"That's why I'm so happy when I'm with you. Because I don't have to think about those things, because I can forget how rotten and terrible the world is..."
"So weak, so little left, time running out. I will be robbed of my old age, I try not to feel bitter about it, but sometimes I can't help myself. Life is shit, I know, but the only thing I want is more life, more years on this godforsaken earth."
Megan Doty
read 125 pages in
Invisible
"Pity is such an awful, useless emotion- you have to bottle it up and keep it to yourself. The moment you try to express it, it only makes things worse."
"But better to be shy than arrogant, I suppose, better to blend in delicately than to intimidate everyone with your insufferable human perfection."
"Whatever reservations I had about him, whatever doubts I harbored about his dubious character, I couldn't stop myself from wanting him to like me, to think that I was something more than a plodding, run-of-the-mill American undergraduate, to see the promise that I hoped I had in me but which I doubted nine out of every ten minutes of my waking life."
"Why do you say want? If you're already doing it, then it's not about the future. It already exists in the present."
"Never underestimate the importance of war. War is the purest, most vivid expression of the human soul."
Very absorbing. As a reader I was quickly pulled into Stephen Walker's life and wanting to know how he would move on from the violent experiences of his youth. However, I felt that the end was ultimately unsatisfying. That could be me: I like loose ends to be wrapped up, but I guess real life isn't like that and neither was this book.