Grandad Quotes

Magic gives you a lot of choices," Grandad says. "Most of them are bad.

You better get over here with my car,” Grandad says. “Before I call the cops and tell them you stole it.” “Sorry,” I say contritely. Then the rest of what he said sinks in and I laugh. “Wait, did you just threaten me with calling the police? Because that I’d like to see.

Downstairs, Grandad's warning Barron about something. His voice swells, and I catch the words, "In my day we were feared. Now we're just afraid.

A girl like that, Grandad said, perfumes herself with ozone and metal filings.

Yesterday when we went over the plan again and again, I never thought about Grandad showing up. Because I'm an idiot, basically--an idiot with poor planning skills. Of course he's here. Where else would he be? Seriously, what else could go wrong?

You got a lot of ladies to get through. You’re still young. First love’s the sweetest, but it doesn’t last.” “Not ever?” I ask. Grandad looks at me with a seriousness he reserves for moments when he wants me to really pay attention. “When we fall that first time, we’re not really in love with the girl. We’re in love with being in love. We’ve got no idea what she’s really about—or what she’s capable of. We’re in love with our idea of her and of who we become around her. We’re idiots.

It's okay," he informs me. "Your grandfather is teaching me how to play poker." If I know Grandad, that means what he'll really be teaching Sam is how to cheat.

We were surrounded by thirty-foot-tall giants who were about to kill us. Then the sky opened up, and the gods descended." "Grandad," the kids said, "you are full of schist." "I'm not kidding!" he protested.

At the end of a criminal’s life, it’s always the small mistake, the coincidence, the lark. The time we got too comfortable, the time we slipped up, the time someone aimed a little to the left. I’ve heard Grandad’s war stories a thousand times. How they finally got Mo. How Mandy almost got away. How Charlie fell. Birth to grave, we know it’ll be us one day. Our tragedy is that we forget it might be someone else first.

I THINK NOT. I WASN'T CUT OUT TO BE A FATHER, AND CERTAINLY NOT A GRANDAD. I HAVEN'T GOT THE RIGHT KIND OF KNEES.

A girl like that, Grandad said, perfumes herself with ozone and metal filings. She wears trouble like a crown. If she ever falls in love, she'll fall like a comet, burning the sky as she goes.

Actually Grandad Christmas is a pagan holiday and Jesus probably hates you for celebrating it.

You wear out, Ed Tom. All the time you spend tryin to get back what’s been took from you there’s more goin out the door. After a while you just try and get a tourniquet on it. Your grandad never asked me to sign on as deputy with him. I done that my own self. Hell, I didn’t have nothing else to do. Paid about the same as cowboyin. Anyway, you never know what worse luck your bad luck has saved you from.

No really. If you only have seven years left, that means the Reaper will be dropping round for tea and buns in about 61,000 hours from now. You therefore shouldn’t be wasting time by pootling to the garden centre at walking pace. So come on, grandad. The clock’s ticking. Pedal to the metal. Or you’ll be in your flowerbed before the plants you bought.

The grief I’m feeling is heavy and raw, pressing down on me, breaking my chest apart. It hurts to even touch the edges of it. It’s to do with Grandad being gone. The loss of him, and the loss of me. I heard someone say once that grandparents are the guardians of our childhoods, and for the first time I really understand what that means.

It was con; my mind was blank; I only wanted a halfpint of Grandad and six or seven tall cool beers . . .

Happiness is Grandad saving links to cat videos in a Word document so he can share them when she visits.

Grandad always says that the books we read help us choose who we want to be, that we’re all made up of characters that mean something to us.

Girls like her, my grandfather once warned me, girls like her turn into women with eyes like bullet holes and mouths made of knives. They are always restless. They are always hungry. They are bad news. They will drink you down like a shot of whisky. Falling in love with them is like falling down a flight of stairs. What no one told me, with all those warnings, is that even after you’ve fallen, even after you know how painful it is, you’d still get in line to do it again. A girl like that, Grandad said, perfumes herself with ozone and metal filings. She wears trouble like a crown. If she ever falls in love, she’ll fall like a comet, burning the sky as she goes. She was the epic crush of my childhood. She was the tragedy that made me look inside myself and see my corrupt heart. She was my sin and my salvation, come back from the grave to change me forever. Again. Back then, when she sat on my bed and told me she loved me, I wanted her as much as I have ever wanted anything. There are no words for how much I will miss her, but I try to kiss her so that she’ll know. I try to kiss her to tell her the whole story of my love, the way I dreamed of her when she was dead, the way that every other girl seemed like a mirror that showed me her face. The way my skin ached for her. The way that kissing her made me feel like I was drowning and like I was being saved all at the same time. I hope she can taste all that, bittersweet, on my tongue.

