Home > Work > Shatter (Joseph O'Loughlin, #3)
1 " I once had a patient who was convinced that his head was full of sea water and a crab lived inside. When I asked him what happened to his brain he told me that aliens had sucked it out with a drinking straw."It is better this way," he insisted. "Now there's more room for the crab. "
― Michael Robotham , Shatter (Joseph O'Loughlin, #3)
2 " There is a moment when all hope disappears, all pride is gone, all expectation, all faith, all desire. I own that moment. It belongs to me. That's when I hear the sound, the sound of a mind breaking. It's not a loud crack like when bones shatter or a spine fractures or a skull collapses. And it's not something soft and wet like a heart breaking. It's a sound that makes you wonder how much pain a person can endure; a sound that shatters memories and lets the past leak into the present; a sound so high that only the hounds of hell can hear it. Can you hear it? Someone is curled up in a tiny ball crying softly into an endless night. "
3 " Sometimes I wake at night and worry that I might have disappeared in my sleep. That's what happens when nobody cares about you. Bit by bit you begin to disappear until people look right through your chest and head like you're made of glass. It's not about love; it's about being forgotten. We only exist if others think about us. It is like that tree that falls in the forest with nobody around to hear it. Who the fuck cares except the birds? "
4 " There is a moment when all hope disappears, all pride is gone, all expectations, all faith, all desire. "
5 " You ever considered the possibility that you might be an alcoholic?” “Nope. Alcoholics go to meetings,” he replies. “I don’t go to meetings. "
6 " She throws herself at Julianne, calling her Mummy. I haven’t heard her use the word in four years. “Be careful. Don’t squeeze her too hard,” warns the young blond paramedic. “Do you have children?” I ask her. “No.” “You’ll learn it doesn’t hurt when they squeeze you hard. "
7 " I won’t say anything—and he won’t ask. That’s one of the great paradoxes of friendship between men. It’s like an unspoken code: you don’t start tunneling unless you hit rock bottom. "
8 " Her pale fat throat seems to have a fist inside it, moving up and down. "
9 " Have you ever had a patient who didn’t want to be gay?” “Yes.” “Did you try to fix them?” “There was nothing to fix. I can’t change someone’s sexuality. I help them come to terms with who they are. I help them cope with their own nature. "
10 " Every excursion or expedition we take is a story, an inner narrative that we sometimes don’t even realise we’re following. "