John Verdon

“The sun sets and we sleep. The sun rises and we wake. We wake and, ever so briefly, ever so blindly, we enjoy the fantasy of beginning anew. Then, without fail, reality reasserts its presence.”

“Eis uma coisa curiosa acerca do passado: a forma como jaz à nossa espera, silencioso, invisível, quase como se ali não estivesse. Podemos ter a tentação de julgar que desapareceu, que já não existe. De repente, como um faisão espantado para fora do seu esconderijo, erguer-se-á numa explosão de som, cor e movimento: escandalosamente vivo.”

“The stories people tell you about themselves seem to retain the possibility of being false. But what you discover about them by yourself seems to be the truth.”

“...but grief, he'd discovered, was not an experience you went through once and then 'moved on' (as the idiotic popular phrase would have it). The truth was that it came over you in successive waves - waves separated by periods of numbness, periods of forgetfulness, periods of ordinary living.”

“This case is complex. It's got layers to it, Davey. It's a fucking onion... You're a natural-born onion peeler -- the best that ever was.”

“They looked like linebackers on a prison football team, whose idea of commincation was to smash into something at full speed, preferably another person.”