And what really struck me was that the woman still meant so much to Grandad after all of those years. She burned in his memory in a way that she never would have if he’d left his wife and sons for her. It got me thinking about how sometimes it’s the people we don’t get to have who stay with us the most.

My grandad always said, "You should never judge a book by its cover." And it's for that reason that he lost his job as chair of the British Book Cover Awards panel.

My grandad used to tell me that if you want to get up-close and personal with birds, you must sit and remain still for at least twenty minutes.

She laughed a bit at the simple beauty of it all - the white paper, the elegant arc, the soft green grass; and, beside her, the purple backpack, Grandad's golden straw hat, the sky a pale-blue umbrella embracing the whole town

According to Grandad, being a vegetarian wasn't about just health or cruelty of money or flavor: it was about manners. He said that stealing milk and eggs and honey was enough of a liberty without hacking off someone's leg and then drowning it in gravy. He had a point.

What?” Nelson said. “Had to scare him straight.” He paused, considering. “Something you probably don’t know a thing about, isn’t that right? Because of the whole gay—” “Grandad.” “I’m old. I’m allowed to say whatever I want. You know this.” “Pain in my ass,” Hugo mumbled,

I'm not sure best friends are a one-size-fits-all sort of situation, Tilly,' Grandad said carefully. 'Sometimes a person who becomes a friend is the least likely person you'd expect. friends should bring out the best in you, not be the same as you. I'm sure you're someone's perfect fit.

I am a harmless old seller of apples," she said, in a voice more appropriate for the opening of hostilities in a middle-range war. "Pray let me past, dearie." The last word had knives in it. "No-one must enter the castle," said one of the guards. "Orders of the duke." Granny shrugged. The apple-seller gambit had never worked more than once in the entire history of witchcraft, as far as she knew, but it was traditional. "I know you, Champett Poldy," she said. "I recall I laid out your grandad and I brought you into the world." She glanced at the crowds, which had regathered a little way off, and turned back to the guard, whose face was already a mask of terror. She leaned a little closer, and said, "I gave you your first good hiding in this valley of tears and by all the gods if you cross me now I will give you your last." There was a soft metallic noise as the spear fell out of the man's fearful fingers. Granny reached and gave the trembling man a reassuring pat on the shoulder. "But don't worry about it," she added. "Have an apple.

Chom. Don’t you have an urge to see justice done?” “It’s not nearly as strong as my urge to reach forty with a complete set of limbs.

Matilda,” her grandad said, his voice cracking. “It’s Boxing Day. You’ve been missing for nearly two days.

I'm twelve years old and I'm an invalid. The mailman brings two pension checks to our house - for me and my grandad. When the girls in my class found out that I had cancer of the blood, they were afraid to sit next to me. They didn't want to touch me. The doctors said that I got sick because my father worked at Chernobyl. And after that I was born. I love my father.

@THEBryanLeech: There’s nothing better in life than a cup of peppermint tea, a comfortable pair of PJs and a good book. @RonanFitz to @THEBryanLeech: You got hacked by your grandad again. Just FYI.

Why is it the most unoriginal thing we can say to one another is still the thing we long to hear? 'I love you' is always a quotation. You did not say it first and neither did I, yet when you say it and when I say we speak like savages who have found three words and worship them. It's the cliches that cause the trouble. A precise emotion seeks a precise expression. If what I feel is not precise then should I call it love? It is so terrifying, love, that all I can do is shove it under a dump bin of pink cuddly toys and send myself a greetings card saying 'Congratulations on your engagement.' But I am not engaged I am deeply distracted. I am desperately looking the other way so that love won't see me. I want the diluted version, the happy language, the insignificant gestures. The saggy armchair of cliches. It's all right, millions of bottoms have sat here before me. The springs are well worn, the fabric smelly and familiar. I don't have to be frightened, look, my grandma and grandad did it, he in a stiff collar and club tie, she in white muslin straining a little at the life underneath. They did it, my parents did it, now I will do it won't I, arms outstretched, not to hold you, just to keep my balance, sleepwalking to that armchair. How happy we will be. How happy everyone will be. And they all lived happily ever after.

