Joe Dunthorne Quotes

It is strange to hear your mother talk about being human because, honestly, it's too easy to forget. ~ Joe Dunthorne

I am drawn to the ocean; I find solace in its mystery. ~ Joe Dunthorne

I am one of those servants – butlers usually – who respectfully points out when their master is about to do something stupid: "You should probably only burn the document once the blackmail has been completed, m' lady. ~ Joe Dunthorne

I don't know if I've come of age, but I'm certainly older now. I feel shrunken, as if there's a tiny ancient Oliver Tate inside me operating the levers of a life-size Oliver-shaped shell. A shell on which a decrepit picture show replays the same handful of images. Every night I come to the same place and wait till the sky catches up with my mood. The pattern is set. This is, no doubt, the end. ~ Joe Dunthorne

She whispers in my ear: '"Tell me that you wan' fuck me hard, make me sweat." In the excitement, she misses out a word. "I want to fuck you so hard that your body drips with sweat," I say, grammatically. ~ Joe Dunthorne

Thursday morning. I usually let my Mum wake me up but today I have set my alarm for seven. Even from under my duvet, I can hear it bleating on the other side of my room. I hid it inside my plastic crate for faulty joysticks so that I would have to get out of bed, walk across the room, yank it out of the box by its lead and, only then, jab the snooze button. This was a tactical manoeuvre by my previous self. He can be very cruel. ~ Joe Dunthorne

I want birds to have strips of my soppy diary to pad out their nests. I want the mother birds to regurgitate food for their young and little bits of half-chewed sick to accidentally landon my name. ~ Joe Dunthorne

I am in awe of Sam's decision to abandon capitals and punctuation but am not brave enough to do the same. I like to imagine the day he, as the Americans say, made the change he wished to see in the world. I like to think it came to him suddenly. Perhaps he was swimming - no, too active - or napping indoors on a hot day - no, too bourgeois - probably he was in Scotland during the midge season and he left the desk lamp on and the window open when he went out for a meaningful walk. It was dark and the midges were drawn to the lamplight and - thinking it was the moon - fried themselves against the bulb, falling in their tens and tens, cooked on the pages of Sam's poems. So when he returned some time later, with bites on his neck, he found his poems loaded with punctuation, asterisks, grammar lying dead on his manuscript and his instant reaction was disgust, a feeling that then infected his whole aesthetic. ~ Joe Dunthorne

Our Welsh teacher thinks he is young. He tells us that the Welsh for skiving in town is 'mitchio yn y dre'. ~ Joe Dunthorne

Anger does not come easy to me. It is something I have to encourage, like a greyhound in second place. ~ Joe Dunthorne

Seducing Jordana was solid – she's got such high standards – but when I finally got the snogs in it was all worth it."

I transform Jordana's blather into high-level discourse: Lounging in a post-osculatory glow, I knew that all those months of hard chivalry had been worthwhile. ~ Joe Dunthorne

He communicated via napkin which was probably a Brechtian alienation device.
wonder if it possible for you to sleep on stage because I've got poem where I say things about you while you sleep?
I asked to hear the poem first and he wrote: whole point is your not knowing.
Hard to believe they fund his PhD. ~ Joe Dunthorne

I expect Mum to remind me that these relationships mean nothing when you are forty-three. Or to at least wheel out a cliché: there are plenty more fish in the sea. There are fish but also whales and crustaceans and shipwrecks and a dozen or so submersible military vehicles. ~ Joe Dunthorne

I would never say snog. I would say osculate. She looks at me as if to say: why do you exist? ~ Joe Dunthorne

I spin around on the swivel chair and look up at the ceiling; Oliver being Oliver being Oliver being Oliver. I am suddenly aware of the separation between my-actual-self and myself-as-seen-by-others. Who would win in an arm wrestle? Who is better-looking? Who has the higher IQ? ~ Joe Dunthorne

Write a diary, imagining that you are trying to make an old person jealous. ~ Joe Dunthorne

I took a photo of us, mid-embrace. When I am old and alone I will remember that I once held something truly beautiful. ~ Joe Dunthorne

The word defenestration, the act of throwing someone or something out of a window, was first coined after a Polish revolution in 1605 when they threw the royal family through the palace windows. ~ Joe Dunthorne

