S. J. Watson - Before I Go to Sleep (2011)

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I wish I hadn't. I wish I'd fought for you. I was weak and stupid.

S. J. Watson
I closed my eyes and he kissed my eyelids, barely brushing them with his lips. I felt safe, at home. I felt as if here, against his body, was the only place in which I belonged. The only place I had ever wanted to be. We lay in silence for a while, holding each other, our skin merging, our breathing synchronized. I felt as if silence might allow the moment to last for ever, which would still not be enough.

S. J. Watson
Thoughts race, as if, in a mind devoid of memory, each idea has too much space to grow and move, to collide with others in a shower of sparks before spinning off into its own distance.

S. J. Watson
It's so difficult, isn't it? To see what's going on when you're in the absolute middle of something? It's only with hindsight we can see things for what they are.

S. J. Watson
There were never going to be any happy endings for me. I know that now. But that is all right.

S. J. Watson
I step back further, until I feel cold tiles against my back. It is then I get the glimmer that I associate with memory. As my mind tries to settle on it, it flutters away, like ashes caught in a breeze, and I realize that in my life there is a then, a before, though before what I cannot say, and there is a now, and there is nothing between the two but a long, silent emptiness that has led me here, to me and him, in this house.

S. J. Watson
With him everything is a test, affection is measured, that given weighed against that which has been received, and the balance, more often than not, disappointing him.

S. J. Watson
"Is it possible to both want and not want something at the same time? For desire to ride with fear?

S. J. Watson
We're constantly changing facts, rewriting history to make things easier, to make them fit in with our preferred version of events. We do it automatically. We invent memories. Without thinking. If we tell ourselves something happened often enough we start to believe it, and then we can actually remember it.

S. J. Watson
Whatever enjoyment I might have had at the time would disappear overnight like snow melting on a warm roof.

S. J. Watson