Benjamin Wood > Quotes

“Actually, I think it's the opposite. We know each other so well there isn't anything left to say. Sometimes it's nice just sitting here with you all, thinking. It's only best friends who can be comfortable with silence, wouldn't you say?”
― Benjamin Wood, The Bellwether Revivals

“My theory is that hope is a form of madness. A benevolent one, sure, but madness all the same. Like an irrational superstition--broken mirrors and so forth--hope's not based on any kind of logic, it's just unfettered optimism, grounded in nothing but faith in things beyond our control.”
― Benjamin Wood, The Bellwether Revivals

“Sometimes, you can hold a grudge for so long you forget why you were holding onto it. And before you know it, half a lifetime has gone by and all you’ve got is a empty fist and a lot of regret.”
― Benjamin Wood, The Bellwether Revivals

“When you're young, you think life is a string of choices. It's either you choose this door or the other door, or jump out of the window. You don't realise that most of what'll happen to you is because of other people's choices. There's a door already opened for you, so you walk straight through it, and you wonder how you wound up on the fire escape. That's life, I'm telling you. Don't bother getting older. Art's the only way I've ever had of making any sense of it.”
― Benjamin Wood, Seascraper

“Once you surrender to hope, its a long road back to reason." There was a certain tone of self-loathing in the way Crest said it.”
― Benjamin Wood, The Bellwether Revivals

“If you construct a room in paint, you haunt it. Your life rests in every stroke. So paint only the rooms that you can bear to occupy forever. Or paint the stars instead.”
― Benjamin Wood, The Ecliptic

“If you don't have the ambition to be the very best at what you do, then what's the point? If you aim for greatness but keep missing -- fine. At least you had the guts to aim. There's honour in failing that way. But there's nothing honourable about settling for mediocrity.”
― Benjamin Wood, The Ecliptic

“He wants to wake up every morning with a better purpose.”
― Benjamin Wood, Seascraper

“And Oscar would tell the old man his only regret: that he was living the unremarkable life his parents had always expected from him.”
― Benjamin Wood, The Bellwether Revivals

“A lot of the big studio guys are straight from Harvard Business School or Princeton, and they’re quick to let you know about it in a meeting. But they never have a thought worth sharing – their whole lives are built on status. More than that: they want conformity. They’re terrified of what’s original, because it undermines them. So they get behind what’s mediocre, keep on feeding you their trash as though it’s good for you.”
― Benjamin Wood, Seascraper

“Once your best story's told it, can't be told again. It makes you, then it ruins you.”
― Benjamin Wood, The Ecliptic

“Once you surrender to hope, it’s a long road back to reason.”
― Benjamin Wood, The Bellwether Revivals

“Nobody should put their own success above their children’s happiness –”
― Benjamin Wood, Seascraper

“The way we envision the stars is by imagining they're attached to a giant invisible sphere surrounding the earth. It is a total fiction, really - just a construction we came up with to help us get our heads around the complexity of it all ... The ecliptic, put simply is the plane of the earth's orbit around the sun. But since we all live here on earth, we observe the sun to be moving along this plane instead. Why? Because what would be the point of looking at things from the perspective of the sun? That's no use to anyone ... Ergo, it's an imaginary circle, as it's only a part of our human construction of the cosmos.”
― Benjamin Wood, The Ecliptic

“He waves back keenly, but it feels inadequate. They've become two strangers pantomiming fondness for each other. Perhaps that's all they ever were.”
― Benjamin Wood, Seascraper

“There is no finer company than inspiration, but its very goodness will leave you heartsick when it goes. So do not waste time asking it to wipe its feet. Embrace it at the treshold.”
― Benjamin Wood, The Ecliptic

“Oscar was raised to believe that if he stayed in his room reading about made up worlds it meant he didn't appreciate the life he had, the possessions his parents had worked hard for, like the TV and the video and the newly turfed back garden.”
― Benjamin Wood, The Bellwether Revivals

“Habit’s all you can rely on.”
― Benjamin Wood, Seascraper

“most of what’ll happen to you is because of other people’s choices.”
― Benjamin Wood, Seascraper

“He didn't know there was another edge to Edgar's temperament: a blunter side that's not so organised or easy-going. There's no doubt that he prefers the other version who arrives with steaks and writes him cheques, but he'll forgive a bloke his flaws if there's no malice in them.”
― Benjamin Wood, Seascraper

“Doggedness in art is no substitute for inspiration.”
― Benjamin Wood, The Ecliptic

“The closer they get to Broughton, the more the sand dunes bunch together on the collar of the road. He'd wander out here as a lad, carefree, and tumble down the slopes for hours with kids from other towns he'd never see again. Back then, he wouldn't give much thought to smashed-up bottles that were dumped there, or the damage he could do an ankle treading in a burrow. He's forgotten that simplicity, that joy. It's true what Mr Acheson is saying about the world and all its noise, but mostfolk seem to carry on undaunted, just like children gaily sliding down a sand dune. When did he stop sliding for fear of broken glass and bloody knees?”
― Benjamin Wood, Seascraper

“Genius does not have time to stand admiring its reflection; it has too much work to get finished.”
― Benjamin Wood, The Ecliptic

“And just for an instant - a second, maybe half that -he couldn't see Iris at all.”
― Benjamin Wood, The Bellwether Revivals

“I'm tired of retracing my own footsteps for a hint of who I used to be, it's undignified.”
― Benjamin Wood, The Ecliptic

“My theory is that hope is a form of madness. A benevolent one, sure, but madness all the same.”
― Benjamin Wood, The Bellwether Revivals

“He's never wasted any thoughts on his appearance. Jut what sort of figure he presents out here in his rank sea-clothes hasn't bothered him before. Now, being drawn, he's too aware of his own body and its failings. How his spine must curve while he sits at the reins, the way his grandpa's used to do. His ingrown nails begin to throb, his shoulders ache.”
― Benjamin Wood, Seascraper

“Edgar backs off with his cases, heading for the front steps while the horse begins its ponderous turn out of the car park; and when he finds that Edgar is still standing there to wave him off, he knows they've passed beyond the territory of strangers, into something more like friendship.”
― Benjamin Wood, Seascraper

“There’s a door already opened for you, so you walk straight through it, and you wonder how you wound up on the fire escape. That’s life, I’m telling you. Don’t bother getting older.”
― Benjamin Wood, Seascraper