Matthew Crow > Quotes

“He had to be nice to me at the moment because he had to be surrounded by people. This was because boys like him were, essentially, pasta. Everyone thought they loved him because they had never been forced to experience the true blandness of him on his own.”
― Matthew Crow, In Bloom

“Nothing's ever all bad if you think hard enough about it.”
― Matthew Crow, In Bloom

“The worst part of Christmas is that it ends. That practically the day after, everyone carries on as if nothing else ever happens. You’re expected to go back to your normal life, eat normal food, not receive presents or celebrate or be jolly and wear stupid clothing, just because the moment’s passed.”
― Matthew Crow, In Bloom

“Amber was designed for life. She was designed for color and movement. She was not a girl born for the click of the camera’s lens. No device could capture her, the way she was, the way she was meant to be. She was not born to be still or stationary. Without her color she was broken, a faulty image that could never be fixed. Without her voice she was nothing. Amber was gone. At that moment it was all clear to me. Everything to come was just a formality.”
― Matthew Crow, In Bloom

“Mum just laughed gleefully at his mounting frustration, like the villainous matriarch in a Roald Dahl story. I suspect a TV guide would describe her idea of comedy as 'dark', or, at very best, 'alternative'.”
― Matthew Crow, In Bloom

“Grandma's house had the atmosphere of a Tupperware box left out in the sun. Like a tropical flower, she had to be kept warm and moist at all times, or she would wilt and die.”
― Matthew Crow, In Bloom

“We had no plan. No final destination in mind. We just drove faster and faster until we arrived. And when we did, all I could think of was how much fun it had been getting there.”
― Matthew Crow, The Brilliant Light of Amber Sunrise

“But mum was tough. No matter how fancily she dressed, she couldn't hide her true nature. Everyone at school was scared of her. Especially the other mums. She once knocked out a man with a single punch when he barged her trolley in Sainsbury's.”
― Matthew Crow, In Bloom

“Do you know the best thing about stars?'
'What?'
'They're all dead, but we can still see them. When we look up it's like we're looking at a million different memories, a million different versions of something that used to be. That's not romantic, either; it's just science.'
'It's a bit romantic,' I tried to argue.
'No, it's not.' she said. 'It's real, and that's what's important.”
― Matthew Crow

“We didn't waste one second of that day. We talked about the past. We talked about the future. And we danced. And we sang. And we toasted absent friends, as the stars shone through the night sky, like Amber's last gift.”
― Matthew Crow, The Brilliant Light of Amber Sunrise

“I don’t think the pain of a broken heart is one I will survive,” I said, lying across the upstairs landing so that everybody would notice my plight.”
― Matthew Crow, In Bloom

“The snow was practically gone by the next morning. It was as though it had arranged a suicide pact with Christmas itself. Patches of street began to poke through the white, like mold on bread. By the first week of the New Year everything looked like it always had, only wetter and sadder, like yesterday’s packed lunch.”
― Matthew Crow, In Bloom

“A box of chocolates is the wrapped equivalent of a shrug. You may as well not bother.”
― Matthew Crow

“Real life is - quieter, more understated. No one is backlot and nothing has a soundtrack and no one has someone cleverer than them writing their lines. And so they just say nothing and get on with it. More's the pity, if you ask me, I quite like the idea of my own soundtrack.”
― Matthew Crow

“Some loves, like the one Mum felt for Dad, disappear forever and are best forgotten about; some are best suspended in the amber of memory - localized to a specific time and place, like a really great dish you ate at a restaurant on holiday; and other loves carry on forever, no matter how distant their nucleus becomes.”
― Matthew Crow, In Bloom

“Do you know the best thing about stars?”
“What?”
“They're all dead, but we can still see them. When we look up it's like we're looking at a million different memories, a million different versions of something that used to be. That's not romantic, either; it's just science.”
“It's a bit romantic,” I tried to argue.
“No, it's not.” she said. “It's real, and that's what's important.”
― Matthew Crow, The Brilliant Light of Amber Sunrise

“At their time of life they should be wearing trouser suits and baking cakes, maybe spending their days penning hand-written letters of complaint to newspapers. Not drinking alcopops with crude straws in them.”
― Matthew Crow, In Bloom

“Real life is - quieter, more understated. No one is backlit and nothing has a soundtrack and no one has someone cleverer than them writing their lines. And so they just say nothing and get on with it. More's the pity, if you ask me, I quite like the idea of my own soundtrack.”
― Matthew Crow, The Brilliant Light of Amber Sunrise

“Et même si tu ne m’aimes plus un jour, même si on devait se perdre de vue, je trouve que le monde est bien plus intéressant avec toi dedans… alors tu vois, je trouve que ce que tu fais, là, c’est vraiment irresponsable.”
― Matthew Crow

“I was practically The Boy in the Bubble; all my autoimmune responses stripped bare by chemical representations of pine forests and summer meadows.”
― Matthew Crow, In Bloom

“Hope you’ve been keeping your nose clean,” DS Bradshaw said, trying to be jovial as he sipped a bottle of beer. I wondered what the police force would make of the fact that he was drinking alcohol at barely half past three in the afternoon. I would inform them at the first given opportunity, and also of his professional misconduct re Mum.”
― Matthew Crow, In Bloom

“Tu sais ce qu’il y a de mieux avec les étoiles ?
[...]
Elles sont mortes mais on peut quand même les voir. Quand on regarde le ciel, on regarde des millions de souvenirs, des millions de versions différentes de quelque chose qui était là avant.”
― Matthew Crow

“Colette looked at me and smiled. It struck me in that moment that Amber’s mouth had been just like her mother’s, and suddenly I was fifteen again, and in love again, and devastated.”
― Matthew Crow

“I had made the unwise decision to have my old clothes bagged and wear my fancy new finds home, so that I could debut my new look to the world at large. The reaction had been mixed at best, but often Tyne and wear was unable to keep up with my style savvy, so I didn't let it dishearten me.”
― Matthew Crow, In Bloom

“He had learned to work around his grief as best he could. After the war his agony was just another voice in the wail of loss which echoed for years afterwards. But just because the world aches it does not dilute your own sorrows, and the pain Baxter had felt in those empty years, when the world was rebuilt on a flimsy foundation of rubble and gaping holes, had been hard conquered.”
― Matthew Crow, Baxter's Requiem