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Janice Galloway Quotes

The phone is an instrument of intrusion into order. It is a threat to control. Just when you think you are alone and safe, the call could come that changes your life. Or someone else's. It makes the same flat,

The phone is an instrument of intrusion into order. It is a threat to control. Just when you think you are alone and safe, the call could come that changes your life. Or someone else's. It makes the same flat, mechanical noise for everyone and gives no clues what's waiting there on the other end of the line. You can never be too careful.

Janice Galloway
Thinking, Phones, Order
Janice Galloway (1989). “The Trick is to Keep Breathing: A Novel”

Needing people yet being afraid of them is wearing me out.

Janice Galloway
People, Being Afraid
Janice Galloway (2010). “The Trick Is To Keep Breathing”, p.48, Random House

You would think there's a natural limit to tears: only so much the body can give at one sitting before it runs dry.

Janice Galloway
Running, Thinking, Giving
Janice Galloway (1989). “The Trick is to Keep Breathing: A Novel”

No matter how dark the room gets I can always see. It looks emptier when I put the lights on so I don't do it if I can help it. Brightness disagrees with me: it hurts my eyes, wastes electricity and encourages moths, all sorts of things. I sit in the dark for a number of reasons.

Janice Galloway
Hurt, Eye, Dark
Janice Galloway (1989). “The Trick is to Keep Breathing: A Novel”

I had thought that growing up's consolation was that you could escape from the arbitrariness of things, that somehow one acquired more control. Now you had two numbers until you were ninety-nine. And it wasn't true. Growing up was just more of the same but taller. What happened was all luck. There was no logic.

Janice Galloway
Growing Up, Numbers, Ninety Nine

It's asking for trouble to listen to music alone.

Janice Galloway
Asking, Trouble, Listening To Music
Janice Galloway (1989). “The Trick is to Keep Breathing: A Novel”

I already read everything. I read poems and plays and novels and newspapers and comic books and magazines. I read tins in supermarkets and leaflets that come through the door, unsolicited mail. None of it lasts long and it doesn't give me answers. Reading too fast is not soothing.

Janice Galloway
Book, Reading, Doors
Janice Galloway (1989). “The Trick is to Keep Breathing: A Novel”

No matter how often I think I can't stand it anymore, I always do. There is no alternative. I don't fall, I don't foam at the mouth, faint, collapse or die. It's the same for all of us. You can't get out of the inside of your own head. Something keeps you going. Something always does.

Janice Galloway
Fall, Thinking, Foam
Janice Galloway (1989). “The Trick is to Keep Breathing: A Novel”

Quiet book-learning in monasteries and ethereal music, sonnets and courtly lovethat stuff is all fantasyand veneer? You couldn't afford to let the beauty of the thing seduce you too far or you forgot the truth and the truth was always hard as iron bloody bars.

Janice Galloway
Book, Iron, Bars
1994 Foreign Parts, ch.7.

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