“Though I obviously have no proof of this, the one aspect of life that seems clear to me is that good people do whatever they believe is the right thing to do. Being virtuous is hard, not easy. The idea of doing good things simply because you’re good seems like a zero-sum game; I’m not even sure those actions would still qualify as ‘good,’ since they’d merely be a function of normal behavior. Regardless of what kind of god you believe in—a loving god, a vengeful god, a capricious god, a snooty beret-wearing French god, or whatever—one has to assume that you can’t be penalized for doing the things you believe to be truly righteous and just. Certainly, this creates some pretty glaring problems: Hitler may have thought he was serving God. Stalin may have thought he was serving God (or something vaguely similar). I’m certain Osama bin Laden was positive he was serving God. It’s not hard to fathom that all of those maniacs were certain that what they were doing was right. Meanwhile, I constantly do things that I know are wrong; they’re not on the same scale as incinerating Jews or blowing up skyscrapers, but my motivations might be worse. I have looked directly into the eyes of a woman I loved and told her lies for no reason, except that those lies would allow me to continue having sex with another woman I cared about less. This act did not kill 20 million Russian peasants, but it might be more ‘diabolical’ in a literal sense. If I died and found out I was going to hell and Stalin was in heaven, I would note the irony, but I couldn’t complain. I don’t make the fucking rules.”
My mother took seventeen years to die. I counted.
She died in a house on the Jellicoe Road. The prettiest road I’d ever seen, where trees made breezy canopies like a tunnel to Shangri-La.
- Jellicoe Road
Hannah looks stunned. ”What do you want me to say? That if he asked me to marry him, I’d say yes? Okay. Yes. But grief makes a monster out of us sometimes, Taylor, and sometimes you say and do things to the people you love that you can’t forgive yourself for.”
- Jellicoe Road
Did she look at me and tell me she loved me? Or did she not speak at all because the words would slice her throat, leaving her to bleed to death all the way back?
- Jellicoe Road
VALENTINE:
(looking at torn and chewed pages from books on the floor)
You’re in one of the other things in life to avoid.
HELENA finds a high shelf with a few worn hardback books.
HELENA:
What, a junk room?
VALENTINE:
No… trouble.
- Mirrormask Illustrated Film Script
I sat with him and he showed me how to make a placemat out of thistles. We let the thistles prick our fingers to make them bleed because they made us feel alive.
Then we spoke about our dreams and how we always felt safe in them, no matter how bad everything else seemed. He told me it was one of the best days of his life and then he took out his gun. A .22 rifle. And he leaned forward and whispered, “Forgive me, Taylor Markham.” Before I could ask him how he knew my name and what I was to forgive him for he said, “Take care of my little girl.”
And then he told me to close my eyes.
And I think I’ve been frightened to do just that ever since.
- Jellicoe Road
Except this boy is dead and the unnaturalness of it makes me want to pull my hair out with Tate’s and Narnie’s and Fitz’s and Jude’s grief all combined. It makes me want to yell at the God I wish I didn’t believe in. For hogging him all to himself. I want to say, You greedy God. Give him back. I need him here.
- Jellicoe Road
“You know what I think,” I tell him. ”You thought I was too much baggage. Or maybe you got bored. Like she would have. She’d get bored being good. She’d get bored trying to go clean. She got bored being my mother. And I wanted to ask her why, but you switched off and you rang the Brigadier to come and get you when I was so close to where I wanted to be and I can’t believe that you preferred to miss out on seeing your mum and brother just so you wouldn’t have to spend another moment with me.”
- Jellicoe Road
“You care about nothing, you piece of shit!”
I’m on the verge of tears, like I always seem to be these days, and I hear the catch in my voice and I hate myself for it. He throws me off and I can tell there is a fury in him.
“Never,” he tells me in a tone full of ice, “underestimate who or what I care for.”
- Jellicoe Road
I feel his fingers on my collarbone, faintly tracing the marks where my buttons scratched my skin when he grabbed me days before.
“I shouldn’t have said what I said,” I say quietly. “I don’t know why I did.”
He shrugs. ”I didn’t come here to ask or give forgiveness.”
And it’s like a trigger word, making every pulse inside of me throb. ”Forgive me,” I whisper, dizzy from the sensation.
He leans forward and out foreheads are almost touching and for a moment, a tiny moment, a slight vulnerability appears on his face.
“Nothing to forgive,” he says.
I shake my head. ”No. That’s what he said. ’Forgive me.’ It’s what the Hermit said before he shot himself.”
- Jellicoe Road
