James Robertson: And the Land Lay Still

Sometimes he’d walk for a mile or two out of town before catching the next bus, for the pleasure of being alone and in silence.

(about Don Lennie, p 206) 

As an adolescent I would do this when escaping from my parents’ back to college; later it became one of the reasons why I preferred, when possible, walking to work to using public transport.

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It would be good to have someone to talk to.

(Peter Bond, p 231) 

One of my most frequent complaints, in fact I wrote about it yesterday.

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[….] and then a pang of jealousy would come as he saw that once again he was in a state of limbo, inside and yet still an outsider. He was part of it and yet alienated.

(about Peter Bond, p 316)

For most of my life I felt like I didn’t really belong. Like the others were a group and I a mere guest of the group; often a well-liked one, but still just a guest none the less.

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Neither of them thought of a telephone as anything other than an instrument for communicating necessary information or for use in an emergency. The idea that you might phone somebody just to talk to them seemed absurd, extravagant.

(about Don & Liz Lennie, p 425) 

I like face-to-face conversation (with some people anyway) because of the physical proximity it involves, I like reading and writing letters and emails because of the possibility to think out properly what one wants to say and how to say it; phones provide neither. As far as I’m concerned, phones are there to arrange a later chat, rather than have one at the moment.

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If Mike liked someone enough to want to make sex, then he probably wanted more than sex with him.

(about Mike Pendreich, p 541)

One of the reasons I only got laid a few times was I never cared to have sex with anybody I wasn’t in love it, with anybody I was merely infatuated with.

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When had he last had a decent night’s sleep?

(about David Eddelstane, p 548)

  

Another of my ‘favourite’ complaints: I exaggerate a bit, but sometimes it does seem like I never get a chance to sleep until fully refreshed, seem that if the alarm clock doesn’t wake me up, then some noisy neighbour will.

(originally posted on WordPress)