Catherine O'Flynn

“The longer she looked down the more scared she became of the growing urge to throw herself off.”

“I hate it here. I hate the way everyone looks at you. I hate the way everyone looks.”

“I don’t know – I suppose if you’re very unhappy at home, anywhere is better than there.”

“Lisa: It just seems a bit of a waste.Ed: Waste of what?Lisa: Waste of time… of life.Ed: That’s the point, isn’t it? To waste time until you die. You have to waste the time.”

“He had no trust in his own judgement any more, but there was no one else to rely on.”

“It had been hard for months. Sleep would curl slowly around him while he was reading a book, sleep would trick him that he was awake, sleep would play the best movies.”

“He was glad some of the pain was fading, had already faded so much since the first year. But it seemed more to be a trade off: with the pain went details and memories. People had said, ‘Time heals,’ but he realized time didn’t heal, time just eroded and confused, and he didn’t think that was the same thing at all.”

“She realized that was one of the things she liked about Green Oaks – nobody knew her. She wasn’t the quiet girl from class. She wasn’t the girl with no mom or dad.”

“She imagined people picking up the newspapers she dropped through their doors, reading about a world they never visited. For the first time it occurred to her that her classmates had been right. Except it wasn’t just one ghost, but many, one in every flat. Floating through the walls, communicating only through the strange words and symbols they left in the lift.”

“She found the evenings long and empty, and the nights worse. She dreaded the weekends.”

“It frightened her to witness these mass ebbs and flows, to work at the cutting face of all that suggestion and manipulation.”