Irene > Recent Status Updates

'…Thatcher's legacy. No such thing as society, just families and individuals. Competitive individuals. Everyone's a competitor, so everyone's a threat. We're pretending to be social, but really we're scared out of our wits.'

'Mirrors, everywhere. How are we going to survive this? Perhaps — oh, this is clever, this is brilliant — perhaps this is our punishment.'

'Words that proved he'd seen her without clothes, without even knickers. He knew what she looked like. A secret she'd kept from everyone. She'd wanted to snatch the spectacles from his face and punch him to the floor.'

'"What did they do?" she wants to know. "Did they do something — anything — or was it all you? Was it all just you, Stephen? With your snake's eyes, your locust's stare. Was it all just you?"' <- This made me feel emotional. You can sense the despair in the words.

'She won't talk about how much she loved them, what a hole he carved in her life. If she gave him that, he'd take it back to his cell to feast on, or fret over. He's had enough of their lives. She won't give him any more.'

"The pain's in my head today, above my left ear. It's possible to put a knife there, if you hit hard enough. He put a knife into my mother's head there. I don't know why."

'They want her to give an impact statement, to stand up and tell this room of strangers how it feels, what he did. She's refused, because what could she say?'

This looks promising so far. Interestingly written.

This looks promising so far. Interestingly written.

"I knew from the first that it was an error to think of the twins as my children, whatever the biological reality. I had no real connection with these creatures who lay in the basement room, crying and fouling themselves, clinging to a life that I could easily have ended with a basin of water or a length of twine."

"I reacted appropriately. ‘A corpse? Here? I’m sorry, I— ’"

"My first live dissection was a large mouse. The pleasure of opening it up, and knowing it was still alive, knowing the life was bleeding away through my fingers was almost overwhelming."

"No choice is ever made on the basis of logic; the logic is fabricated around the impulse…"

"No choice is ever made on the basis of logic; the logic is fabricated around the impulse…"

"…and I made my own private catalogue of implosions and seepages, ergots and mildews, sickening odours, twitches, vanishings."

"The trick and the beauty of language is that it seems to order the whole universe, misleading us into believing that we live in sight of a rational space, a possible harmony."

"No one could say it was my choice to kill the twins, any more than it was my decision to bring them into the world."