Цитаты из книги Лужок черного лебедя

Through the ceiling's coming not Abbey Road but 'The Man with the Child in His Eyes' by Kate Bush. Julia only plays 'The Man with the Child in His Eyes' when she's hyper-emotional or when she's got her period. Life must be pretty brill for Julia. She's eighteen, she's leaving Black Swan Green in a few months, she's got a boyfriend with a sports car, she gets twice as much pocket money as me, and she can make other people do whatever she wants with words.

Just words.

Julia's just put on 'Songbird' by Fleetwood Mac.

Идиоты трудятся в этом заблуждении. Красота не есть превосходность. Красота отвлекает, красота – это косметика, красота в конечном итоге утомляет. Вот, например, вы пишете: «Из уха Луны выплывает, сияя, Венера». И в стихотворении образуется смертельный прокол. Пфффт! Шина лопнула. Автомобильная авария. Эта строчка говорит: «Ну разве я не прелесть-прелесть?» На это я отвечаю: «Убирай себя чертям!» Если у вас в саду растет магнолия, вы красите краской ее цветы? Вешаете на нее блестки-блестки? Цепляете к веткам пластмассовых попугаев? Нет. Вы этого не делаете.

God knows what job I'm going to be able to do. Not a lawyer, that's for sure. You can't stammer in court. You can't stammer in a classroom, either. My students'd crucify me. There aren't many jobs where speaking isn't a part of it. Miss Lippetts said once nobody buys poetry, so I can't be a professional poet. I could be a monk, but church is more boring than watching the screen-test card. Mum made us go to Sunday school at Saint Gabriel's when we were smaller but it turned every Sunday morning into torture by boredom. Even Mum got bored after a few months. Being trapped in a monastery'd be murder. How about a lighthouse keeper? All those storms, sunsets, and Dairylea sandwiches'd make you lonely in the end. But lonely is something I'd better get used to. What girl'd go out with a stammerer? Or even dance with one? The last song at the Black Swan Green Village Hall Disco'd be over before I could spit out D-d-d-you want to d-d-d-d-d-dance. Or what if I stammered at my wedding and couldn't even say “I do”? “Were you listening in just now?”

Then Mrs de Roo got out her Metro Gnome. Metro Gnomes’re upside-down pendulums without the clock part. They tock rhythms. They’re small, which could be why they’re called gnomes. Music students normally use them but speech therapists do too. You read aloud in time with its tocks, like this: here – comes – the – can – dle – to – take – you – to – bed, – here – comes – the – chop – per – to – chop – off – your – head. Today we read a stack of N-words from the dictionary, one by one. The Metro Gnome does make speaking easy, as easy as singing, but I can hardly carry one around with me, can I? Kids like Ross Wilcox’d say, ‘What’s this, then, Taylor?’, snap off its pendulum in a nanosecond, and say, ‘Shoddy workmanship, that.’ After the Metro Gnome I read aloud from a book Mrs de Roo keeps for me called Z for Zachariah. Z for Zachariah’s about a girl called Anne who lives in a valley with its own freak weather system that protects it after a nuclear war’s poisoned the rest of the country and killed everyone else off. For all Anne knows she’s the only person alive in the British Isles. As a book it’s utterly brill but a bit bleak. Maybe Mrs de Roo suggested I read this to make me feel luckier than Anne despite my stammer.

— Ну… пока нет, — Дэнни поставил свою вилку на подушечку большого пальца и принялся ею балансировать. — Чего нам — сиротам, то есть — не хватает, так это фотографий людей, похожих на нас. И это чувство не проходит. Так что в один прекрасный день я доберусь до Слайго и попробую там пощелкать. С телеобъективом, если кишка окажется тонка подойти близко. Но эти большие жизненные… «вопросы»… они не терпят спешки. Дать вопросу правильно созреть — это самое важное, юный Джейсон. Хочешь бутерброд с креветками?