13
“…my memory of it is that my approaching Tommy that afternoon
was part of a phase I was going through at that time—“
16
“If you think about it, being dependent on each other to produce
the stuff that might become your private treasures—
that’s bound to do things to your relationships.”
19
“Tommy and I talked about all this not so long ago,
and his own account of how his troubles began confirmed what I was thinking that night.”
22
“There’d been no real change in Tommy’s work—
his reputation for ‘creativity’ was as low as ever.”
23
“What she said was that if I didn’t want to be creative,
if I really didn’t feel like it, that was perfectly all right.”
30
“But what is her gallery? She keeps coming here and taking away our best work.”
32
“If for us the Gallery remained in a hazy realm,
what was solid enough fact was Madame’s turning up usually twice—
sometimes three or four times—each year to select from our best work.”
35
“Ruth had been right: Madame was afraid of us”
38-39
“I can remember one or two students not bothering much
with their collections, but most of us took enormous care, …“
39
“…there were reports of guardians talking—even arguing—about the tokens question.”
40
“One day, I hope, it’ll be explained to you.”
45
“What I want to do now is get a few things down about Ruth,
about how we met and became friends, about our early days together.”
68-69
“You’ve been told about it. You’re students. You’re … special.
So keeping yourselves well, keeping yourselves very healthy inside,
that’s much more important for each of you than it is for me.”
70
“What made the tape so special for me was
this one particular song: track number three, ‘Never Let Me Go.‘“
81
“You’ll become adults, then before you’re old,
before you’re even middle-aged, you’ll start to donate your vital organs.”
89
“None of us stopped to think about how she felt, Miss Lucy herself.
We never worried if she’d got into trouble,
saying what she did to us. We were so selfish back then.”
108-109
“Look, there are all kinds of things you don’t understand,
Tommy, and I can’t tell you about them. Things about Hailsham,
about your place in the wider world, all kinds of things.”
117
“But this was one thing we’d been told over and over:
that after Hailsham there’d be no more guardians,
so we’d have to look after each other.”
129
“In those first months at the Cottages,
our friendship had stayed intact because, on my side at least,
I’d had this notion there were two quite separate Ruths.”
139
“Since each of us was copied at some point from a normal person,
there must be, for each of us, somewhere out there,
a model getting on with his or her life.”
142
“I suppose it was mainly us newcomers who talked about ‘dream futures’ that winter,
though a number of veterans did too.”
149
“As it turned out, though, it was just about the last moment like that
between me and Ruth for the rest of that outing.”
155
“A look had appeared in Tommy’s eyes that made me catch my breath.
It was one I hadn’t seen for a long time and that belonged to the Tommy
who’d had to be barricaded inside a classroom while he kicked over desks.”
169
“Ruth was getting people to look for it and
saying you were really upset about losing it. So I tried to find it.”
175
“But the point is, whoever decides,
Madame or whoever it is, they need something to go on.”
187
“So I was taken aback at how densely detailed each one was.
In fact, it took a moment to see they were animals at all.”
197
“But the fact was, I suppose, there were powerful tides tugging us apart by then,
and it only needed something like that to finish the task.
If we’d understood that back then—who knows?—
maybe we’d have kept a tighter hold of one another.”
198
“Though they still made a show of being a couple—
they still did the punching-on-the-arm thing when they parted—
I knew them well enough to see they’d grown quite distant from each other.”
213
“But it definitely felt like Hailsham’s going away had shifted everything around us.”
232
“The main thing is, I kept you and Tommy apart.”
237
“I became Tommy’s carer almost a year to the day after that trip to see the boat.”
246
“From days before we went, I’d had in my mind this picture of
me and Tommy standing in front of that door,
working up the nerve to press the bell,
then having to wait there with hearts thumping.”
253
“You believe this? That you’re deeply in love?
And therefore you’ve come to me for this …
this deferral? Why? Why did you come to me?“
254
“Poor creatures. What did we do to you? With all our schemes and plans?“
261
“Most importantly, we demonstrated to the world that
if students were reared in humane, cultivated environments,
it was possible for them to grow to be as
sensitive and intelligent as any ordinary human being.”
264
“The world didn’t want to be reminded how the donation programme really worked.”
269
“We’re all afraid of you. I myself had to fight back my dread of
you all almost every day I was at Hailsham.”
272
“I saw a new world coming rapidly. More scientific, efficient, yes.
More cures for the old sicknesses. Very good. But a harsh, cruel world.”
276
“For one thing, though Tommy carried on with his animal pictures,
he became cagey about doing them in my presence.”
280
“Kath, I think I ought to get a different carer.”
284
“She always wanted to believe in things. That was Ruth.
So yeah, in a way, I think it’s best the way it happened.”