Boy Swallows Universe Quotes

Maybe we'd all be much more effective communicators if we all shut up more.

I have a forgiveness weakness in me that I hate because it means I'd probably forgive the man who removed my heart with a blunt knife if he said he needed it more than me.

Do your time before it does you.

The downside is life is short and has to end. The upside is it comes with bread, wine and books.

I’m a good man,’ Slim says. ‘But I’m a bad man too. And that’s like all men, kid. We all got a bit o’ good and a bit o’ bad in us. The tricky part is learnin’ how to be good all the time and bad none of the time. Some of us get that right. Most of us don’t.

August is one year older than me but August is one year older than everybody. August is one year older than the universe.

Boy swallows past. Boy swallows himself. Boy swallows universe.

True love like this asks lovers to cast aside what is meant to be and work with what is.

Every day of your life has been leading up to tomorrow. But of course every day of your life led up to today.

Dormant true love, there for everybody, just waiting to be found, erupting when the thread of existence collides with chance and the eyes of two lovers meet. Boom. From what I’ve seen of it, true love is hard. Real romance has death in it. It has midnight shakes and flecks of shit across a bedsheet. True love like this dies if it has to wait for fate. True love like this asks lovers to cast aside what is meant to be and work with what is.

Your end is a dead blue wren.

The whole point of life is doing what’s right, not what’s easy.

Most things people say don't need to be said.

Watch my language? Watch my language? This is what really shits me, when the clandestine heroin operation truth meets the Von Trapp family values mirage we've built for ourselves.

...hugging Dad back feels like the good thing to do and my hope is to grow into a good man, so I do it.

The sun is in me now. The sun is my heart, and all the world - the fishermen in China and the corn farmers in Mexico and the fleas on the backs of the dogs in Kathmandu - relies on the rising and falling of my full heart.

Maybe we’d all be much more effective communicators if we all shut up more.

...she knew there was hardship in this true love and endurance and reward and failure and renewal and, finally, death, but never regret.

Slim’s always talking about this, the little movies within the movie of your own life. Life lived in multiple dimensions. Life lived from multiple vantage points. One moment in time – several people meeting at a circular dining table before taking their seats – but a moment with multiple points of view. In these moments time doesn’t just move forward, it can move sideways, expanding to accommodate infinite points of view, and if you add up all these vantage point moments you might have something close to eternity passing sideways within a single moment. Or something like that.

I know why she stormed out of here." Decebel's and Jacque's heads both whipped around. "You do?" they both asked at the same time. Fane raised an eyebrow at Sally's words. Sally in turn eyeballed Decebel. "Jen never really learned how to use an inside voice. So, Decebel, why don't you share how she asked you if you were involved with Crina, and how you never really gave her an answer but instead taunted her, and then nearly made her hyperventilate with desire." Decebel's head cocked to the side, his eyebrows drawn together. "How -" "I would say it's a gift, but really I'm just nosy as hell. And damn, boy, the look you were giving her nearly had me in a puddle." "Shut up!" Jacque squealed. "Are you telling me Jen stormed out of here because he got her all hot and bothered?" Sally was grinning from ear to ear. Decebel looked like he would be perfectly happy if the universe would just swallow him whole. "She was angry when she left," Decebel defended. "She left because she was mad." "Yeah, mad because she's got it bad for you, Sherlock," Sally told him, rolling her eyes. "Really? She likes me?" Jacque laughed at Decebel's cocky smile. "Um, if you aren't her mate that's not a good thing, Casanova," Jacque reminded him. Sally nodded in agreement, scrutinizing Decebel. "Let's just hope that she finds her mate at Mate Fest so she can get over you." Decebel took a step towards Sally. Fane stepped around Jacque and laid a hand on Decebel's chest, stopping him. "Easy, Beta." Decebel closed his eyes taking slow breaths, leashing his wolf. Then Sally's words worked past the jealous fog. "Mate Fest?" he questioned. Sally grinned. "Jen deemed it." "Naturally," Decebel muttered with a slight smile.

