“Losing him would, she realised, be unlike anything she had ever experienced before. A marriage is a conspiracy, a shared aspect toward the rest of the society, a code devised over a long history of negotiation and habit. That code would vanish. Her thoughts would be unobserved, her memories would be hers alone, without the heft that comes from sharing them with another. She would become insubstantial to herself.”
Matthew De Abaitua“It is in his obsessions that mankind most closely resembles his machines.”
Matthew De Abaitua, If Then“Exhaustion is a thin blanket tattered with bullet holes.”
Matthew De Abaitua, If Then“If you said to me, “I do not love, I have never loved,” then you would sound incomplete. Equally, if you say “I do not hate, I have never hated,” then you sound like half a man.”
Matthew De Abaitua, If Then“Her self lagged behind her anger, like a mother picking up after a destructive child.”
Matthew De Abaitua, If Then“Humans make tools. Some animals make tools too. The making and using of tools is important for developing language, how we think and speak. If we do not make anything, it affects our thinking.”
Matthew De Abaitua, If Then“Horror is the awakening of repressed knowledge, something that you have known all along but kept at the periphery of awareness so that life can go on.”
Matthew De Abaitua, If Then“Kindness is not entered onto the great ledger of civilisation.”
Matthew De Abaitua, If Then“Losing him would, she realised, be unlike anything she had ever experienced before. A marriage is a conspiracy, a shared aspect toward the rest of the society, a code devised over a long history of negotiation and habit. That code would vanish. Her thoughts would be unobserved, her memories would be hers alone, without the heft that comes from sharing them with another. She would become insubstantial to herself.”
Matthew De Abaitua, If Then