Gavin Extence

I__e brought you some things from home,_ I said, gesturing at the bag on the floor. __ome clothes and books _ things like that.___ooks _ great! That__l make things easier. You know I can__ read worth a damn right now!___here__ also some music. Schubert__ fifth, Mendelssohn__ third, Mozart__ Clarinet Concerto, Mahler__ fourth____ would have preferred his sixth.___ou__e not well enough for his sixth'.

They called our arrangement a 'Death Pact' - but, really, that's not a phrase that tells you anything important. It's just the kind of phrase that sells newspapers. For us, it was never about death. It was about life. Knowing that there was a way out, that his suffering was not going to become unendurable (...).

I knew that iridium-193 was one of two stable isotopes of iridium, a very rare, very dense metal, but I didn't know that the periodic table even existed.I knew how many zeroes there were in a quintillion, but I thought that algebra lived in ponds.I'd picked up a few Latin words, and a smattering of Elvish, but my French was non-existent.I'd read more than one book of more than one thousand pages (more than once), but I wouldn't have been able to identify a metaphor if it poked me in the eye.By secondary-school standards, I was quite a dunce.

If you had to relive your life exactly as it was _ same successes and failures, same happiness, same miseries, same mixture of comedy and tragedy _ would you want to? Was it worth it?

Sometimes words aren't needed.

Mr. Treadstone believed that there was always an apposite word. The English language, after all, was the richest in the world. If you couldn__ find the apposite word, if you found your language slipping into the mire of vagueness and obscurity, this meant that you needed to work on your vocabulary. Because the apposite word certainly existed _ and it was very eager to make your acquaintance.

Funerals aren't for the dead. They're for the living.

Turning things over and over in isolation had led me to a certain point, but I knew that to get any further I'd have to voice some ideas aloud, just to see how they sounded. But I certainly didn't go to Ellie expecting any kind of constructive input on her part. It was more that I'd hit a wall and needed someone to talk_around the subject with - like when you come up against a problem that's just immune to normal logic.

... When you're living like that, I think time can seem to stretch out for ever. Matters only change when you start fretting about all the things you need to get done. The more stuff you try to force into it, the less accommodating time becomes.

I know, for example, that Mr. Petersen did not experience the flow of time in the same way that I did during those last sixteen months. He told me often, particularly towards the end, that for him time had become a slow, peaceful drift. If I had to guess why this was the case, I'd say that maybe it was because this was time he never expected to have. Or maybe it was more than he was now letting time drift. There was a certain type of contentment in his outlook, which never strayed too far into the future. His life had become simple and uncluttered, and when you're living like that, I think time can seem to stretch out for ever. Matters only change when you start fretting about all the things you need to get done. The more stuff you try to force into it, the less accommodating time becomes.

If you're a boy, any display of sensitivity is gay. Compassion is gay. Crying is supergay. Reading is usually gay. Certain songs and types of music are gay. 'Enola Gay' would certainly be thought gay. Love songs are gay. Love itself is incredibly gay, as are any other heartfelt emotions. Singing is gay, but chanting is not gay. Wanking contests are not gay. Neither is all-male cuddling during specially designated periods in football matches, or communal bathing thereafter. (I didn't invent the rules of gay - I'm just telling you what they are.)

Don't you think it's good to serve your country?' I asked. 'No, I don't,' Mr Peterson said. 'I think it's good to serve your principles. And in the army you don't get to pick and choose your fights according to your conscience. You kill on command. Don't ever surrender your right to make your own moral decisions, kid.

It's possible to find order in chaos, and it's equally possible to find chaos underlying apparent order. Order and chaos are slippery concepts. They're like a set of twins who like to swap clothing from time to time. Order and chaos frequently intermingle and overlap, the same as beginnings and endings. Things are often more complicated, or more simple, than they seem. Often it depends on your angle. I think that telling a story is a way of trying to make life's complexity more comprehensible. It's a way of trying to separate order from chaos, patterns from pandemonium.