And then I remembered what Grandad had said about mould. Maybe it was toxic? I yanked my hand back and stared at it, half expecting my fingers to shrivel up and drop off in some fatal reaction. They didn’t. And the relief was slightly sprinkled with disappointment

Legere est Peregrinari.” “What does that mean?” Tilly said, pointing. “It’s Latin,” Grandad explained. “It doesn’t have an easy English translation, but the verb peregrinor means to travel about, to roam or to wander, so it essentially means ‘to read is to wander.’ It’s the motto of the Underlibrary.

God Will, I wish you'd stop telling me what to do. What if I like watching television? What if I don't want to do much else other than read a book?" My voice had become shrill. "What if I'm tired when I get home? What if I don't need to fill my days with activity?" "Bur one day you might wish you had", he said quietly. "Do you know what I would do if I were you?" I put down my peeler. "I suspect you're going to tell me." "Yes. And I'm completely unembarrassed about telling you. I'd be doing night school. I'd be training as a seamstress or a fashion designer or whatever it is that taps into what you really love." He gestured at my minidress, a Sixties-inspired Pucci-type dress, made with the fabric that had once been a pair of Grandad's curtains. The first time Dad had seen it he had pointed at me and yelled, "Hey, Lou, pull yourself together!" It had taken him a full five minutes to stop laughing. "I'd be finding out what I could do that didn't cost much - keep-fit classes, swimming, volunteering, whatever. I'd be teaching myself music or going for long walks with somebody else's dog, or -" "Okay, okay, I get the message," I said, irritably. "But I'm not you, Will." "Luckily for you.

Another time he felt himself reenacting a conversation with father, a long talk about duty and honor and all the reasons why enlisting was the right thing to do. It was a talk they'd had several months ago, and Frank had agreed with everything his father had said, only this time Frank found himself taking a contrary opinion. What the hell's so honorable about it? Duty to whom? To myself, or the guys who would be fighting without me, or to the people here at home afraid of the Hun? Or duty to President Wilson, or to Carnegie, or to God, or to all the fallen soldiers before me, to Great-grandad Emmett and his bleached bones down at Antietam?

The important thing to remember is that the words will always be right if they are real and true and come from the heart.

Shut your mouth - there's a bus coming.

Like the trees and winds and waters, we pray because we are here - not to change the world, but to change ourselves. Because it is when we change ourselves....that the world is changed.

Grandad taught me that the alien signs and symbols of algebraic equations were not just marks on paper. They were not flat. They were three-dimensional, and you could approach them from different directions, look at them from different ways, stand them on their heads. You could take them apart and put them back together in a variety of shapes, like Legos. I stopped being scared of them.

You’d then drive your vehicle to a tree, beneath which the examiner sat. He or she would ask you to park. If you managed to do so without knocking over the tree or hitting the examiner, you had a license.

The morning bourbon—an ounce of Old Grandad or Wild Turkey taken after the two-mile walk and a few setting-up exercises and the rubdown that usually followed the morning walk—had also become routine. Whether the bourbon was on doctor’s orders, or a bit of old-fashioned home medicine of the kind many of his generation thought beneficial to the circulation past age sixty (“to get the engine going”), is not known. But it seemed to agree with him.

Last weekend, grandad and I sat on the porch in silence at sunset. We admired the grapes hanging on the vines. Time passed and it did not matter. That moment was precious, that moment was to be cherished. That moment was a healer. That moment was rich, comfortable and words were unneeded. We had each other sitting side by side and the luxury of a moment lived in its full presence. That is all that mattered. The best things in life are really free.

Grandad's voice boomed across the yard. 'This is the United States of America,' he said. 'You don't seem to understand that, Penny, so let me explain. In America, here is how we operate. We work for what we want, and we get ahead. We never take no for an answer, and we deserve the rewards of our perseverance... We Sinclairs are a grand, old family. That is something to be proud of. Our traditions and values form the bedrock on which future generations stand.

I cut off a piece of meatball dripping with sauce. I tried to make my face right. I tried to smile and not grimace, tried to close my eyes in delight , not panic; tried to swallow, not gag. They watched me like hawks. 'Delicious,' I said, still chewing. They tasted like salt and shit and gristle. 'As good as you remember?' 'Better.' I got through two. I drank a lot of water. I broke them down into fractions of themselves, sixteen more to go, fourteen more, eight, one. In my head I said sorry to grandad, and to the lamb or pig or mixture of creatures I was eating. I put my knife and fork together with four of them still swimming on my plate.