Do your time, before it does you

Don't worry. A man can have many best friends and none any more or less best than the other.

It’s about the ups and downs of life. The downside is life is short and has to end. The upside is it comes with bread, wine and books.

The human heart's default state is actually kindness.

Time, Slim. Changes faces. Changes stories. Changes points of view.

I was thinking that true character surely is best shown in hell, that true goodness must surely be best displayed in an underworld where the very opposite is the norm, when evil is living and goodness is an indulgence, you know what I’m saying?

Don’t forget to be specific…Details. Put in all the details. The boys appreciate all that detailed daily life sh*t they don’t get anymore. If you’ve got a teacher you’re hot for, tell ‘em what her hair looks like, what her legs look like, what she eats for lunch. If she’s teaching you geometry, tell ‘em how she draws a bloody triangle on the blackboard. If you went down the shop for a bag of sweets yesterday, did you ride your pushee? Did you go by foot? Did you see a rainbow along the way? Did you buy gobstoppers or clinkers or caramels? If you had a good meat pie last week was it steak and peas or curry or mushroom and beef? You catchin’ my drift? Details.

The tilapia has been drowned in a garlic and chilli and coriander sauce, so many exposed white bones in its charred and thorny dorsal fin that they look like the ivory keys in the warped piano organ the devil plays in hell.

Sometimes when he's drinking, he gets all weepy and he'll ask me to come closer to him and he'll ask me to hug him and it feels strange to hold him close to me but it feels good too, with his face hair rubbing like sandpaper against my softer cheeks and it's strange and sad the feeling of sorrow I feel because I know he might not have actually been physically touched, except by accident, by another human for about fifteen years.

Adult men. Fucking adult men. Nutters, all of them. Can’t be trusted. Fucking sickos. Freaks. Killers. What was this man’s road to becoming Batman on a side street of inner-city Brisbane? How much good was in him? How much bad? Who was his father? What did his father do? What did his father not do? In what ways did other adult men fuck his life up?

Australian shrimp barbecue, when the beers and the rums mix with the hard sun headaches and widespread Saturday night violence spreads across the country behind closed front doors. Truth is, Bich said, Australian childhoods are so idyllic and joyous, so filled with beach visits and backyard games of cricket, that Australian adulthoods can’t possibly meet our childhood expectations. Our perfect early lives in this vast island paradise doom us to melancholy because we know, in the hard honest bones beneath our dubious bronze skin, that we will never again be happier than we were once before. She said we live in the greatest country on earth but we’re actually all miserable deep down inside and the junk cures the misery and the junk industry will never die because Australian misery will never die.

He said so many things, and I reckon all those things put together wouldn't say as much as he said when he'd wrap his arm around my shoulder.

Don't fuckin' swear.

I'm not gonna kill myself. And we love him very much, which is only half as much as he loves us.

because I listen and I remember what I listen to.

What's with you and men being good?' 'Never met a good one, that's all,' he says. 'Adult men, Tink. Most fucked-up creatures on the planet. Don't ever trust 'em'.

The dads in those tv shows spend a great deal of time talking to their kids in their living rooms. Steven Keaton - the dad of my dreams - seems to do nothing but sit on his couch or at his kitchen table talking to his children about their myriad teenage calamities. He listens and listens to his kids and he pours glasses of orange juice and hands them to his kids as he listens some more. He tells his kids he loves them by telling his kids he loves them. Dad tells me he loves me when he forms a pistol out of this forefinger and thumb and points it at me as he farts. He tells us he loves us by showing us the tattoo we never knew he had on the inside of his bottom lip: Fuck you.

He stares into my eyes and he tries to understand me and I think he does because he breathes and that's what humans do. We breathe. And we think. But we get mad too. We get so sad and we get so mad.

It’ll get good, mate. It’ll get so good you’ll forget it was even bad.

But isn't there a little white lie in all acts of forgiveness?