Problems are like top trumps. I have a pretty good card: Adulterous Mum. But Jordana's is still better: Tumour Mother. ~ Joe Dunthorne

Jordana is in the umpire's highchair.
I walk under the rugby posts and on to the tennis courts, stopping a few metres in front of her, in the service box.
Her legs are crossed.
I wait for her to speak.
'I have two special skills,' she says.
She pulls a sheaf of papers from under her bum. I recognize the font and the text boxes. It's my pamphlet.
'Blackmail,' she says.
She holds up her Zippo in the other hand. I can tell that she has been practising this.
'And pyromania.'
I am impressed that Jordana knows this word.
'Right,' I say.
'I'm going to blackmail you, Ol.'
I feel powerless. She is in a throne.
'Okay,' I say. ~ Joe Dunthorne

When I am very sad, I tend towards symbolism. ~ Joe Dunthorne

Exercise II.
Write a diary, imagining that you are trying to make an old person jealous. I have written an example to get you started:
Dear Diary,
I spent the morning admiring my skin elasticity.
God alive, I feel supple. ~ Joe Dunthorne

There will be birds and if they write your name in the sky then you can get on the buses and if they don't you have to die on the floor. ~ Joe Dunthorne

The next thing Jordana says makes me realize that it's too late to save her.
"I've noticed that when you light a match, the flame is the same shape as a falling tear."
She's been sensitized, turned gooey in the middle. I saw it happening and I didn't do anything to stop it. From now on, she'll be writing diaries and sometimes including little poems and she'll buy gifts for her favourite teachers and she'll admire the scenery and she'll watch the news and she'll buy soup for homeless people and she'll never burn my leg hair again. ~ Joe Dunthorne

Old people only say that life happens quickly to make themselves feel better. The truth is that it all happens in tiny increments like now now now now now now and it only takes twenty to thirty consecutive nows to realize that you're aimed straight at a bench in Singleton Park. Fair play though, if I was old and had forgotten to do something worthwhile with my life, I would spend those final few years on a bench in the botanical gardens, convincing myself that time is so quick that even plants – who have no responsibilities whatsoever – hardly get a chance to do anything decent with their lives except, perhaps, produce one or two red or yellow flowers and, with a bit of luck and insects, reproduce. If the old man manages to get the words father and husband on his bench plaque then he thinks he can be reasonably proud of himself. ~ Joe Dunthorne

I tell my parents I'm going out for pudding. They think this might be a nickname for heroin.Mum makes the international face for 'is there anything you want to tell me?' ~ Joe Dunthorne

I find that the only way to get through life is to picture myself in an entirely disconnected reality. I often imagine how people would react to my death. Mr Dunthorne's quavering voice as he makes the announcement. The shocked faces of my classmates. A playground bedecked with flowers. The empty stillness of a school corridor. Local news analysis ... The steady stoicism of my parents ... Candlelit vigils ... And finally, my glorious resurrection. ~ Joe Dunthorne

I was camped at the same site as her: Broughton Farm. She came over to my tent and showed me her blisters. She asked me whether I knew the reason why a blister can keep on producing fluid ad infinitum. I said that I had always wondered the same thing about mucus. One of the reasons we are together is because we have similar interests. ~ Joe Dunthorne

The queen-size bed has a wooden frame and a dark-orange duvet cover and pillows. The bedside tables on both sides are identically stocked: three books, a lamp and a glasses case. I wonder if this allows my parents to swap sides during the night. I turn on one of the lamps, lighting the room like a sexy library. ~ Joe Dunthorne

The smoke rolls along the low ceiling and pours up into the night - a reverse waterfall - like when the kettle boils beneath the plate cupboard. ~ Joe Dunthorne

Most people think of themselves as individuals, that there's no one on the planet like them. This thought motivates them to get out of bed, eat food and walk around like nothing's wrong. My name is Oliver Tate. ~ Joe Dunthorne

One more word that may be useful in the heat of passion: dong. Dong sounds like someone very important has just arrived. ~ Joe Dunthorne

