Olivia Sudjic, Sympathy Quotes

I was on the sidewalk, buffering, wondering if it was okay to follow people in real life.

Suddenly I had to laugh. It was like realising you definitely need to projectile vomit when you thought you had it under control in some imprisoning form of public space.

To me, it was clear proof of the existence of supersymmetry, the idea that every particle has a partner. She was mine.

Yeah!' I said again, widening my eyes and nodding slowly but emphatically to show that she had seen into my own symmetrical soul.

She was limp and pathetic and woozy and I loved her, I realised, even more because I knew how completely it was doomed.

Man with goatee. Man who looked like a Beatle. All the Beatles at once. Woman wearing newspaper hat. I'd grown used to how weird New Yorkers were, and I could fit them into types.

I began to cry but maintained my shouting through it, like a wind through sheets of rain.

I couldn't decide what kind of person she was, whether she was one of those insects that look exactly like wasps but aren't . . . I just wanted to know if she would sting.

No order, no pattern, just chaos. Lots of little universes separated by invisible screens . . .

It never ceased to amaze me how she just had the facts always, in her head. It occured to me that if, or when, she died, a whole load of facts, a body of knowledge, might disappear without a trace.

Email is the scourge of our age, ' said Silvia. 'Email and cancer.

The messages must be stuck somewhere in the tube of light underneath the ocean that connects London and New York.

I felt the nauseous shiver in my stomach—everything from rage to empathy to morning sickness—that I had grown used to and now thought of as being love.

My ability to make up lies on the spot chills me as much as it saves me.

Well, then, what's the plan now? You can't stay here forever.'My plan was indeed to stay there forever.

Waking in the morning, I had to remember grief all over again. It was sunny, a white winter sun, and that made me sad.

Mizuko loved reading the dictionary. She liked it when there were multiple meanings for words and when opposite meanings could be contained.

The sharp, superficial pain at being spoken to unkindly had obscured the deeper pain, which had not yet turned into something hard and heavy.