Dunthorne Quotes

#1. For my last birthday, Dad bought me a pocket-sized Collins English Dictionary. It would only fit in a pocket that had been specially designed. #Quote by Joe Dunthorne

#2. I authorize an air strike that reduces my street to rubble; I fold Swansea Bay like an enormous omelette and scoff it all #Quote by Joe Dunthorne

#3. The ocean is six miles deep. #Quote by Joe Dunthorne

#4. Are we making a bomb?"
"This is a trust exercise, like in drama," she says.
"Are we making a bomb as a trust exercise? #Quote by Joe Dunthorne

#5. Exercise II.
Write a diary, imagining that you are trying to make an old person jealous. I have written an example to get you started:
Dear Diary,
I spent the morning admiring my skin elasticity.
God alive, I feel supple. #Quote by Joe Dunthorne

#6. Anger does not come easy to me. It is something I have to encourage, like a greyhound in second place. #Quote by Joe Dunthorne

#7. She whispers in my ear: '"Tell me that you wan' fuck me hard, make me sweat." In the excitement, she misses out a word. "I want to fuck you so hard that your body drips with sweat," I say, grammatically. #Quote by Joe Dunthorne

#8. I remembered his expression remained not exactly bored so much as philosophically separate #Quote by Joe Dunthorne

#9. I bought a packet of Trojan Ultra Pleasure Extra Sensitive condoms: 'No. 1 in AMERICA'. They smell nothing like a positive first sexual experience. #Quote by Joe Dunthorne

#10. We asked our Welsh teacher, Mr Llewellyn – who is young, to tell us the Welsh sex words. The Welsh word for sex is 'rhyw'. It sounds like coughing. He said that, in general, Welsh-speakers use English words. When pressed, he gave us a couple of examples to show us why this might be. 'Llawes goch' means 'red sleeve'. 'Coes fach' means 'small leg'. The phrase would be: 'Put your small leg in my red sleeve'. #Quote by Joe Dunthorne

#11. I am drawn to the ocean; I find solace in its mystery. #Quote by Joe Dunthorne

#12. Ever since Jordana dumpled me, I've started feeling like a middle-aged person. I think it is to do with trauma. I just walk around doing and impression of a sixteen-year-old. #Quote by Joe Dunthorne

#13. Depression comes in bouts. Like boxing. Dad is in the blue corner. #Quote by Joe Dunthorne

#14. I want the evening upon which we lose our collective virginities to be special. I'm no parthenologist but I suspect that Jordana's virginity is still intact. Her biological knowledge is minimal. She thinks that a perineum is to do with glacial moraine. #Quote by Joe Dunthorne

#15. I tell myself not to feel sexually threatened. I am of no special interest; he could just as easily be angling for the printer. #Quote by Joe Dunthorne

#16. Write a diary, imagining that you are trying to make an old person jealous. #Quote by Joe Dunthorne

#17. I expect Mum to remind me that these relationships mean nothing when you are forty-three. Or to at least wheel out a cliché: there are plenty more fish in the sea. There are fish but also whales and crustaceans and shipwrecks and a dozen or so submersible military vehicles. #Quote by Joe Dunthorne

#18. Problems are like top trumps. I have a pretty good card: Adulterous Mum. But Jordana's is still better: Tumour Mother. #Quote by Joe Dunthorne

#19. Your diary should be a nepenthe. #Quote by Joe Dunthorne

#20. My mother tells me I do not chew my food enough; she says I am making it harder for my body to get the essential nutrients it needs. If she were here, I would remind her that I am eating a blueberry Pop-Tart. #Quote by Joe Dunthorne

#21. I am running low on solutions. #Quote by Joe Dunthorne

#22. I want to grab her collarbones as if they were handlebars. #Quote by Joe Dunthorne

#23. I was camped at the same site as her: Broughton Farm. She came over to my tent and showed me her blisters. She asked me whether I knew the reason why a blister can keep on producing fluid ad infinitum. I said that I had always wondered the same thing about mucus. One of the reasons we are together is because we have similar interests. #Quote by Joe Dunthorne

#24. There will be birds and if they write your name in the sky then you can get on the buses and if they don't you have to die on the floor. #Quote by Joe Dunthorne

#25. I would never say snog. I would say osculate. She looks at me as if to say: why do you exist? #Quote by Joe Dunthorne

#26. Unhappy people have a role in society – and that is to make the rest of us feel better. #Quote by Joe Dunthorne

#27. I love you more than words. And I am a big fan of words. #Quote by Joe Dunthorne

#28. After that, we had a short conversation about how your body can sometimes seem totally separate. She said her body can feel like a distant bureaucracy controlled by telegrams from her brain, and I said my body is sometimes like that of Mario Mario, being controlled with a Nintendo joypad. Mario's surname is Mario. #Quote by Joe Dunthorne

#29. Old people only say that life happens quickly to make themselves feel better. The truth is that it all happens in tiny increments like now now now now now now and it only takes twenty to thirty consecutive nows to realize that you're aimed straight at a bench in Singleton Park. Fair play though, if I was old and had forgotten to do something worthwhile with my life, I would spend those final few years on a bench in the botanical gardens, convincing myself that time is so quick that even plants – who have no responsibilities whatsoever – hardly get a chance to do anything decent with their lives except, perhaps, produce one or two red or yellow flowers and, with a bit of luck and insects, reproduce. If the old man manages to get the words father and husband on his bench plaque then he thinks he can be reasonably proud of himself. #Quote by Joe Dunthorne

#30. Our Welsh teacher thinks he is young. He tells us that the Welsh for skiving in town is 'mitchio yn y dre'. #Quote by Joe Dunthorne

#31. He had a bad feeling that there was literally no one he could think of who wasn't in some very significant way a let-down. #Quote by Joe Dunthorne

#32. Oliver, we've got something to tell you," Dad says, dumping a cardboard box full of garden waste into a toad green mangler.
Unlike the doctor, when Dad says we, he means we because Mum is omnipotent.
"Who's dead?" I ask, shot-putting a bottle of Richebourg.
"No one's dead."
"You're getting a divorce?"
"Oliver."
"Mum's preggers?"
"No, we - "
"I'm adopted."
"Oliver! Please, shit up! #Quote by Joe Dunthorne

#33. Her eyebrows were so blonde they were almost invisible, making it difficult for her to look angry, apologetic or quizzical. #Quote by Joe Dunthorne

#34. The word defenestration, the act of throwing someone or something out of a window, was first coined after a Polish revolution in 1605 when they threw the royal family through the palace windows. #Quote by Joe Dunthorne