Colin Barrett > Quotes

“The Ferdias had the unreliability, but also the dangerous decisiveness, of creatures who did not understand their nature and did not care to understand it. You could never tell what lines they would elect to cross, what courses of action they would follow through to the bitter end, because they did not know either.”
― Colin Barrett, Wild Houses

“In the dream, exactly as he had in real life, he sensed the slow, inexorable approach of the shapeless, prospectless days to come, days when there would be no need to get out of bed or brush his teeth or talk to anyone at all, days that would, in time, become unbearable too.”
― Colin Barrett, Wild Houses

“And it was difficult, eventually it was unbearable, to be around someone you could not help, and he had not understood this until it was way, way too late.”
― Colin Barrett, Wild Houses

“What you are in, Dev, is a holding pattern, only you're not holding out for anything.”
― Colin Barrett, Wild Houses

“If he could get clean, and take his pill, and sleep; tomorrow it could all begin to be different. He just needed to get there. But in the meantime, all he could do was keep looking at his foot. It hung there like it had nothing to do with him. And that was the thing. That was what made it all so difficult. You couldn't do anything until you did another thing first.”
― Colin Barrett, Wild Houses

“The moment she stepped out of her car she had crossed a line, that razor-thin border separating the possible from the actual.”
― Colin Barrett, Wild Houses

“I saw a thing on TV once... about how dogs experience the world. Their senses and all that. You think there's the world, right, and in the world the sky is blue, grass is green, and shite smells bad. But for the dogs, it's not like that at all. What they hear, what they smell, the way they see light and colour, it's all fucked up and totally out of whack compared to us. The world is completely different to them... I don't like thinking about that.”
― Colin Barrett, Wild Houses

“Dev thought about how little you had to do with your body, really; it was true that it had its routines and processes, most of which were benign and necessary, but some of which were catastrophic and inexplicable. And the thing was, it perpetuated those processes irrespective of your wishes. He thought about how, when it came down to it, you were a kind of janitor or superintendent of your body, responsible only for its sanitation and presentation. You fuelled it and disposed of its waste, showered it, dressed it. You brushed its hair and you cut its nails. But you could choose not to do these things and your body, regardless of your neglect, would simply carry on for as long as it could.”
― Colin Barrett, Wild Houses

“He looked around the empty kitchen. A part of him wanted this of course. A part of him had always wanted this, to be alone, away from even the prospect of any demand upon him to talk, to interact, to acknowledge opinions and be expected to offer ones in return, to be responsible for anyone but himself and the dog. To be left be. To be.”
― Colin Barrett, Wild Houses

“... with a face on him like a vandalized church, long and angular and pitted, eyes glinting deep in their sockets like smashed-out windows.”
― Colin Barrett, Wild Houses

“All boys, all children, are capable of cruelty at the right juncture of opportunity and circumstance, but only a few become committed prodigies of sadism...”
― Colin Barrett, Wild Houses

“bubble-wrap crackle of wheels turning slow on gravel.”
― Colin Barrett, Wild Houses

“Its once cream exterior had faded to the stained, indistinct colour of a dead tooth,”
― Colin Barrett, Wild Houses

“That’s the thing about Mayo. I find it’s very presentable from a distance. It’s only up close that it lets you down.”
― Colin Barrett

“The feeling would come again and she would push it away again, and on it would go until she could not do it any more. When that day came, everything would change. She knew it would. But for now, that did not matter.”
― Colin Barrett, Wild Houses

“Denuded of its usual gloating composure, Sketch's face looked as pale and raw as a woman's without her make-up.”
― Colin Barrett, Wild Houses

“He thought of himself as intrinsically unobjectionable, someone who, for better and for worse, could not be singled out in any way.”
― Colin Barrett, Wild Houses

“She knew violence was close, could sense with each step the approach of some dark, whipping torsion of bodies and limbs that might sweep her up and buffet her away with the powerful headlong indifference of the sea.”
― Colin Barrett, Wild Houses