This book shows the power and purpose of revisiting books. I first read it as part of my GCSE curriculum way, way back in the late 90s, and haven’t really thought about it since. It made almost zero impact on me other than vaguely remembering something dystopian about it.
Re-reading it, especially in today’s climate, showed me just how much I missed from it because either a) I was a teenage boy who couldn’t connect with the first-person narrative and so dismissed it, or b) I was taught it really badly. It’s probably a combination of the two, to be honest.
“There is more than one kind of freedom, said Aunt Lydia. Freedom to and freedom from.” p24
“When we think of the past it’s the beautiful things we pick out. We want to believe it was all like that.” p30
“The red is the same but there is no connection. The tulips are not tulips of blood, the red smiles are not flowers, neither thing makes a comment on the other. The tulip is not a reason for disbelief in the hanged man, or vice versa.” p34
“This may not seem ordinary to you now, but after a time it will. It will become ordinary.” p34
“Ignoring isn’t the same as ignorance, you have to work at it.” p56
“You can wet the rim of a glass and run your finger around the rim and it will make a sound. This is what I feel like: this sound of glass. I feel like the word shatter.” p103
“His face is beginning to fade, possibly because it wasn’t always the same: his face had different expressions, his clothes did not.” p104
“I didn’t much like it, this grudge-holding against the past.” p201
“Better never means better for everyone, he says. It always means worse, for some.” p211
“People will do anything rather than admit that their lives have no meaning. No use, that is. No plot.” p215