Duckmonke > Duckmonke's Quotes

“Gaunt, meanwhile, had struggled along until he got so tall and strong and impenetrable that no one could hurt him. Gaunt, in fact, represened the only real trial Ellwood had every gone through. Unrequited love was a difficult thing to live with, but Ellwood managed because Gaunt needed him.”
― Alice Winn, In Memoriam

“I’m sorry. This is not what I intended to say. What I meant to say is this: You’ll write more poems. They are not lost. You are the poetry.”
― Alice Winn, In Memoriam

“My dearest, darling Sidney,' There was nothing else. Only dead white paper, blank and meaningless. A comma, followed by nothing. Death summed up by grammar.”
― Alice Winn, In Memoriam

“Ellwood smiled, and a sudden, dry bleakness spread over Gaunt’s heart as he thought of Hercules, and Hector, and all the heroes in myth who found happiness briefly, only for it not to be the end of the story.”
― Alice Winn, In Memoriam

“Gaunt was woven into everything he read, saw, wrote, did, dreamt. Every poem had been written about him, every song composed for him, and Ellwood could not scrape his mind clear of him no matter how he tried.”
― Alice Winn, In Memoriam

“It was the Hell you’d feared in childhood, come to devour the children. It was treading over the corpses of your friends so that you might be killed yourself. It was the congealed evil of a century.”
― Alice Winn, In Memoriam

“Call me Sidney,” said Ellwood.
“Sidney,” said Gaunt, so quickly, as if he had been waiting years to say it ... He pressed their foreheads together. “This means I’m keeping you,” he added, his voice fierce with warning.
As if it wasn’t exactly what Ellwood wanted to hear.
“You can have me,” he told Gaunt, and suddenly he couldn’t breathe.”
― Alice Winn, In Memoriam

“Do you believe in magic?” he asked. Ellwood paused for a while, so long that if he had been anyone else, Gaunt might have repeated the question.
“I believe in beauty,” said Ellwood, finally.
“Yes,” said Gaunt, fervently. “Me too.” He wondered what it was like to be someone like Ellwood, who contributed to the beauty of a place, rather than blighting it.”
― Alice Winn, In Memoriam

“Poor Elly, he thought, as he fell. It’s so much harder to be left behind.”
― Alice Winn, In Memoriam

“It seems unfair, doesn't it? Our parents got to live their whole lives without anything like this."

"Busily building up the world that led to this.”
― Alice Winn, In Memoriam

“Where’s the rest of it?” said Ellwood, his voice rising unpredictably.
“My,” just the word “my” would have been enough to live on, if Gaunt had ever called him that to his face.
“He never called me Sidney. Not once, in five years.” He looked up at Hayes. “What does it mean?”
“I don’t know,” said Hayes. He sat stiff and upright on the bed.
“Why didn’t he finish it?”
“I don’t know,” said Hayes.
“He knew he was going to die.”
“He thought you both would.”
“But he never called me Sidney.”
He never called him any of it. My, dearest, darling. Sidney. Ellwood leant back against the window, his throat stretching long as he looked up.
“If Gaunt had been a girl, I should have married him in an instant,” he said.”
― Alice Winn, In Memoriam

“It was dusk, on a Friday. The battered skeletons of trees tapered against the fresh starlight in No Man's Land. The sky offered curious glimpses of beauty, from time to time. The men wrote about it in their letters, describing sunsets in painstaking detail to their families, as if there was nothing to see at the front but crimson clouds and dusted rays of golden light.”
― Alice Winn, In Memoriam