—THOUGH THE CLOUDS ARE ALWAYS CHANGING, AND THE WIND IS REARRANGING, A PART OF ME WILL ALWAYS BE IN LOVE WITH YOU.

 

 

THE WHALEBONE THEATRE   /    Joanna Quinn

 

 

Without love, there is no dancing.

 

“I’m never sure what you think.”

 

She came to him with a frankness, with a blunt and welcome ease, like dropping your clothes on the beach.

 

Words are inadequate, such a lot of the time.

 

Romance is risk and passion and all things that make a life.

 

Sometimes he woke in the dead of the night, wanting to tell her something dreadful had occurred, to shake her and say, “You simply won’t believe this.” But there was no one there, only the whistling walls and the empty dark.

 

It’s pleasant to drop in on yourself unexpectedly.

 

“Not in the business of proof, mister. I gives you what they gives me.”

 

Outside, it is becoming autumn and the wind is running through the trees like a rumor.

 

He finds himself to be a heavy load. A sandbag man.

 

There is a power, Flossie realizes, in saying nothing at all.

 

You shouldn’t worry about what other people say about you. It gets in the way. It’s like walking through life with an umbrella up.

 

The sound of shattering glass can, after a while, cease to be startling.

 

She is getting better at waiting.

 

Even when you’re standing in the rubble, you can convince yourself that it’s habitable, that with a good rug you could make it a home.

 

“You say such awful things so charmingly.”

 

Art is the only sane response to an insane world.

 

Oh, this unimaginable life!

 

Anger is only useful if used strategically.

 

“There. There you are.”

 

“Hello there. How do you do?”