Max Porter Books & Quotes

“He waits by the hedge and nibbles his fingers and thumbs for a minute, chewing through burning memories, spitting chunks of skin and nail into the dark.”

Sadness Despair Metaphor Helplessness

Book:Shy

Source: Shy

“He falls asleep judging himself with no context. In his dream he’s offended someone, then everyone, then he’s hunted and taunted so he stabs through the fence, stabs naked backs, stabs soft temples and vulnerable gaps.”

Despair Overthinking Selfjudgment

Book:Shy

Source: Shy

“He feels colossally sad. Blisteringly sad. Almost ecstatically sad.”

Sadness Sad

Book:Shy

Source: Shy

“Posh Cal comes from the countryside and tells stories about the woods. These old hunty blokes who live in the forest and cut people and burn them on big bonfires with all the brambles and bracken and smoky shit so nobody knows, grind the bones into pig lunch. Shiny leather high heels and kids' toys in the wood like props from ITV murder dramas, scared people running through bracken and brambles, trying to get to the safety of the big house but the big house isn't safe, it's fully stocked with violent, frustrated young male offenders, lying awake, nightsweats in the dark Last Chance, marinating their desire to hurt people night after night in their soupy rural overlapping dreams, bad young men, blast-past-borstal bastards, lab rats, lying there while crusty ghosts from the old house crouch over them dribbling fear and violent fantasy into their ears, drip, spittle, trickle in the middle of the mean old witchy littered English woods a long way from home, a long way from any lights or cab ranks, or trust, or mums. Haha, crack on, you fuckintwat, says Shy, and starts walking again, slight shivers in his belly.”

Fear

Book:Shy

Source: Shy

“We are but pitiful narrative creatures... obsessing over the agony of not knowing. Sisyphus, Atlas, Echo, all those poor souls, now us. It is the oldest story of them all; never-ending pain.”

Life Humans Suffering Fate Searching

Book:Lanny

Source: Lanny

“Shy said It's our music, coming out of our shit towns, it's not from Staten Island or Seattle or Detroit, it's from Walsall and Watford. Shaun and his mate Andy burst out laughing and Andy did a squeaky voice and said Fwom Wycombe and Weading and... Wochdale and Shy said Fuck off Andy, and Shaun said Argh man, learn to take a joke, yeah?”

England Joke Teenagers Nineties Jungle Music

Book:Shy

Source: Shy

“Which do you think is more patient, an idea or a hope?”

Hope Patience Abstract Idea Abstract Thinking

Book:Lanny

Source: Lanny

“I’ve drawn her unpicked, ribs splayed stretched like a xylophone with the dead birds playing tunes on her bones.”

Death Death Of A Loved One

Book:Grief Is the Thing with Feathers

Source: Grief Is the Thing with Feathers

“[Grief] is everything. It is the fabric of selfhood, and beautifully chaotic. It shares mathematical characteristics with many natural forms.”

Nature Grief Selfhood

Book:Grief Is the Thing with Feathers

Source: Grief Is the Thing with Feathers

“...we were different boys, we were brave new boys without a Mum. So when he told us what happened I don't know what my brother was thinking but I was thinking this: Where are the fire engines? Where is the noise and clamour of an event like this? Where are the strangers going out of their way to help, screaming, flinging bits of emergency glow-in-the-dark equipment at us to try and settle us and save us? There should be men in helmets speaking a new and dramatic language of crisis. There should be horrible levels of noise, completely foreign and inappropriate for our cosy London flat.”

Grief Without A Mum

Book:Grief Is the Thing with Feathers

Source: Grief Is the Thing with Feathers

“I plucked one feather from my hood and left it on his forehead, for, his, head. For a souvenir, for a warning, for a lick of night in the morning. For a little break in the mourning.”

Grief Grief And Loss Crow Grief Is The Thing With Feathers

Book:Grief Is the Thing with Feathers

Source: Grief Is the Thing with Feathers

“Once upon a time there were two boys who purposefully misremembered things about their father. It made them feel better if ever they forgot things about their mother.”

Grief Memory Misremembering

Book:Grief Is the Thing with Feathers

Source: Grief Is the Thing with Feathers

“I felt it would be years before the knotted-string dream of other people’s performances of woes for my dead wife would thin enough for me to see my black space again, and of course- needless to say - thoughts of this kind made me feel guilty.”

Grief

Book:Grief Is the Thing with Feathers

Source: Grief Is the Thing with Feathers

“I remember her pretending to like watching award winning ceremonies more than she actually did because it surprised me, but then I let her know that such-and-such ceremony was on and we would have to sit through it. Le's go to bed, she said. We don't really know who any of these people are. Winners, I said. Every stinking ugly vacuous cunt-faced last one of them. And off we went to bed.”

Grief Media Cynicism Realism

Book:Grief Is the Thing with Feathers

Source: Grief Is the Thing with Feathers

“One boy lost the treasured lunchbox note from his mother saying 'good luck'. He cried, alone in his room, then threw a toy car at his father's framed Coltrane poster. It smashed. He felt better. The father dutifully swept up all the glass and understood.”

Loss Grief Mourning

Book:Grief Is the Thing with Feathers

Source: Grief Is the Thing with Feathers

“Daar wil ik weer zijn. En nog eens, en nog eens. Ik wil in armen gehouden worden. Ik wil in mijn armen houden.”

Love Loss Grief

Book:Grief Is the Thing with Feathers

Source: Grief Is the Thing with Feathers

“Ik weet nog dat ik bang was dat er haast wel iets mis móést gaan als we zo gelukkig waren, zij en ik, in de begintijd, toen onze liefde zich naar de vorm van onze levens voegde zoals cakebeslag in de hoeken van het bakblik kruipt terwijl het rijst en bakt.”

Love Loss Grief

Book:Grief Is the Thing with Feathers

Source: Grief Is the Thing with Feathers

“MAN "Dan zou mijn verdriet over zijn?" VOGEL "Nee, zeker niet. Maar je wanhoop was over. Verdriet heb je nog steeds, maar daar heb je geen kraai bij nodig.”

Love Loss Grief

Book:Grief Is the Thing with Feathers

Source: Grief Is the Thing with Feathers

“I remember being scared that something must, surely, go wrong, if we were this happy, her and me, in the early days, when our love was settling into the shape of our lives like cake mixture reaching the corners of the tin as it swells and bakes.”

Love Hope Grief Anxiety Superstition

Book:Grief Is the Thing with Feathers

Source: Grief Is the Thing with Feathers

“Perfect devices: doctors, ghosts and crows. We can do things other characters can't, like eat sorrow, un-birth secrets and have theatrical battles with language and God.”

Religion Language Loss Grief Secrets Ghosts Doctor Religion And Philoshophy Crows

Book:Grief Is the Thing with Feathers

Source: Grief Is the Thing with Feathers

“Shy is wrapped up in other people, no weight on his back, eyes closed, waiting for another day.”

Hope Friendship Life Goes On

Book:Shy

Source: Shy

“Ghosts do not haunt, they regress. Just as when you need to go to sleep you think of trees or lawns, you are taking instant symbolic refuge in a ready-made iconography of early safety and satisfaction. That exact place is where ghosts go.”

Sleep Ghost Refuge Place

Book:Grief Is the Thing with Feathers

Source: Grief Is the Thing with Feathers

Max Porter Books

Grief Is the Thing with Feathers

Shy

Lanny

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