Dannii Elle’s Reviews > The Emperor of Gladness > Status Update

"We murder ourselves, he thought, by remembering."

"How strange to feel something so close to mercy, whatever that was, and stranger still that it should be found here of all places, at the end of a road of ruined houses by a toxic river. That among a pile of salvaged trash, he would come closer to all he ever wanted to be: a consciousness sitting under a lightbulb reading his days away, warm and alone, alone and yet, somehow, still somebody's son."

"When did he die, your husband?"
"When does anybody die?" She shrugged. "When God says Well done."

"He... considered the name his mother gave him, the thought of it sinking him, It wasn't that he didn't like his name - only that he had been willing to toss it into the river. He had never wanted to throw his name out, just the breath attached to it. The name, after all, was the only thing his mother gave him that he was able to keep without destroying."

"There is no shame, the boy thought, in losing yourself to something as natural as gravity - where one doesn't jump but is pulled, blameless, towards the sea."

"The hardest thing in the world is to live only once."