To us and a wonderful evening of love making. ~ Joe Dunthorne

Your diary should be a nepenthe. ~ Joe Dunthorne

That's a big love letter," she says, squinting. I know what I'm going to say and for a moment I wish there was a film crew documenting my day-to-day life: "I've got a big heart," I say. ~ Joe Dunthorne

Just seeing the things on TV and the things in front of you, the amount of information coming in, and the lack of information not coming in, how could you not help but write songs about it. ~ Billie Joe Armstrong

West stared at her as she trudged off up the hill after the Northmen, hardly able to believe his ears. She was happy to bed that stinking savage, but he was too angry? It was so unfair he almost choked on his rage. ~ Joe Abercrombie

Madmen and fools feel no fear. Heroes fear and face the danger anyway. ~ Joe Abercrombie

Film and television is just a different technique in terms of how to approach the camera but basically the job is the same; but what you learn as a craft in theater, you can then learn to translate that into any mediums. ~ Joe Morton

The Oscar Wilde of Welfare State gentility. ~ Joe Orton

If you currently travel abroad or plan to in the future, make sure you understand the cultural convention of the country that you are visiting. Particularly with regard to greetings. If someone gives you a weak hand-shake, don't grimace. If anyone takes your arm, don't wince. If you are in the Middle East and a person wants to hold your hand, hold it. If you are a man visiting Russia, don't be surprised when your male host kisses your cheek, rather than hand. All of these greetings are as natural as way to express genuine sentiments as an American handshake. I am honored when an Arab or Asian man offers to take my hand because I know that it is a sign of high respect and trust. Accepting these cultural differences is the first step to better understanding and embracing diversity. ~ Joe Navarro

The third day, he wasn't on the road. I wanted to feel relieved. Instead, I was disappointed. Until I got home. Mom had had the day off, the first in a long while. So, of course, she was home when I got there. And so was Joe. Sitting at our kitchen table. Wearing dress pants, a dress shirt. And a bow tie. Which, unbeknownst to me, turned out to be one of my greatest weaknesses. I ~ T.J. Klune

That was clearly a tackle aimed at getting revenge - or maybe it was just out-and-out retribution. ~ Joe Royle

Sometimes it doesn't matter too much what choice you make, as long as you make it quick and stick to it. ~ Joe Abercrombie

slanderous diarrhea of the mouth. ~ Joe Couch

A King must win. The rest is dust. ~ Joe Abercrombie

The real horror of my life is not that I've killed some terrible people. The real horror is that the people I've loved didn't love me back. ~ Caroline Kepnes

The Constitution provides for one democratic moment, Judge, before a lifetime of judicial independence, when the people of the United States are entitled to know as much as we can about the person that we're about to entrust with safeguarding our future and the future of our kids. ~ Joe Biden

If you turn it over to the universe, you will be surprised and dazzled by what is delivered to you. This is where magic and miracles happen. ~ Joe Vitale

The kind of people I absolutely cannot tolerate are those who never let you forget they are religious. It seems to me that a truly religious person would let his life be example enough, would not let his religion interfere with being a human being, and would not be so insecure as to have to fawn publicly before his gods. ~ W.P. Kinsella

He didn't finish most of the stories he started anymore, couldn't bear to. He felt weak at the thought of reading another story about vampires having sex with other vampires. He tried to struggle through Lovecraft pastiches, but at the first painfully serious reference to the Elder Gods, he felt some important part of him going numb inside, the way a foot or a hand will go to sleep when the circulation is cut off. He feared the part of him being numbed was his soul. ~ Joe Hill

That's the great thing about G.I. Joe: it's essentially superheroes, but it's military based - and it's based in reality. ~ D.J. Cotrona

The people in charge can always justify doing terrible things in the name of the greater good. A slaughter here, a little torture there. It becomes moral to do things that would be immoral if an ordinary individual did 'em. ~ Joe Hill

Being decent is the only thing that matters in a terrible world like this. ~ Joe Meno

In the end, I don't think you can find soul. Soul finds you. ~ Joe Cocker

Fiction should always challenge what you believe in, and make you think hard about what it is to be a human being. ~ Joe Mynhardt

No one sees me changing, but who sees me? I am my own hiding place. ~ Joe Bousquet

