Rachel Joyce

“I always got cross with Elizabeth for leaving the top off the toothpaste. Now I throw it away as soon as I open a new tube. I find I dont´t want the lid.”

“The regrets about all she had let go flooded her. Where had all that enterprise gone? All that energy? Why had she never traveled? Or had more sex when she could? She had bleached and annihilated every waking moment of the last twenty years. Anything, rather than feel.”

“He saw the reflection of her face in a compact mirror as she painted on her re lips. She did it with such care, he had felt she was trapping something behind the colour.She had touched life, played with it a little, bit it was a slippery bugger,and finally we must close the door, and leave it behind.”

“People were buying milk, or filling their cars with petrol, or even posting letters. And what no one else knew was the appalling weight of the thing they were carrying inside. The superhuman effort it took sometimes to be normal, and a part of things that appeared both easy and everyday. The loneliness of that.”

“The past was the past; there was no escaping your beginnings.”

“Houses don't clean themselves, she'd mutter. Sometimes she cleaned the bits she had just cleaned. It wasn't like living in a house, but more a question hovering over the surfaces.”

“His shirt, tie, and trousers were folded small as an apology on a faded blue-velvet chair.”

“Sometimes her words sliced down on his before they had even reached his mouth.”

“If we don't go mad once in a while, there's no hope.”

“... He went under the stars, and the tender light of the moon, when it hung like an eyelash and the tree trunks shone like bones. He walked through wind and weather, and beneath sun-bleached skies. It seemed to Harold that he had been waiting all his life to walk. He no longer knew how far he had come, but only that he was going forward. The pale Cotswold stone became the red brick of Warwickshire, and the land flattened into middle England. Harold reached his hand to his mouth to brush away a fly, and felt a beard growing in thick tufts. Queenie would live. He knew it.”

“After the two drinks, she felt warm inside, and slightly indistinct at the edges.”

“Harold could no longer pass a stranger without acknowledging the truth that everyone was the same, and also unique; and that this was the dilemma of being human.”

“If I just keep putting one foot in front of the other, it stands to reason that I'm going to get there. I've begun to think we sit far more than we're supposed to." He smiled. "Why else would we have feet?”

“you could be ordinary and attempt something extraordinary, without being able to explain it in a logical way.”

“Beginnings could happen more than once, or in different ways.”

“It was not a life, if lived without love.”

“There was no escaping what he had realized as he fought for warmth in the night. With or without him,the moon and the wind would go on, rising and falling. The land would keep stretching ahead until it hit the sea. People would keep dying. It made no difference if Harold walked, or trembled, or stayed at home.”

“But it never ceases to amaze me how difficult the things that are supposed to be instinctive really are.”

“The least planned part of the journey, however, was the journey itself.”

“There is so much to the human mind we don't understand. But, you see, if you have faith, you can do anything.”

“Sein Schmerz habe ihn dazu gebracht, sagte sie; der Schmerz koenne Menschen zu den merkwuerdigsten Dingen treiben. Ihrer Meinung nach war Harold auf Selbstzerstoerung aus.”

“Die sichere Welt des Schlafs hatte keinen Platz fuer sie.”

“Die Menschen denen er begegnete, die Orte, die er durchquerte, waren Schritte auf seiner Reise, und jedem einzelnen von ihnen raeumte er einen Platz in seinem Herzen ein.”

“Doch als er annahm, lernte er damit auch etwas Neues. Empfangen war nicht weniger ein Geschenk als geben, denn es verlangte sowohl Mut als auch Demut.”

“Einen Anfang kann es oefter als einmal geben, und immer wieder anders. Man konnte sich auch nur einbilden, neu anzufangen, obwohl man denselben alten Stiefel weitermachte.”

“Es war nicht einfach, ein bisschen zu begreifen und dann wegzugehen.”

“Eine bereits hinter sich gebrachte Strecke wieder zurueckzulaufen war das Schlimmste ueberhaupt.”

“Wenn er den Blick immer auf die Dinge gerichtet hielt, die groesser waren als er selbst, dann wuerde er es nach Berwick schaffen. Ganz sicher.”

“Welche unmenschliche Anstrengung es sie manchmal kostete, normal zu erscheinen, zugehoerig zur scheinbar so einfachen Welt des Alltaeglichen.”

“Die Leute kauften Milch, tankten ihre Autos auf, brachten Briefe zur Post. Und niemand wusste, welche entsetzliche Last sie mit sich herumschleppten.”

“Es kam Harold seltsam, aber unvermeidlich vor, dass Touristen an religioesen Staetten Souvenirschnickschnack kaufen, sie wissen eben sonst nicht, was sie dort tun sollen.”

“Harold hatte einen Anfang gemacht, und damit kam schon das Ende in Sicht.”

“Sie glaubten an ihn. Sie hatten ihn in seinen Segelschuhen angesehen, hatten zugehoert, was er sagte, und hatten mit Herz und Verstand beschlossen, das Offensichtliche zu ignorieren und an etwas Groesseres und unendlich Schoeneres als das real Sichtbare zu glauben.”

“Unser Geist ist viel groesser,, als wir begreifen. Wenn wir fest an etwas glauben, koennen wir alles schaffen.”

“If we can't accept what we don't know, there really is no hope.”

“It surprised him that he was remembering all this. Maybe it was the walking. Maybe you saw even more than the land when you got out of the car and used your feet.”

“He had felt safe with what he had confided. It had been the same with Queenie. You could say things in the car and know she had tucked them somewhere safe among her thoughts, and that she would not judge him for them, or hold it against him in years to come. He supposed that was what friendship was, and regretted all the years he had spent without it.”

“He must have driven this way countless times, and yet he had no memory of the scenery. He must have been so caught up in the day's agenda, and arriving punctually at their destination, that the land beyond the car had been no more than a wash of one green, and a backdrop of one hill. Life was very different when you walked through it.”

“He understood that in walking to atone for the mistakes he had made, it was his journey to accept the strangeness of others. As a passerby, he was in a place where everything, not only the land, was open. People would feel free to talk, and he was free to listen. To carry a little of them as he went.”

“...People would make the decisions they wished to make and some of them would hurt both themselves and those who loved them, and some would pass unnoticed, while others would bring joy.”

“But maybe it's what the world needs. A little less sense, and a little more faith.”

“He wished the man would honor the true meaning of words, instead of using them as ammunition.”

“I miss her all the time. I know in my head that she has gone. The only difference is that I am getting used to the pain. It's like discovering a great hole in the ground. To begin with, you forget it's there and keep falling in. After a while, it's still there, but you learn to walk round it.”

“You got up, and you did something. And if trying to find a way when you don't even know you can get there isn't a small miracle; then I don't know what is.”

“The world was made up of people putting one foot in front of the other; and a life might appear ordinary simply because the person living it had been doing so for a long time.”

“He had never been good at expressing himself. What he felt was so big it was difficult to find the words, and even if he could, it was hardly appropriate to write them to someone he had not contacted in twenty years.”

“He had always been too English; by which he supposed he meant that he was ordinary.”

“I can't explain why I think I can get there, when all the odds are against me. But I do. Even when a big part of me is saying I should give up, I can't. Even when I don't want to keep going, I still do it”

“I've begun to think that we sit far more than we're supposed to...Why else would we have feet?”