Luke Kennard > Quotes

“Worry gives a small thing a big shadow.”
― Luke Kennard, Black Bag

“He had a talismanic obsession with final pages. At school he would near a book's conclusion, whether it was pulp science fiction or The Return of the Native, with one hand firmly clamped over the ultimate paragraph, in case his eye lit on a single word which might rob the entire story of its point, spoil the answer to the riddle of why he was reading it. When he shared this with Genevieve, she admitted to him that she always started a book by reading its final page, that she still did, but she wasn't sure why.”
― Luke Kennard, The Transition

“I presided over the last ebbing away of enchantment, pointing out the occasional shiny thing as it flowed into the drain. I wonder if I wasn't just tricking them into feeling more comfortable with the coming meaninglessness. Plumping the coffin pillows.”
― Luke Kennard, Black Bag

“when damaged men have money and influence, that’s a problem for the whole world.”
― Luke Kennard, Black Bag

“we are not convinced by one another’s adult selves.”
― Luke Kennard, Black Bag

“Our only obligation to each other should be a vast, oceanic affection. Our only assumption must be that everybody else’s life is more meaningful than our own. That is the only way to encounter the other. The rest is window dressing.”
― Luke Kennard, Black Bag

“What I want to say is “Thank You.” English people have such a deep-seated position on ingeniousness that we often forgo gratitude all together. It is feasible to go your entire life without ever expressing a single emotion just in case you didn’t mean it.”
― Luke Kennard, Black Bag

“All his life he had been plagued by impulses to do something inappropriate or despicable for no reason: grab his dissertation supervisor by the ears and give him a big Bugs Bunny kiss, drop the precious vase . . . These thoughts arose from nowhere that he could account for and, at their worst, caused him to lose sleep. When he read Goethe's statement about every man secretly believing himself to be an undiscovered genius or an undiscovered maniac, he wept with relief. He lived in fear that the thoughts might show in his eyes. Usually, though, when he had reason to be offended, his mind was a clear disc of hurt, not a thought of any action, violent or otherwise. But something had changed.”
― Luke Kennard, The Transition

“The sensation of her skin against the material. It felt as if his lungs were filling with tint glowing asterisks.”
― Luke Kennard, The Transition

“Occasionally, he was quite sure of this, she disguised a yell of pure rage behind a sneeze. The sneeze was real; it was an opportunistic yell, which might as well have come out then, when she happened to need to sneeze, as ever.”
― Luke Kennard, The Transition

“do the boring parts, but it disturbs them that it could also take over the parts they like, write their poems and paint their pictures, take away their livelihoods.”
― Luke Kennard, Black Bag

“Isn’t time that someone rescued me from the cult of myself for deprogramming? To trust in the arts is an act of hubris so self-destructive the gods don’t even bother to punish you for it. It is to become a monstrous politician of an insecure republic, an estate agent of your own soul, a demon of lubricity. There is just a chance, though, the width of a crack in a martini glass, that we need it more than ever.”
― Luke Kennard, Black Bag

“To trust in the arts is an act of hubris so self-destructive the gods don’t even bother to punish you for it. It is to become a monstrous politician of an insecure republic, an estate agent of your own soul, a demon of lubricity. There is just a chance, though, the width”
― Luke Kennard, Black Bag

“When he arrived at the flat, he found Keston sitting in his leather armchair wearing a quilted maroon smoking jacket. He was drinking a Bloody Mary and looked like he was about to introduce Masterpiece Theatre or a tale of the unexpected.”
― Luke Kennard, The Transition

“We ought not be too disappointed if a hallucination resembles cheap headshop artwork when the cheap headshop artwork is, after all, a clumsy attempt to accurately illustrate a hallucination.”
― Luke Kennard, Black Bag

“we live by comparison and competition,”
― Luke Kennard, Black Bag