22
" He preferred his own judgments and, if the truth were told, his own company, too. That was how he had always been, even as a boy, always by himself, stravaging the fields or the back streets of the Midlands town where he was born, looking for something and never knowing what, hoping to chance on something, anything at all, that would interest or amuse him. "
― Benjamin Black , The Silver Swan (Quirke, #2)
32
" I put my feet up on the desk. I could still see out the window. Why do the lights of the city, seen from a distance, appear to twinkle? When you look at them up close, they have a steady shine. It must have something to with the intervening air, with the millions of minute specks of dust swirling in it, maybe. Everything looks fixed, but it’s not; it’s moving. The desk I was resting my feet on, for instance, wasn’t solid at all but a swarm of particles so small that no human eye will ever be able to see one. The world, when you come down to it, is a scary place. And that’s not even counting the people. "
― Benjamin Black , The Black-Eyed Blonde