“There was a lull when we came in. Gene and Blondey just stood there, looking at nobody; all they wanted was cigarettes. There were some pretty girls, too. And one of them made eyes at Blondey and he never saw it, and if he had he wouldn’t have cared, he was so sad and gone.”
“Last night it had been my father who had finally said it, ‘She’s never coming home.’ A clear and easy piece of truth that everyone who had ever known me had accepted. But he needed to say it, and she needed to hear him say it.”
“Those days are gone, and good fucking riddance to them; unhappiness really meant something back then. Now it’s just a drag, like a cold or having no money. If you really wanted to mess me up, you should have got to me earlier.”
“And in that moment, everything I knew to be true about myself up until then was gone. I was acting like another woman, yet I was more myself than ever before.”
“He could not play the game without hope; could no play the game without a dream. They had taken it all away from him now, they had turned away from him and there was nothing for him now. The plane gone, his family gone, all of it gone. They would not come. He was alone and there was nothing for him.”
Where have they gone and will they be coming home again? When Griffin starts school and meets Princess Layla the answers to his questions gently start to unfold.
″‘Oh, Forrest,’ she say. ‘You have come home at last. There wadn’t a day gone by I didn’t think bout you, an I done cried myself to sleep ever night since you been gone.‘”
“When they said you were gone, I cried all night, I confessed. And the next morning, over hard-boiled eggs and sugar cereal, Shawn taught me Rule Number One— no crying.”
“The worst part, the absolute worst part, is the constant slipping of your tongue into the new empty space, where you know a tooth supposed to be but a’int no more.”
“And then one year she did not return and was never seen again. But when hunters next saw the wild horses there galloped beside the mighty stallion a beautiful mare with a mane and tail floating like wispy clouds about her. ”
“ ‘Mowzer, my handsome,’ he said, for he was a courteous and well-spoken man, ‘Mowzer, my handsome, it will soon be Christmas, and no man can stand by at Christmas and see the children starve. Someone must go fishing come what may, and I think it must be me. It cannot be the young men, for they have wives and children and mothers to weep for them if they do not return. But my wife and parents are dead long since and my children are grown and gone.’ “
“Everywhere I’d looked I’d seen faces full of smiles and laughter. But then, overnight, the party had ended. Not the Nazi Party. They had only gotten stronger. The other party- the feeling of unbounded German cheerfulness- was gone.”
“My sister looks like me- the same brown hair, eyes the same shade of gray... She is aways with the fairies, as my grandma used to say. She wasn’t always that way. Three years ago something happened that changed her. An accident. And just like that the sister I knew was gone. Now she doesn’t go out, doesn’t talk much, doesn’t think much as far as I can tell. She just is.”
“But little by little they had nibbled up most of the nuts and berries, the straw was gone, and the corn was only a memory. It was cold in the wall and no one felt like chatting.”
“I was waiting for the longest time, she said. I thought you forgot.
It is hard to forget, I said, when there is such an empty space when you are gone.”
″ ‘The ruby has fallen out of his sword, his eyes are gone, and he is golden no longer,’ said the Mayor in fact, ‘he is little better than a beggar.’ ”
″ ‘Why it’s gone!’ she said sadly, feeling once more just to make sure. The loose tooth was really and truly gone. The salty mud from her fingers tasted bitter, and she made a bitter-tasting face that was almost a face like crying.”
“Before he’s completely gone, I reach out to grab a single petal and hold it tight against my chest. But somehow it slips through my fingers and vanishes into the sky. Just like the rest of him.”
“As we shall now have no influence over his destiny, good or bad, you must say nothing of where he is gone to my daughter: she cannot associate with him hereafter, and it is better for her to remain in ignorance of his proximity; lest she should be restless, and anxious to visit the Heights. Merely tell her his father sent for him suddenly, and he has been obliged to leave us.”