Bliss Peter Carey Quotes

His hair was a curling mess and he showed the proper desregard for sartorial elegance which Harry had always seen as a sign of reliability in a person. Neat men always struck him as desperate and ambitious.

And in it's magical pattern there was now a new element, a new glow, a cast of a golden colour which suffused everything, the source of which was a character in a book he had half read of and would never finish. He was not interested in what happened to Jay Gatsby. He was only interested that Jay Gatsby should exist.

HIs great talent in life was to be a Good Bloke. He could walk into a room and sit down and everybody would be happy to have him, even if all he ever did was smile, for they imagined behind the mustache, behind the smile it hid, something sterner, more critical and yet, also, tolerant, so that when he smiled they felt themselves approved of and they vied with each other to like him best.

He would never believe, in his wildest dreams ,that she no longer loved him. She had said it once, but he would dismiss these sorts of things as "temperament" or "wine" as if a bottle contained an infusion of foreign thoughts with which she had innocently poisoned herself.

They had sat here, in this very room, their knees almost touching, and there had been a sense of almost breathless discovery, and while they had not become lovers everything was laid out, like a feast, and they were merely arranging the table decorations and putting out the place names, the final little touches, so that when the feast began it would have been a splendid thing, not only satisfying to the baser appetites but to the higher senses.

She could see herself still blushing and he was looking at her with those big dark eyes, as if he knew. But that was a trick of his, not an intentional trick but a misleading sign. He saw nothing.It looked as if he could see everything and people always gave him credit for it.

Притча за пеперудата: Бях в Богота и чаках да дойде една моя приятелка. Бях влюбен, беше преди много-много години. Чаках цели три дни. Бях гладен, но не смеех да изляза за храна, да не би тя да дойде, а мен да ме няма. И тогава, на третия ден, се почука. Спуснах се по стария коридор, но вън, на слънчевата улица, нямаше никой. - Само - каза Винс Джой - една пеперуда отлиташе.

Joel was only twenty-six but there was about him the sense of something over-ripe and gone to seed. He was not tall, and not exactly fat. But once noticed, immediately, those large red lips, which hovered on that balancing point where sensuality becomes greed. His fleshy face was a trifle too smooth and the skin glistened like a suspect apple which had been waxed to give it extra sales appeal.

Harry saw his death as if it was someone else's. He watched himself from outside his body and he wasn’t scared at all… he found that he could slide between the spaces in the air itself. Ecstasy touched him. He was stroked by something that felt like trees, cool, green and leafy. It occurred to him that he died, and he got scared. He felt walls like membranes which shivered with pain and a sound, a terrible sound which promised meaningless tortures, like the Christian stories of his youth. He recognized the world of pleasure and the world of pain. Bliss, punishment, heaven and hell.