All the time you spend tryin to get back what's been took from you there's more goin out the door. After a while you just try and get a tourniquet on it. Your grandad never asked me to sign on as a deputy with him. I done that my own self. Hell, I didn't have nothin else to do. Paid about the same as cowboyin. Anyway, you never know what worse luck your bad luck has saved you from. I was too young for one war and too old for the next one. But I seen what come out of it. You can be patriotic and still believe that some things cost more than they're worth. Ask them Gold Star mothers what they paid and what they got for it. You always pay too much. Particularly for promises. There aint no such thing as a bargain promise. You'll see. Maybe you have done.

All the time you spend tryin to get back what’s been took from you there’s more goin out the door. After a while you just try and get a tourniquet on it. Your grandad never asked me to sign on as deputy with him. I done that my own self. Hell, I didnt have nothin else to do. Paid about the same as cowboyin. Anyway, you never know what worse luck your bad luck has saved you from. I was too young for one war and too old for the next one. But I seen what come out of it. You can be patriotic and still believe that some things cost more than what they’re worth. Ask them Gold Star mothers what they paid and what they got for it. You always pay too much. Particularly for promises. There aint no such thing as a bargain promise. You’ll see. Maybe you done have.

I love banned books. I used to read as many to you as I could when you were little, Mac.” “You read me banned books?” I say this sarcastically because I know he’s making it up. “Almost exclusively,” he answers—dead serious. “Charlotte’s Web and the poetry book by—uh—Silverstein—uh.” “Where the Sidewalk Ends?” I say. “And Reynolds—brave … uh …” “As Brave as You? No! How could anyone ban that?” “Yeah. And Paterson’s Bridge to Terabithia. Remember that one?” “I cried for a whole day.” Mom says, “Where the Wild Things Are. And Tango Makes Three. Melissa.” “Captain Underpants!” Grandad adds. “A lot of younger books you loved. I Am Rosa Parks,” Mom says. “And Last Stop on Market Street and Henry’s Freedom Box, and …” Grandad says, “Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry!

Remember the great stories Grandad told about the war? And you would think, sure Grandpa smells funny and thinks he invented the paper towel. But he was a badass when it counted. What stories will we tell?

Back at the Davydokovo apartment, we sat mesmerized in front of Grandad's Avantgard brand TV. It was all porn all the time. Porn in three flavors: 1)Tits and asses; 2) gruesome close-ups of dead bodies from war or crimes; 3) Stalin. Wave upon wave of previously unseen documentary footage of the Generalissimo. Of all the porn, number three was the most lurid. The erotics of power.

And what exactly makes someone best-friend material?” Grandad asked. “Someone who sticks by you; someone who never gets bored of talking to you. Someone who’s adventurous, and clever, and brave, and funny . . .” Tilly said, checking her criteria off on her fingers. “Someone like Anne Shirley or Alice from Wonderland—those are my favorite characters, incidentally.” With very few exceptions Tilly found that she much preferred the company of characters in her books to most of the people she knew in real life.

Grandad was always hunting in charity shops for copies that had someone’s name in, or messages from people who had given books as presents. “I love thinking about other people reading the books I love, or why someone gave that book as a present—those names and messages are like tiny moments of time travel linking readers from different eras and families and even countries.

My life was going to be different from my mother’s. She belonged to one person, to Walt. But I did not. I wasn’t Mona’s dog, or Patsy’s, or Tyler’s, or Eddie’s. I belonged to all my friends. I was everyone’s dog. I was surrounded by people who loved me, just like Grandad was. Suddenly, I understood that I was the luckiest dog in the world.

I'm not sure best friends are a one-size-fits-all sort of situation, Tilly,' Grandad said carefully. 'Sometimes a person who becomes a friend is the least likely person you'd expect. Friends should bring out the best in you, not be the same as you. I'm sure you're someone's perfect fit.

Grandad was always hunting in charity shops for copies that had someone's name in, or messages from people who had given books as presents. 'I love thinking about other people reading the books I love, or why someone gave that book as a present - those names and messages are like tiny moments of time travel linking readers from different eras and families and even countries.