He turns to us at the window. ‘I always told my mum that’s the worst part about this country,’ he says, shaking his head. ‘All the fuckin’ bullies.

Stay sweet, Eli Bell.

To burn this house down or set the world on fire. Up to you, Eli.

Most things people say don’t need to be said,

Never grow attached to anything you can’t instantly separate yourself from.

timing, planning, luck, belief. I reckon that’s like life.

And time is up. Time is undoing. Time is undone.

Should have told you then that it's nothing but a choice. There's no past in it, there's no mums and dads and no where you came froms. It's just a choice. Good. Bad. That's all there is.

Slim spent a total of 36 years in Boggo Road.). ..He knows what a well-written letter means to a man inside. It means connection, humanity. It means waking up. He’s been writing letters to Boggo Road inmates for years using false names on the envelopes because the screws would never pass a letter on from Arthur “Slim” Halliday, the man who knows how to escape their red brick wall fortress, better than anyone. …

No, your marrow, boy. You are weak-boned. Your bones are hard but your bones are not full. He nodded at August. 'Marcel Marceau's bones are hard and they are also full. Your brother possesses a strength that you will never have.' August shot a smug and knowing smile at me. 'But I've got great finger bone strength,' I said, flipping August the bird.

Darren says his mum told him a secret recently about Australians. She said this secret would make him a rich man. She said the greatest secret about Australia is the nation's inherent misery. Bich Dang laughs at the ads on telly with Paul Hogan putting another shrimp on the barbie. She said foreign visitors should rightfully be advised about what happens five hours later at that Australian shrimp barbecue, when the beers and the rums mix with the hard sun headaches and widespread Saturday night violence spreads across the country behind closed front doors. Truth is, Bich said, Australian childhoods are so idyllic and joyous, so filled with beach visits and backyard games of cricket, that Australian adulthoods can’t possibly meet our childhood expectations. Our perfect early lives in this vast island paradise doom us to melancholy because we know, in the hard honest bones beneath our dubious bronze skin, that we will never again be happier than we were once before. She said we live in the greatest country on earth but we’re actually all miserable deep down inside and the junk cures the misery and the junk industry will never die because Australian misery will never die.

I was overjoyed two weeks later when I received 6 letter pages back from Alex. Three of which were devoted to memories of the times in Alex’s childhood when he’d been intimidated by boys in sewage tunnels and of the violence that ensued. After the passage in which Alex detailed the anatomy of the human nose and how weak it is in comparison to a swiftly butted forehead, I asked him just exactly who I had become pen pals with….

See, kid, there's all kinds of bad inside", he says. "Blokes who start good and turn bad; blokes who seem bad but aren't bad at all; and then there's the blokes who are bad in blood and bone because they're born that way. That about describes half of those screws in Boggo. They took those jobs inside because they were drawn to their own kind, all those rapists and killers and psychopaths they were pretending to help rehabilitate when all they were doing was feeding their own evil beasts that lay dormant inside the cells of their own fucked-up heads.

You’re born with an energy that connects to someone else’s, and for reasons we will never understand, you’re brought together and it isn’t a choice anymore. That’s true love.” “I don’t know about that,” I say, forcing a swallow. “I do. True love isn’t something you pick; it’s something the universe picks for you. It’s like you’re born knowing this woman can cook your sausage patties the way you like, will humor your Thursday night poker games, and will stand by your side as you fight whatever life throws you just because you’re you. For no other reason. That,” he says, jabbing a finger my way, “is true love.

August turns on the flashlight, shines it into the black void beyond the wardrobe

Darren says his mum told him a secret recently about Australians. She said this secret would make him a rich man. She said the greatest secret about Australia is the nation’s inherent misery. Bich Dang laughs at the ads on telly with Paul Hogan putting another shrimp on the barbie. She said foreign visitors should rightfully be advised about what happens five hours later at that Australian shrimp barbecue, when the beers and the rums mix with the hard sun headaches and Saturday night violence spreads across the country behind closed front doors. Truth is, Bich said, Australian childhoods are so idyllic and joyous, so filled with beach visits and backyard games of cricket, that Australian adulthoods can’t possibly meet our childhood expectations. Our perfect early lives in this vast island paradise doom us to melancholy because we know, in the hard honest bones beneath our dubious bronze skin, that we will never again be happier than we were once before. She said we live in the greatest country on earth but we’re actually all miserable deep down inside and the junk cures the misery and the junk industry will never die because Australian misery will never die.