At 7-1, your pitching has obviously controlled that other team. At 16-10, I'm not sure when it's safe. ~ Joe Torre

The problem with object-oriented languages is they've got all this implicit environment that they carry around with them. You wanted a banana but what you got was a gorilla holding the banana and the entire jungle. ~ Joe Armstrong

The people far prefer a leader who appears great, to one who is. ~ Joe Abercrombie

I'm a Republican, but I'm a Republican from the old school. I was taught that you get what you put into it. You can be anything you want to be if you work hard enough at it, and you can earn your place. That's the old way. ~ Joe Perry

People can change anything they want to, and that means everything in the world. ~ Joe Strummer

He looked cold in his little loincloth, so Bing flicked a match and dressed him in a robe of flame ~ Joe Hill

She was different from any other women he'd been with. Something he'd known from the moment he'd met her and she'd made a smart-ass comment about him looking like GI Joe on vacation. ~ Katie Reus

I have a Madonna portrait done in the style of a Russian icon. My mother, the chef Lidia Bastianich, and I bought it together. It reminds me of her. ~ Joe Bastianich

Rhythm and sex go together and that's where I come from as far as the music goes. Rag Doll and Love In An Elevator are such sexual songs that you put them on & the strippers go NUTS! ~ Joe Perry

It was the kind of talk that made me want to break off a limb and take to whacking her and that bunch of hypocrites across the back of the head. ~ Joe R. Lansdale

I am a football fan, yeah. ~ Joe Namath

Like most of us, Joe Biden has had moments when he's led the league in mistakes or verbal gaffes. The difference is his were on a public stage where explanations are almost always made out by pundits to be excuses. ~ Mike Barnicle

We have reached an important milestone and achieved a new momentum in reaching a goal all Americans should embrace - building a secure, peaceful, democratic Iraq that is no longer a threat to the United States or the international community. ~ Joe Lieberman

The lucky ones died in the blasts. They were spared the fate of starvation, cannibalism, rape and slaughter. Where a man could be killed over half-eaten can of corn. ~ Joe Reyes

That was sort of the 'Second City' approach, which was try to be intelligent and assume your audience is intelligent. We were influenced by 'Monty Python,' too, which would have philosophers in a wrestling match. ~ Joe Flaherty

We believe the currently one cannot speak of a revolutionary situation, just as there is no concrete possibilities of an immediate and comprehensive assumption of power by the people. ~ Joe Slovo

The clack of fangs and the soft swift pad of stealthy feet tell you that the Warhounds are closing in. You look up to see a man running towards you from the barricade. He has a shield in one hand and a longbow in the other; it is Guard Captain D'Val. He reaches you, breathless from his run, and draws an arrow from his quiver. D'Val aims and fires, drawing another arrow from his quiver as soon as the first is loosed. The Warhounds tumble and crash to the ground around you, felled by D'Val's deadly shafts. Eight lie dead before his quiver is empty.
The captain grabs you by the arm and, swinging you over his shoulder in one swift motion, carries you back towards the barricade. Others run forward to help you, but the bandit archers are now in range and your men are forced back by a hail of arrows. The red shafts of the enemy whistle past on all sides. You reach the barricade, a wagon is pulled aside, and you are carried in through the gap. Captain D'Val is close to exhaustion; he staggers, and his men rush to catch him before he drops to the ground. ~ Joe Dever

A good base stealer should make the whole infield jumpy. Whether you steal or not, you're changing the rhythm of the game. If the pitcher is concerned about you, he isn't concentrating enough on the batter. ~ Joe Morgan

I've been sober for so many years. It wasn't like you flick a switch, and you're sober. It takes a while. You have to learn how to do everything all over again. You can measure how long that takes in terms of years. ~ Joe Walsh

If you want a Super Bowl, put a retractable dome on your stadium ~ Joe Flacco

When we lost, I couldn't sleep at night. When we win, I can't sleep at night. But, when you win, you wake up feeling better. ~ Joe Torre

You take music out of life and love. I don't want to be on a planet without music. ~ Joe Budden

The advice that I usually give to young actors is that if you can create a character for the stage and keep that character fresh for at least 6 months that means you're doing the show eight times a week. ~ Joe Morton