Paperweight Quotes

“This is the terrible thing girls like us have in common" she explained. "Parents, upbringings,lifestyles, that are painfully normal. Middle class."It was almost amoral, being raised this way, she told me fiercely. We'd never really understand pain. And wasn't that the human condition? By shielding us from the real world, pressing their palms over our eyes during all the bad parts. our parents -our parents-were keeping us separate from humanity. We were something else entirely”

“The paperweight was the room he was in, and the coral was Julia's life and his own, fixed in a sort of eternity at the heart of the crystal.”

“When I was little, I'd pick flowers wherever I traveled with my mom, then dry them, cover them with resin, and turn them into paperweights.”

“We are all a collection of lost causes, stashed here so no one has to see just how wounded we are.”

“Promise was like a precious stone, she told me: hypnotising, but after a while the weight of it could sink you.”

“But every time I near sleep, I'm scared shitless. Because the memories are coming faster now, pouring through me, as if I've broken the handle on the faucet. They are coming, no matter how much is hurts. And all I can do is hold my breath and try not to drown.”

“He couldn’t say the words, had spent too long in Silence, but he’d learned other ways to speak. Taking the paperweight she’d knocked off her desk out of his pocket, he put it in her hands. “It’s fixed. As long as you don’t mind more than a few scars.”

“That is a very Earthling question to ask, Mr. Pilgrim. Why you? Why us for that matter? Why anything? Because this moment simply is. Have you ever seen bugs trapped in amber?''Yes' Billy, in fact, had a paperweight in his office which was a blob of polished amber with three ladybugs embedded in it.'Well, here we are, Mr. Pilgrim, trapped in the amber of this moment. There is no why.”

“That is a very Earthling question to ask, Mr. Pilgrim. Why you? Why us for that matter? Why anything? Because this moment simply is. Have you ever seen bugs trapped in amber?''Yes' Billy, in fact, had a paperweight in his office which was a plop of polished amber with three ladybugs embedded in it.'Well, here we are, Mr. Pilgrim, trapped in the amber of this moment. There is no why.”

“He has the memory of a convict, the balls of a fireman, and the eyesight of a housebreaker. When there is crime to fight, Landsman tears around Sitka like a man with his pant leg caught on a rocket. It's like there's a film score playing behind him, heavy on the castanets. The problem comes in the hours when he isn't working, when his thoughts start blowing out the open window of his brain like pages from the blotter. Sometimes it takes a heavy paperweight to pin them down.”