Ian Cross Quotes

I looked back towards them, to see if they were watching me, and saw her pulling her arm from his grip. Her eyes were closed and her hair was all over the places and her face was screwed up.

I never could talk to my sister Molly, because she was loopy

It's all because of me isn't it? It's all my fault?

I jerked the blankets right back off her, and there she was with her nightdress up around her neck. It was a shock to me that, her starting to look like a woman."
[Jimmy about Molly]

I never told anybody what was going on. Not a soul.

He was blaming her for being sick, and she kept repeating, 'I'm forty, do you hear? I'm forty and I've been through enough. I'm forty, it was too much.

It was great to float on your back in a calm sea and have somebody steer you.

the air just went cold, as it did those times before, and started sticking to my skin, on my arms and legs and face, everywhere. I had seen a marble statue in a museum, a well built man doubled over throwing something, and the feeling reminded me of him. It was as if I was starting to be made of marble.

And then, believe it or not, it came to me for the first time that all the difference was caused by me.

I looked across to his picture on the wall, the one that showed him with a pained look on this face, with a bleeding heart painted on his chest. I knew exactly how he felt.

Come on Pop' I said as best I could 'don't go back now'
I felt rotten, watching him go back like that.

But I was a fool, the biggest, damnedest, stupidest fool in thee whole world.

Like that time I came home and Mum was sick, not letting me upstairs. Later on I heard Dad actually blaming her for being sick. That must have been the first time I felt queer.

She reminded me of a picture in a history book of the executioner who killed on of the kings.

There is no hiding the fact that in some ways I am dissatisfied with God.

I was frightened again, knowing thatmy having seen God that morning was only my stupid imagination. Everything was going to be as bad as it had ever been.

I felt almost sick with wanting to tell her how I felt, but I couldn't think of words to suit my feelings.

[Mr. Sullivan to Mrs Sullivan]
"I'm a very popular man, plenty of friends, and I can move in any circle and I'm always a perfect gentleman. I'd have plenty of friends if it wasn't for you. And you talk about being humiliated by me. People think you are queer, that's what people think about you

I stared so long that I got to seeing them as being dark, ugly sins in my body, smelling and dirty, but my touch face showed that I didn't give a damn. I was the toughest person in the whole world. And then inside the outline of my body a devil's face slowly took shape. It came to my chest, a dark, ugly thing with big lips that looked hot around yellow pointed teeth, eyeing me in a friednly way, as though it had been feeding on what was inside me and was trying to show how pleased it was.

Molly wasn't hope then, of course, and i can't help hating her for not being there.

Standing there. watching her go, I felt lonelier than I have ever been in my life.

One of the reasons dad was so pleased was because it did something to her.

What exactly he would say, I couldn't imagine, but I felt sure that as soon as I had actually got everything off my chest, I wouldn't have to worry any more.

They go on like that and I can't understand, really I can't, what it's all about, and yet I feel terrible.

Do you like Mother and Father?"
"they're both all right"
"they're not Jimmy, and you shouldn't say so. I hate them, and you should hate them."
"all right" I said, "I hate them.

[in reference to Mothers refusal to go to a party]
"I'm past being humiliated by you in public, having to watch your drunken foolishness and everybody looking on