Notes On A Scandal Quotes

“As I say, I have never been a big fan of firework displays. All that brightness falling, the sad, smoke smell, the finale that is never quite as magnificent as it should be. And then there’s the dispiriting, figurative tendency in modern fireworks. To stand in the cold, watching coloured sparks momentarily take the ragged shape of a smiley face or a drunken script that spells ‘Happy Holidays’ would seem, by any objective standard, to be a very low form of entertainment indeed. Yet appreciating fireworks is one of those things by which one is judged on one’s child-like delight in life. It is perfectly acceptable to hate the circus. But to admit that one finds fireworks tiresome is to render oneself a pariah. I suspect that only the tiniest fraction of the crowd gathered on the top of Primrose Hill was genuinely invested in the spectacle, but we all stayed there for a full frigid hour, dutifully manufacturing sharp intakes of breath and other symptoms of ingenuous wonderment.

from Notes on a scandal”
― Zoë Heller