I leaned back in my chair, pulling Roxy closer so that I could steal a moment with her for myself and brushing her hair away from her ear so that I could speak to her alone. She leaned in to listen to me and my grip on her waist shifted so that I could hold her even closer, the fingers of my other hand stroking against the bare skin of her shoulder where I'd smoothed her black hair aside. “Do you want to tell me about what happened in that alley?” I asked, wondering if I really should have been worrying about Nymphs or not. A shiver moved across her skin and I was filled with a protective kind of anger as I felt that echo of her fear. “Is this the part where you laugh at us for falling for some prank you set up?” she asked. “Was that one of your friends back there? Did you get someone to send the messages too?” I was tempted to push her for more information, but Lance and Francesca were already hunting for any signs of a Nymph and I didn't want to fall into the trap of arguing with her again while I was holding her like this. I just wanted to steal this moment from the universe and forget about all the shit that was hanging between us outside of right now. “I don’t need to recruit anyone to do my handy work,” I replied dismissively, dropping the subject. “Maybe I’m concerned for your wellbeing.” She snorted in disbelief, shifting away so that she wasn't pressed against my chest anymore and I fought a sigh at how quickly I'd managed to fuck that up. Though as she was currently still in my arms, I had to think it wasn't a total lost cause yet, not that I had any real idea what I was trying to achieve with her here. The bartender returned and I pulled a roll of auras from my pocket which was more than enough to cover our tab, pressing them into her hand as she finished laying the drinks out for us. We'd been planning to move on after this drink anyway and I was keen to get Roxy and her sister away from the place. Roxy reached out to claim her drink, my gaze moving to her mouth as she lifted the glass to it and tipped the whole thing back, swallowing over and over until every last drop was gone. “There you go,” she announced. “One drink.” She pushed out of my lap so suddenly that for a moment all I could do was blink up at her in confusion before my brain caught up to what was happening and I reached out to pull her back again. But she stepped aside, offering me a mocking smile which made it more than clear how much she disliked me. Darcy smirked as she got to her feet too, not even bothering to touch her drink. “See you later, guys,” she agreed and the two of them turned to walk away. Caleb shot into Roxy's way with his Vampire speed before she could actually escape and I was glad when she cut him a glare just as acidic as the one she'd offered me, even while he tried to throw the pretty boy charm on with his gleaming smile. “I guess your word means shit then?” she demanded as he gave her throat a look which said he was thinking about biting her. “No. I said I won’t bite you tonight and I meant it,” he promised, acting all alluring and pissing me the hell off as she hesitated. “I’m just wondering where you’re going now?” “Dancing,” Roxy replied moving to brush past him, her hands landing on his waist for a moment as she nudged him aside and irritation flared through me at the contact. “You can always join us if you think you can keep up.” My anger grew as she offered him that invitation and I scowled at the two of them openly, wondering why she was so much more willing to fall for his bullshit than she was for mine. Roxy gave Cal a flirtatious look and I ground my teeth before shoving to my feet the moment she was out of sight. My fist slammed into his bicep as he turned to look at me and he barked a laugh as he shoved me in return. "Come on, assholes, if the two of you waste time in a dick measuring contest then we'll lose them before you finish,” Max said.(Darius POV)

He likes to personalise his plants because if he doesn’t personalise them – picture them possessing human needs and wants in some tiny and whimsical part of a mind I am only beginning to realise operates with as much order and predictability as the insides of our lounge room vinyl beanbag

at which point he vowed – through a largely incoherent barrage of slurred words and at least twenty-three ‘cunts’ – to bury us alive in the backyard beside the dead macadamia nut tree.

