Ella > Recent Status Updates

‘We are, in the end, just two chambers of the same poisoned heart’ p240

‘This reputation was important to Ben. At school, it came to him naturally. Later in life, it was one he cultivated, and I found it less convincing. As a teenager, he had been touchingly sincere. These days, he saw sincerity as a valuable asset and it wasn't quite the same thing.’ p57

‘The chandelier … revealed itself to be constructed entirely from upended wine glasses. It was, Serena and Ben thought, a humorous accent; a sign that although they recognised beautiful design, they were not ones to take themselves too seriously. But I knew that the chandelier had cost £250,000. More, if you count …costs. I couldn't help but admire the grandiosity of it. The sheer, unthinking excess.’ p17

‘Knowledge is nobody's property. You receive it, you give it back. In this way, a colony remembers what its individual members have long forgotten.’ p287

‘Because in real life, unlike in history books, stories come to us not in their entirety but in bits and pieces, broken segments and partial echoes, a full sentence here, a fragment there, a clue hidden in between. In life, unlike in books, we have to weave our stories out of threads as fine as the gossamer veins that run through a butterfly's wings.’ p262

‘With all-encompassing curiosity he would study a moss-covered log, inhale the aromas of garlic mustard and pokeweed, listen to a beetle munch its way through a leaf, and he would marvel at his mother's fear of this world so full of wonders.’ p108

‘Kostas barely remembered anything of his father. He knew that his elder brother had many memories of him, and his younger brother, a newborn back then, had absolutely none. But he, the middle one, was left with a layer of fog, a frustrating illusion that if he could only part the cloud with his hands, he might find his father's face in there, the pieces no longer missing, finally complete.’ p107