More via texts, memes and sound bytes, short but profound quotes from books have become Memorable and interesting quotes from great books. ― Jonathan Coe, quote from The Rotters' ClubīookQuoters is a community of passionate readers who enjoy sharing the most meaningful, And so was Benjamin's brother, the little bastard, with his sparkler and his horrible grin and that nasty gleam of incipient victory in his twelve-year-old eyes. Goodbye to all that.Įasy to be clever with hindsight, I know, but I was right, wasn't I? Look back on that night from the perspective of now, the closing weeks of the closing century of our second millennium - if the calendar of some esoteric and fast-disappearing religious sect counts for anything any more - and you have to admit that I was right. If there had ever been a time when it might have happened, that time was slipping away. Beautiful ideas, Dad, noble aspirations, just as there was the kernel of something beautiful in Philip's musical hodge-podge. Redistribution of wealth through taxation. A national health service, free to everyone who needed it. This ludicrous attempt to squeeze the history of the countless millennia into half an hour's worth of crappy riffs and chord changes suddenly seemed no more Quixotic than all the things my dad and his colleagues had been working towards for so long. I thought about Phillip and his stupid rock symphony and I swear that my eyes pricked with tears. The same triumphalism, the same excitement, not because something new was being created, but because something was being destroyed. He giggled like a little maniac, and stared at me for a second or two before running off, and in that time I saw exactly the same thing I'd seen in Stubbs's eyes the day before. 'The death of the socialist dream,' he said. I didn't say anything, so he supplied the answer himself. 'Look! What's this?'Īt that precise moment, his sparkler fizzled out. He held the sparkler up in front of my face and said, 'Wait. I felt like sticking one on him, the cheeky bastard.

“Hey - Duggie! Duggie! Duggie!' He came running up to me, sparkler in hand.

Trial by Fire by Jennifer Lynn Barnes