Down the corridor, the staircase was decorated with paintings of them all, her and Mum and Grandad and countless other similar faces that stared out at her and reminded her, as she climbed down the stairs, that men and women may come and go, be born and die, but the family goes on and stays the same forever.

great-great-grandad’s

This infuriates me. The Windrush scandal shows a callous disregard for Commonwealth immigrants, part of a wider lack of respect and appreciation for good, decent people like Grandad Bertie and my mum, who paid their taxes for years and who in their own way contributed

IMAGINE! See it, feel it, believe it! You can do anything, if you truly believe in yourself.” Ronaldo’s Grandad Former captain of the North Pole Flying Team, and very wise reindeer.

work and carried on until she was seventy-two. Grandad worked in a nearby mill

I mean, I started out with nothing, son, except that old boat that your grandad left me, but—” “—you worked and scraped—” said Les wearily.

tombstones! What kind of McFadden would I be if I turned away from 'em. My Grandad an' pa would shed a tear at the sight of so many heavy rail quads. I think I'll be stayin' on Captain,” He said with a final nod. “Losin' Grace is sudden, hard, but I'll be up there with my head on a swivel, nothin' will get past me.” Captain Valance

It was August 1988, I was an 80s person, contemporaneous with Duran Duran and The Cure, not that fiddle and accordion music grandad listened to in the days when he trudged up the hill in the dusk with a friend to court grandma and her sisters. I didn’t belong here, with all of my heart I felt that. It didn’t help that I knew the forest was actually an 80s forest and the mountains actually 80s mountains. So what was I doing here? My plan had been to write. But I couldn’t, I was all on my own and lonely to the depths of my soul.

I wanted to ask your grandad first, I wanted to talk to Luke. I wanted it to be so much more romantic than us standing in a bathroom, you naked and me wearing your knickers with Ms Bitch written across my arse, but I’ve never seen you look more beautiful than you do right now.

Who’s too skinny?” Grandad strode across the lawn towards us as he dried his hands on a small towel. “Not you, that’s for sure,” Nan called out. “Well that’s coz you keep feeding me, woman.” “It’s nothing to do with what I feed ya. It’s the beer you drink in that shed every day and the whiskey you sip in front of the telly every night. Not to mention the amount of liquorice allsorts you polish off every week.” “I’m eighty years old, Maisie, I’ve worked hard all my life and raised these two fine people. I think that entitles me to drink, sip, and polish off whatever I bloody well like, which includes you when the mood takes me. So there’ll be no chasing after younger men, there’d only leave ya disappointed anyway. You’ve had sixty years of the best, there’s no going back from that.” He looked at me and winked.

Can the pair of you stop talking about geriatric sex for Christ’s sake? You should be done with all that by now.” “You jealous, son? Is your ol’ grandad getting it more than you?” Luke shook his head and headed back into the house. “C’mon, Winston, let’s go and get drunk.” The dog followed Luke.

and asked to speak to Reg. She

My grandad wasn't finished, “Brightened up the room, he did. Just by being there.” I'm not reading into it. I'm trying not to read into it. But if I did, I doubt I'd be alone. At that exact moment bright sunlight came pouring through the top windows. We had the fire door propped open to let the air in, and with the sunshine came the gentlest breeze, so that all at once it felt warm and cool, and everywhere around us, tiny golden dust particles were swirling in their millions.

It could mean anything?” said David. Grandad shines the torch across the walls looking for anything that might be what they are looking for, even though he’s not exactly sure what it is they are looking for. It could be anything? There’s nothing but dirty bricks and a few old work clothes hanging on hooks. After about fifteen minutes of looking everywhere, they have found nothing. “It has to be here somewhere?” said David. Grandad nods in agreement. “But where?” Shaye walks over to the clothes hanging on the wall; it looks like they haven’t been disturbed in a long time. He removes all three jackets and a black apron placing them on the floor. That’s odd thought Shaye. He continues to stare at the shiny metal thing sticking out of the wall. It isn't a hook or a peg, or even a

I'm amazed that even as recently as 2012, that colonial spirit of finding humour in difference lived on in the hearty laughs of people using my grandad's accent to be entertained.