August is lying down with his back on the dirt. He’s listening but he’s not caring about what he’s hearing. With his hands tucked behind his head like that, he might as well be daydreaming by the Mississippi River with a straw of grass in his mouth.

Because ibis don’t eat silverside and pickles sandwiches,’ Dad says. ‘You’re only giving it the sandwich chunks because you want to feel good about yourself. That’s a selfish mindset. You start feeding that bird from this window every day then it’ll start dropping by every afternoon like we’re fuckin’ Big Rooster and it brings its friends and then none of those birds get the strength and exercise they usually get from finding food the hard way so you drastically alter their metabolisms, not to mention cause widespread civil war among the Bracken Ridge ibis community as they battle to be the first to chomp into your silverside and pickles treat. Moreover, you suddenly get an unnaturally high level of birds in one place, which affects the ecological balance of the whole Bracken Ridge area. I know I don’t always practise this but, basically, you know, the whole point of life is doing things that are right over things that are easy. Because you want to feel good about yourself, suddenly the ibis are spending less time in the wetlands on a tree and more time on the ground in a fuckin’ car park rubbing shoulders with the pigeons, and then we start getting inter-species contact and weaker immune systems in the birds and higher stress hormones and from that little petri dish of dynamite springs salmonella

Adult men, Tink. Most fucked-up creatures on the planet. Don’t ever trust ‘em.

You ever wonder why you cry so easy, Eli?’ ‘Because I’m a pussy.’ ‘You’re not a pussy. Don’t you ever be ashamed of crying. You cry because you give a shit. Don’t ever be ashamed of giving a shit. Too many people in this world are too scared to cry because they’re too scared to give a shit.

Truth is, Bich said, Australian childhoods are so idyllic and joyous, so filled with beach visits and backyard games of cricket, that Australian adulthoods can’t possibly meet our childhood expectations. Our perfect early lives in this vast island paradise doom us to melancholy because we know, in the hard honest bones beneath our dubious bronze skin, that we will never again be happier than we were once before. She said we live in the greatest country on earth but we’re actually all miserable deep down inside and the junk cures the misery and the junk industry will never die because Australian misery will never die.

Don’t forget to be specific,’ Slim always says. ‘Details. Put in all the details. The boys appreciate all that detailed daily life shit they don’t get any more. If you’ve got a teacher you’re hot for, tell ’em what her hair looks like, what her legs look like, what she eats for lunch. If she’s teaching you geometry, tell ’em how she draws a bloody triangle on the blackboard. If you went down the shop for a bag of sweets yesterday, did you ride your pushy, did you go by foot, did you see a rainbow along the way? Did you buy gobstoppers or clinkers or caramels? If you ate a good meat pie last week, was it steak and peas or curry or mushroom beef? You catchin’ my drift? Details.

And I'll be dumb. And I won't dream. And I will crawl into a hole and read about dreamers like my dad does and I'll read and read and drink and drink and smoke and smoke and die.

If you're tired for tomorrow ... the moon will crack like a gobstopper between your teeth and the colours inside will blind humanity.

was thinking that true character surely is best shown in hell, that true goodness must surely be best displayed in an underworld where the very opposite is the norm, when evil is living and goodness is an indulgence, you know

head. He can tell you how he’s feeling by the way he unscrews a Vegemite jar lid. He can tell you how happy he is by the way he butters bread, how sad he is by the way he ties his shoelaces.

Gal mes visi kur kas geriau susikalbėtume, jei dažniau prikąstume liežuvį.

Everybody running from something, especially ideas.

And I remember looking at him like it was all going in slow motion and I was thinking that true character surely is best shown in hell, that true goodness must surely be best displayed in an underworld where the very opposite is the norm, when evil is living and goodness is an indulgence.

The whole point of life is doing what's right, not what's easy.

The more things change, the more they stay fucked.

It is going to be the most significant day of your life. Every day of your life has been leading up to tomorrow. But of course every day of your life led up to today.

