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41 " Now breathe, and step out again, a step further from the past. Step into the streets as narrow as bones, the white streets of the labyrinth, and breathe deeply. Breathe, and step out once more. "
― Kevin Barry , Night Boat to Tangier
42 " Did you ever get a whistling-type pain out the left lung, Mr. Redmond? Is it one of those sinister-type pains that you’ve never had before, Mr. Hearne? ’Tis, yeah. Give it time, it’ll be like an old pal to you. Maurice leans in to his friend, and he speaks with fear and very quietly now. I’m fifty-one years to fucken Jesus, Charlie. "
43 " On the larches (primly erect, arrogant as surgeons) that lined the avenue to the Psychiatric the buds were rudely swollen—he couldn't—he couldn't take his eyes off them, hey were like fucken nipples. It's tricky, always, when the world is coming to life again. "
44 " He said, Remick, I could say things to you in the night that you would never fucking recover from. They lived together for a while in the district of Gràcia. They drank too much and too late. They fought with venom and skill. They smoked rock cocaine. They fought like drunk gorillas. "
45 " Outside the internet café a gypsy kid and his girl sold punnets of chestnuts from a roasting cart and kissed. They looked like the year 1583. The air was dark blue and had the smoke of old poetry at dusklight. "
46 " and fucked and ranted. He slept little by night. He was living in the amalgam place of a dream. Cities turned into other cities; streets turned into distant streets. Karima’s kisses tasted of oil and smoke. "
47 " The port by night had a hot, diabolic quality. It rang of the past but was of the new century. On such a clear night you could see an hour south to the lamps of Tangier. "
48 " Fucking Ireland. Its smiling fiends. Its speaking rocks. Its haunted fields. Its sea memory. Its wildness and strife. Its haunt of melancholy. The way that it closes in. "
49 " Even as a kid, in the stroller, he was tuned to odd frequencies, it seemed. "
50 " that lacking her he’d be sucking his thumbs in a locked room. Marriage, Charlie says. Beautiful and cruel. "
51 " for a moment, descends all the way through him. This is not a rare occurrence. He will never lose the feeling of the love that they had together, or the nausea of its absence. "
52 " Charlie Redmond drank alone, but for his demons, at a crowded table at the back. "
53 " The past shifted and rearranged itself. He could not step out from its reach. The past was fluid in the moment. "
54 " They settled into it together. They arranged the laptop on a chair between the two beds and she sat back on the edge of Maurice’s and they watched Rumble Fish again. In my humble and honest? Maurice said. We could be looking at Francis Ford Coppola’s finest hour. "
55 " The past is uncertain, mobile. It shifts and rearranges back there. All might turn and change back there yet. "