Natasha Pulley Quotes

“Being solitary isn't a disease that needs a cure.”
― Natasha Pulley, The Watchmaker of Filigree Street

“I don't tolerate you. I can't breathe when you're not here, I can't think, I can't write music properly, I spend my whole bloody life waiting for the post.”
― Natasha Pulley, The Lost Future of Pepperharrow

“It is not summer, England doesn't have summer, it has continuous autumn with a fortnight's variation here and there.”
― Natasha Pulley, The Watchmaker of Filigree Street

“I'm a Buddhist. You might have a Christian obligation to catch pneumonia while you sit for two and a half hours listening to some twerp in a dress drone on about the virtue of wedded life but, dear as you are to me, I don't.”
― Natasha Pulley, The Watchmaker of Filigree Street

“In Japan, first names are only for who you're married to, or if you're being rude,' the watchmaker explained.”
― Natasha Pulley, The Watchmaker of Filigree Street

“Nobody wants a house in Osaka,' he said, and it was strange to hear him switch suddenly to foreign pronunciation in the middle of his English. 'It would mean you had to live in Osaka.'

'What's wrong with it?'

'It's like . . . Birmingham.”
― Natasha Pulley, The Watchmaker of Filigree Street

“Mori smiled properly. The lines around his eyes were deeper than usual now. They made him look like an old photograph of a young man, often crushed, but ironed carefully so that only the ghosts of the marks remained.”
― Natasha Pulley, The Watchmaker of Filigree Street

“The safest way to success is to write according to the capacity of the stupidest member of the audience.”
― Natasha Pulley, The Watchmaker of Filigree Street

“What's that?' Thaniel said, curious. The postmarks and stamps weren't English or Japanese.

'A painting. There's a depressed Dutchman who does countryside scenes and flowers and things. It's ugly, but I have to maintain the estates in Japan and modern art is a good investment.”
― Natasha Pulley, The Watchmaker of Filigree Street

“I'll give you a cake if you get him in the stream by the end of the afternoon,' Mori said to Six.

'Hold on,' Thaniel said. 'No making criminals of the orphans, Fagin.'

'But I want some cake,' Six frowned. 'And his name isn't Fagin.”
― Natasha Pulley, The Watchmaker of Filigree Street

“When they returned to Filigree Street, Mori refused even to go upstairs. Instead he hid under a quilt in the parlour with Thaniel's never-read copy of Anna Karenina. The Russians, he said, knew how to write genuinely boring novels, and he would only stop being afraid when he was bored enough. They were all the more boring because he could remember reading the end in the recent future.”
― Natasha Pulley, The Watchmaker of Filigree Street

“Isn't that what impoverished young artists usually do with old millionaires who fall in love with them?”
― Natasha Pulley, The Lost Future of Pepperharrow

“Is it white wine? Red tastes like vinegar.'

'Of course it's white wine, I'm Japanese.”
― Natasha Pulley, The Watchmaker of Filigree Street

“Mori looked across and was, briefly, a languageless, inhuman thing rescued from the sea and asked for an impious favour.”
― Natasha Pulley, The Watchmaker of Filigree Street

“Six saw a caterpillar.'

'What kind?'

'Green, with purple and white zigzags.'

'I see,' Thaniel said slowly. Liking children did not keep him from being perplexed by them. He was recently too old to remember his own childhood with any clarity. 'I imagine that was exciting?'

She glanced up at him warily. 'No. It was just a caterpillar.”
― Natasha Pulley, The Watchmaker of Filigree Street

“Mori made an unwilling sound. 'I don't like Western art.'

'No look at this.' He lifted it from its package. It wasn't heavy. 'It's clever, it looks like busy Mozart.'

'What?'

'I . . .' Thaniel sighed. 'I see sound. Mozart looks like this. You know. Fast strings.'

'See? In front of you?'

'Yes. I'm not mad.'

'I didn't think so. All sounds?'

'Yes.”
― Natasha Pulley, The Watchmaker of Filigree Street

“The creeping sense that he might have seen him reading the book came up from the ground, but that was more anxiety than evidence.”
― Natasha Pulley, The Watchmaker of Filigree Street