Conor O'Malley Quotes

“He went over and sat next to her on the side facing the window. She ran her hand through his hair, lifting it out of his eyes, and he could see how skinny her arm was, almost like it was just bone and skin.”

“He’d had a nightmare. Well, not a nightmare. The nightmare. The one he’d been having a lot lately. The one with the darkness and the wind and the screaming. The one with the hands slipping from his grasp, no matter how hard he tried to hold on.”

″ ‘Son,’ his father said, leaning forward. ‘Stories don’t always have happy endings.’ ”

″ ... there was his house, small but detached. It had been the one thing his mum had insisted on in the divorce […] after his dad had left for America with Stephanie, the new wife. That had been six years ago, so long now that Conor sometimes couldn’t remember what it was like having a dad in the house.”

“The blackness was wrapping itself around Conor’s eyes now, plugging his nose and overwhelming his mouth. He was gasping for breath and not getting it. It was suffocating him. It was killing him.”

“I thought it was a dream at first,” Conor said […], “but then I kept finding leaves when I woke up and little trees growing out of the floor. I’ve been hiding them all so no one will find out.”

“When Conor started having that nightmare, that’s when Harry noticed him, like a secret mark had been placed on him that only Harry could see.”

“The real monster […], the real nightmare monster, formed of cloud and ash and dark flames, but with real muscle, real strength, real red eyes that glared back at him and flashing teeth that would eat his mother alive.”

“And then she groaned, deep in her chest, her mouth still closed. It was a sound so painful, Conor could barely keep himself from putting his hands over his ears.”

“I’ve known forever she wasn’t going to make it, almost from the beginning. She said she was getting better because that’s what I wanted to hear. And I believed her. Except I didn’t.”

“Even though it walked and talked, even though it was bigger than his house and could swallow him in one bite, the monster was still, at the end of the day, just a yew tree. Conor could even see more berries growing from the branches at its elbows.”

″ ‘Conor O’Malley,’ he said, his voice growing poisonous now. ‘Who everyone’s sorry for because of his mum. Who swans around school acting like he’s so different, like no one knows his suffering.’ ”

″ ‘What’s the use of you if you can’t heal her?’ Conor said, pounding away. ‘Just stupid stories and getting me into trouble and everyone looking at me like I’ve got a disease.’ ”

“He was inside the nightmare.”

“Don’t be stupid,” he told himself. “You’re too old for monsters.”

“And then one day the invisible man decided, the monster said, its voice ringing in Conor’s ears, I will make them see me.”

“She hadn’t tied her scarf around her head yet this morning, and her bare scalp looked too soft, too fragile in the morning light, like a baby’s. It made Conor’s stomach hurt to see it.”

″ ‘You be as angry as you need to be,’ she said. ‘Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise. Not your grandma, not your dad, no one. And if you need to break things, then by God, you break them good and hard.’ ”

″ ‘You know that is not true,’ the monster said. ‘You know that your truth, the one that you hide, Conor O’Malley, is the thing you are most afraid of.’ ”