Today is Tuesday the 15th of August and Grandad Wilcox is at home in his bungalow with his dog Bruno, the town of Little Chedderton which was swarming with the media as gone back to its usual quiet self. Grandad Wilcox was watching a gardening programme on TV when he heared somebody knocking at the front door, he told Bruno to stay in his dog bed and then went to answer the door, when he opened the door he saw two men and a woman who were smartly dressed, the woman spoke " Hello Mr Wilcox, were are from the British department of space exploration " Grandad Wilcox invited the agents into his home and offered them each a drink and biscuits to which one of the male agents said OK and after about 10 minutes Grandad came into the living room with a tray of drinks and a large selection of biscuits.

Everywhere we went was full of life - there were so many people, so many animals, and so many things to see. It was amazing. We saw lots of different kinds of homes, from high-rise apartments to town houses. But we were happy with our little home on wheels, which we could take wherever we pleased.

Chapter Eight Jack shifted his gaze between the packet and Fabien’s pale face, then slowly got to his feet. Go to the police, that was what they should do. Let them deal with it. But what kind of trouble would that land Fabien in? “I’ll sort it.” Jack made his way up to the chimney, stuffed the packet into the black bin liner he found up there, and wedged it between the pots. That would buy them some time to think about how to help Fabien. He returned to the others. Fabien was still looking green and shaky, but was on his feet and putting on his hat. “I’ll help you get down to the street,” said Beth. “It’s okay. I’ll go back through the attic. Grandad will be wondering where I am.” The boy hobbled up the incline, back the way he’d come, and they heard him stagger down the other side. Jack banged his fist against the chimney wall, sending loose cement dust showering onto the tiles. “I wish he’d told me what was going on. I could have helped. I wondered why he wanted me to teach him shadow jumping.” “He’s scared,” said Beth. “Don’t be too hard on him. Kai’s got him where he wants him. It’s Kai you should be angry with, not Fabien.” “Who’s Kai working for?” Jack let out a worried breath. “I mean, he might be a thug, but he’s not got a lot of brains, has he?” Beth pressed her lips together in thought. “You’re right. He can’t be doing this alone.” Jack’s encounter with Kai from a few months ago was inked on his memory like a tattoo. He touched his ribs as if the bruising was still there, but of course the physical injuries were gone. Not so for Fabien, Jack thought, remembering the livid mark blooming on the

But he’s pretty much run Fonseka Jewellers into the ground. My poor grandad would turn in his grave . . . but here we are—booking out the entire fucking Mount Lavinia Hotel, paying

The sharks that you need to fear are the ones inside your head -- Grandad

Your mind is a horse you ride, Merrick. No one can hold the reins for you -- Grandad

Raymond stands and puts a reassuring hand on her shoulder. ‘If you need a decent funeral director, I’ve got a name.’ Of course he has. She has to face it. There’s no one else to help, and Marnie doesn’t expect her parents will travel down to London for the funeral. They were fearful before Hitler’s blitzkrieg, and still terrified more than four hundred miles to the north. Only she and her cousin, Susie, are left in London. Grandad’s diaries and order books went up in smoke, so there’s little chance of contacting even his best customers. Besides which, who has the will amid this chaos to attend the funeral of their tailor? At

There are many safe places in my bedroom, and with Molly and Kiran's help I searched them all. I found a bundle of dead roses, a homemade CD from America, several guitar picks (how I wish I could see Tom again), a photo of me on Grandad's knee, a sponge shaped like a dinosaur, a T-shirt with teh sleeves chopped off and CRIME PAYS in iron-on letters across the front, a hat that I had when I was five and which was exactly like a hat Sarah used to wear, a packet of banana-flavored chews (why did I keep them?), and a picture of our house that I drew long, long ago on my first day at school. And I found, last of all, in the pocket of a jacket that used to be Indigo's, the diamond ring.

Miss Farley recognized him. 'We must find you a seat near the front!' she cried, loud enough for the whole school to hear and abandoning her raffle tickets in her excitement. 'Recorders! One moment please while we find a place for Baby Jesus's grandad!

Too often it’s easy to think of someone like Grandad as being no more than the role he plays in my own life, not as a person who struggles with flesh-and-blood feelings. What he told me about Mum makes me wonder if I’ve been thinking of her that way too. An extraordinary thought – that under their different skins everyone I’ve ever met is feeling the same things I am, experiencing the same little dramas. All the problems of their lives seeming as vast to them, as all-consuming, as my own are to me. And does that mean all those problems must be important, and the world is completely beset around? Or might it mean that, actually, none of it matters at all?

