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Tying Down the Lion QUOTES

Tying Down the Lion QUOTES

1 " The Bad-Moon Girls appear on days when Dad doesn't know what he is thinking, or even if he is thinking. Those days can weigh less than air or more than an ocean. He has blank thoughts without feelings, followed by heavy feelings without thoughts. Time means nothing. A minute ticks by in the same rhythm as an entire day. He can look at one thing for an hour without moving. He can see me or Victor without knowing we are in the room, peering at us as if we are underwater, moving in warped slow motion.

After the nothingness, he wades through a stagnant lake with the moon reflected in it, waiting for the daylight to rinse it away. He almost drowns while time ticks on. The sky is filled with black milk. No stars. Two days can pass before he surfaces.

Dad's brain-switch, the focusing thing the rest of us switch on to make things look better, is a bit buggered. Those are his words, not mine.

The Bad-Moon Girls whisper evil in Dad's ear, the sort of women who would set their own mother on fire if there were no other way to light their cigarettes. The trouble is, they can follow. Just as we were setting off to Clacton last autumn, they hunted him down. "

― Joanna Campbell , Tying Down the Lion

2 " 45,000 sections of reinforced concrete—three tons each.
Nearly 300 watchtowers.
Over 250 dog runs.
Twenty bunkers.
Sixty five miles of anti-vehicle trenches—signal wire, barbed wire, beds of nails.
Over 11,000 armed guards.
A death strip of sand, well-raked to reveal footprints.
200 ordinary people shot dead following attempts to escape the communist regime.
96 miles of concrete wall.

Not your typical holiday destination.

JF Kennedy said the Berlin Wall was a better option than a war. In TDTL, the Anglo-German Bishop family from the pebbledashed English suburb of Oaking argue about this—among other—notions while driving to Cold War Berlin, through all the border checks, with a plan to visit both sides of it. "

― Joanna Campbell , Tying Down the Lion

3 " He promised me Berlin," Mum says. "It will kill him if we do not arrive."
"It'd take more than that to kill my Roy. Your lot didn't manage it, did they?"
"But what would happen if the brakes fail, Nell?" Mum dabs at her damp forehead with the hem of her cardigan. "Oh, I do hope Roy can take me home."
"He won't."
"Oh, Nell, can you not let me dream?"
"If hopes and dreams were big ice-creams, the world would be right sticky. Now come on, Bridge. Pull yourself together. Jesus wept, look at the state of you. You're as much use as a knitted knife. "

― Joanna Campbell , Tying Down the Lion

4 " A softly-spoken German man points to a window on the third floor of a tall building and says, "My grandfather is sitting in that room."
Planting his feet wide apart, the man begins to wave, his arm sweeping through the air in a huge arc. We all step back to give him enough room.If I let my vision swim out of focus, this seems like an ordinary day with an ordinary man greeting someone he loves across the street.
"I'm not expecting to see him again," he says. But he waves on and on, hoping his grandfather has spotted him.
The Englishmen look away. "

― Joanna Campbell , Tying Down the Lion

5 " Here we go then," Dad says. "Motoring towards our dreams, Bridge."
"You shouldn't follow dreams," Grandma announces.
"Why?" I ask her.
"Because it's a road paved with disappointments, that's why. People should get on with what they've blinking well got at home."
"You can't tell people what their dreams are meant to be."
"I can. But they never listen, do they? "

― Joanna Campbell , Tying Down the Lion