.e. useless, whereas I obstinately cling to the hope that some are at least less useless than others. "
79 " Isn't life that much easier when you decide to want what is rather than trying to bend life to fit what you want instead? "
80 " Maybe she has wasted her life dreaming about something that was never entirely real. "
― Nick Alexander , The Half-life of Hannah