Good men are brash and brave and fly by the seat of their pants that are held up by suspenders made of choice.

August knows things because August is exactly one year older than me and the universe.

Un vero amore così chiede agli amanti di mettere da parte quello che deve succedere e di darsi da fare con quello che c'è.

Finally, we see that narcissistic students are now coequal drivers with their professors when it comes to rapidly evolving victim theory. By one count, there are now 117 categories of gender identity, many of those developed by students struggling to find some last way to be transgressive in an environment where their every self-involved claim of victimhood is met with tender attention and apologies from the campus diversity bureaucracy. How those 117 categories will play out for public policy remains to be seen. The ultimate agenda here, however, is to destroy any last shred of female modesty that might stand in the way of the total normalization of casual promiscuity, in obedience to the sexual-liberation movement of the 1960s. Many girls are embarrassed to be seen naked by other girls. Now, however, they are being told to swallow their inhibitions if a boy is in their bathroom or locker room. This can be achieved only by adopting a stance of utter indifference to the powerful, primal taboos around nakedness and sex—in other words, to adopt the sad sexual crudeness of the stars of Sex and the City or of Lena Dunham. And according to progressive elites, any parent or school official who disagrees is standing in the way of moral progress. One shrinks to contemplate what the academy is cooking up next.

Il ragazzo scrive nell'aria allo stesso modo in cui il mio vecchio vicino di casa Gene Crimmins diceva che Mozart suonasse il pianoforte, come se ogni parola gli arrivasse confezionata in un pacchetto spedito da un luogo lontano dalla sua mente fervida. Non su carta e quaderno o con una macchina per scrivere, ma nell'aria, quella materia invisibile, quella sostanza legata a un atto di fede di cui non sospetteresti neppure l'esistenza se a volte non si curvasse per formare il vento e soffiarti in faccia.

Lyle doesn’t believe in much, but he believes in the circumstance-shifting power of a broken nose.

I beam at her. See, Mum. See. After all this, after all these mad moments, after Lyle, after Slim, after you getting put away, it's still the same old me. Nothing changes, Mum. Nothing changes me. Nothing changes you. I love you more, Mum. You think I love you less but I love you more because of it all. I love you. See. See that on my face.

I reckon my mum didn't deserve some of the fellers in her life.

The key elements to a successful follow are distance and belief. Distance enough from the subject to remain undetected. Belief enough to convince yourself you’re not actually following the subject, even though you are. Belief means invisibility. Just another invisible stranger in a world of invisible strangers.

Slim says the mistake of all those old English writers and all those matinee movies is to suggest true love comes easy, that it waits on stars and planets and revolutions around the sun. Waits on fate. Dormant true love, there for everybody, just waiting to be found, erupting when the thread of existence collides with chance and the eyes of two lovers meet. Boom. From what I ve seen of it, true love is hard. Real romance has death in it. It has midnight shakes and flecks of shit across a bedsheet. True love like this dies if it has to wait for fate. True love like this asks lovers to cast aside what is meant to be and work with what is.

how the universe stole her boy and replaced him with the enigmatic A-grade alien loop

I reckon He'd know she deserved a proper burial and the only thing she didn't deserve was some of those fellers in her life.

Molly...Hook...change...everything,

Never forget, you two, you are free,’ he says. ‘These are your sunshine hours and you can make them last forever if you see all the details.

I too would know just how Marco Polo felt when he first ran his fingers over silk.

He can tell you how he’s feeling by the way he unscrews a Vegemite jar lid.

How do you know when a fish is going bonkers?’ ‘They start preaching about the end of the world,’ Slim chuckles.

Sacrifice,’ he said. ‘Never grow attached to anything you can’t instantly separate yourself from.

Half these deals Lyle and Teddy are making I could make in half the time riding through the south-west Brisbane suburbs on my Mongoose BMX with the gear in my backpack. August could probably do it even faster because he rides faster than me and he’s got a ten-speed Malvern Star racer.