Цитаты из книг — Питер Камерон

Most people think things are not real unless they are spoken, that it’s the uttering of something, not the thinking of it, that legitimizes it. I suppose this is why people always want other people to say “I love you.” I think just the opposite — that thoughts are realest when thought, that expressing them distorts or…

She said nothing in her stop-being-silly-I’m-not-going-to-encourage-you way. Just ignore him and he’ll go away, my mother used to say to Gillian when we were young and I bugged her. Just ignore him. All he wants is attention. In retrospect there seems to be something almost cruel about that — to simultaneously acknowledge…

It had only been three days ago, but it seemed like ages. It’s weird how slowly time passes when you’re miserable.

I was thinking about these notions of speech and thought, thinking how difficult it would be for me to articulate them — or not difficult, but wearisome, as if thinking them was enough and expressing them would be redundant or inferior, for everyone knows things are diminished by translation, it is always best to read a…

I only feel like myself when I am alone. Interacting with other people does not come naturally to me; it is a strain and requires effort, and since it does not come naturally I feel like I am not really myself when I make that effort. I feel fairly comfortable with my family, but even with them I sometimes feel this strain…

“I know this is going to make you think I’m just being deliberately belligerent, but I really hate that term.” “What term?” “Ground Zero.” “Oh. Why is that?” “It seems like a euphemism to me. Like something they’d say in a James Bond movie. And it made it a destination. Like, ‘Let’s go down to Ground Zero. Let’s go to…

My sitting alone bothered her; it’s like how you resent those people standing up on the subway when you’re seated. It’s like they’re standing up just to make you feel bad. Sometimes there are even some seats available — half seats between big men with spread legs — but they won’t sit in them, they just stand in front of…

This is something I really hate. Really, really hate — when people react to your being alone as some kind of problem for them.

On Entertainment Night! we had a choice of going to a comedy club or a dinner theater. I decided on the dinner theater because I had never been to one and I hate stand-up comics; I think funny is something you are, not something you desperately try to be in front of a roomful of obnoxious people.

I remember at one point (genuinely) wondering if I was, perhaps, genetically altered in some way, some tiny modification of DNA that separated me from the species in some slight but essential way, the way mules can mate with donkeys but not with horses (I think). It seemed that everyone else could mate, could fit their…

I learned very quickly it was much easier for me to be the first to sit at a table and let others join me, because there was something about sitting down at a table that was already populated, especially if it meant sitting down beside someone, that I couldn’t do. I know when you sit beside someone for lunch in a Red…

Mealtimes were the worst. Breakfast was fine — a buffet in the hotel’s Excelsior “Ballroom” at which many people chose not to appear, so there were many empty tables, and even if you had to sit at a table with someone, they didn’t expect you to say anything besides good morning, and that I could handle. I wish the whole…

I think there is some sort of sieve in my mind that prohibits the rapid (let alone simultaneous) transference of my thoughts into speech. Like one of those mesh drain guards in a bathtub, there is something that prevents my thoughts from leaving my mind, and so they collect, like those nasty damp coils of hair stuck to…

“I see,” she said. I hate when people say “I see.” It doesn’t mean anything and I think it’s hostile. Whenever anyone tells me “I see” I think they’re really saying “Fuck you.” I was going to ask her what she saw, but I realized that wouldn’t get us anywhere, so I said nothing.

“It’s nice to meet you, James.” I said, “Thank you,” as if she had paid me a compliment. I wasn’t about to say it was nice to meet her, too. I hate saying anything expected like that, that kind of dead, meaningless language.

“I am disturbed,” I said. I thought about what the word meant, what it really means to be disturbed, like how a pond is disturbed when you throw a rock into it or how you disturb the peace. Or how you can be disturbed by a book or movie or the burning rain forest or the melting ice caps. Or the war in Iraq. It was one of…

I didn’t answer. I knew my mother was right, but that didn’t change the way I felt about things. People always think that if they can prove they’re right, you’ll change your mind.

The main problem was I don’t like people in general and people my age in particular, and people my age are the ones who go to college. I would consider going to college if it were a college of older people. I’m not a sociopath or a freak (although I don’t suppose people who are sociopaths or freaks self-identify as such);…

“What’s so bad about college students?” “They’ll all be like Huck Dupont.” “You’ve never met Huck Dupont.” “I don’t need to meet him. The fact that his name is Huck and he got a full hockey scholarship to the University of Minnesota is enough for me.” “What’s wrong with hockey?” “Nothing,” I said, “if you like blood…