They were ashamed of it, or at least they didn’t think we should have it. The future was English. My grandad is dead no, but last year I went to my granny and said to her, in Gaelic, why did you hide it from us? And when she realised how much I could speak she started crying. She said they’d thought it was for the best. Gaelic would handicap us. But now I speak nothing but Gaelic to her and she loves it. I’m learning loads from her. I’m not fluent yet, but I’m getting close.

Too bad so sad your grandad.

It's about creating a record of who's read and loved each book. I love thinking about other people reading the books I love, or why someone gave that book as a present - those names and messages are like tiny moments of time travel linking readers from different eras and families and even countries. (This is the Grandad talking to Tilly about finding books with written notes in them or a book owner's name written on the inside of the book. I like think that way as well). :)

shit. I’ve just got back from the funeral of my best friend.  He died after being hit on the head with a tennis ball.  It was a lovely service. Death is nature’s way of saying ‘Slow down’. I intend to live forever……or die trying. What happens when you get scared half to death twice? A man has died after falling into a vat of coffee.  It was instant. A Chinese man faked his death but his family were suspicious.  They didn’t bereave him. I saw an ad for burial plots.  I thought to myself ‘That’s the last thing I need’. I met a Dutch girl with inflatable shoes last week and phoned her up to arrange a date.  Unfortunately, she’d popped her clogs. My grandad gave me some sound advice on his deathbed.  He said that it’s worth shelling out on good speakers. A friend of mine always wanted to be run over by a steam train.  When it happened, he was chuffed to bits. The man who invented Velcro has died. RIP. A Mexican stuntman died while making a film.  At his funeral, his mother approached the director and said ‘Jesus died for your scenes’. The Grim Reaper came for me last night and I beat him

Grandad always went on about the good old days. I loved that about him. The funny thing is though, we don’t really know when we’re in the good old days. It seems impossible to know at an exact moment that it’s something special. You can be happy, you can know that a particular time is important, but you never know if it’s the good old days until it’s gone.

We thought we didn't have the first ingredient, but we had it all along, didn't we, Grandad? - Sam

You realize you can actually be friends with a boy, Grandad? Just friends. You don't have to marry them. You can just meet them and chat!

Bad news.

So this is Paris, where my great-grandparents came from...the place that gave me my roots...and new friends! My house has a thousand rooms...one for every place we've passed through! My ceiling is sometimes a dome of stars...other times a fiery sunset...and still other times...the wild dance of storm clouds... My time is that of the seasons... My family speaks all languages... But we don't have to open our mouths to understand each other. One look is enough... We work together to create something that none of us alone would be able to. We mix our diversities with passion and what comes out is infinitely better than what is mine or yours... Grandad Tenzin would say it's alchemy. While it's true that I don't have a tiled roof, brick walls or a fixed address to write on an envelope...if you think about it I have much, much more... Swimming pool with a view... Gymnastics and acrobatic lessons every day... Ethnic cuisines and nightly entertainment... And day after day I can enjoy everything...without possessing anything! I read somewhere --WHERE YOUR TREASURE LIES, THERE YOUR HEART WILL BE. Well my heart lies with this big family of travelers... They are my treasure! That's why I can feel at home anywhere, though I have no home anywhere... Deep down, wanderers are like flowing rivers.. which, with their twists and turns, are always looking for their own way to reach the sea... If you think about it, isn't the same true of everyone? We may go along our separate ways , but our hearts must beat the world over!

Remember what Grandad always said: “If you think you’re too small to make a difference, try sleeping with a mosquito in the room.

remembered how my grandfather had been after my parents died. The way he would look around vaguely, ask for our mother, and Hel would say gently, “Mum’s dead, remember, Grandad? She and Dad died two years ago.” And then three years ago. And then four. And every time, he would react with the same grief, his face crumpling, his blue eyes filling with unexpected tears. The shock wore off a little as the years passed—as if the knowledge had lodged in there somewhere, in spite of his Alzheimer’s—but the grief… the grief never lessened.

The thing about pain, whether it’s physical or not, it demands our attention. A lot of the time that’s as it should be. We move our hand away from a flame to avoid being burned, or we treat an injury so our body can heal. But when that pain doesn’t go away, and it’s not something we can easily fix, it starts to dominate our life. Add in a hefty dose of anger, especially anger at things you can’t change, and it’s easy to forget how to feel anything else.” “It’s hard to remember there is anything else.” “But there is. Grace has been trying to show you the only way she knows how. By loving you through this. She’s a bit like Grandad.