Book: Good Bones and Simple Murders
Quotes of Book: Good Bones and Simple Murders
Today I speak to my bones as I would speak to a dog. I want to go up the stairs, I tell them. Up, up, up, with one leg dragging. Is the ache deep in the bones, this elusive pain? Does that mean it will rain? Good bones, bones, I coax, wondering how to reward them; if they will sit up for me, beg, roll over, do one more trick, once more.There. We're at the top. bones! Good ! Keep on going. book-quotebonesThe question about the page is: what is beneath it? It seems to have only two dimensions, you can pick it up and turn it over and the back is the same as the front. Nothing, you say, disappointed.But you were looking in the wrong place, you were looking instead of . is another story. Beneath the page is a story. Beneath the page is everything that has ever happened, most of which you would rather not hear about.The page is not a pool but a skin, a skin is there to hold in and it can feel you touching it. Did you really think it would just lie there and do nothing?Touch the page at your peril: it is you who are blank and innocent, not the page. Nevertheless you want to know, nothing will stop you. You touch the page, it's as if you've drawn a knife across it, the page has been hurt now, a sinuous wound opens, a thin incision. Darkness wells through. book-quoteBut we still find the world astounding, we can't get enough of it; even as it shrivels, even as its many lights flicker and are extinguished {the tigers, the leopard frogs, the plunging dolphin flukes}, flicker and are extinguished, by us, by us, we gaze and gaze. Where do you draw the line, between love and greed? We never did know, we always wanted more. We want to take it all in, for one last time, we want to eat the world with our eyes." book-quoteBy now you must have guessed: I come from another planet. But I will never say to you, Take me to your leaders. Even I - unused to your ways though I am - would never make that mistake. We ourselves have such beings among us, made of cogs, pieces of paper, small disks of shiny metal, scraps of coloured cloth. I do not need to encounter more of them.Instead I will say, Take me to your trees. Take me to your breakfasts, your sunsets, your bad dreams, your shoes, your nouns. Take me to your fingers; take me to your deaths.These are worth it. These are what I have come for. book-quotelifedeathphilosophy
