Jump and Other Stories

"A mother and father must never make any move that might jeopardize the opportunities they themselves have not been able to provide."

"A house and a car. Eventually some sort of decent position. Rehabilitated."

"Sometimes he found himself swimming underwater beneath them, his tough-skinned body grazing past like a shark."

"And so when we left we had among us only a child here and there who was raw-faced and blue-eyed; we were coloured neither very dark nor very light ."

"He could not say to this woman, That’s not what I read."

"He is not listening: the swell and clash, the tympani of conflict, the brass of glory, the chords of thrilling resolve, the maudlin strings of regret, the pauses of disgust—they come from inside him."

"We should have never allowed it. Giving in, letting you run wild with those boys. It started to go wrong then, we should have seen you were going to make a mess of our lives, I don’t know why. You had to go jumping from up there. Do you know what I felt, seeing you fall like that, enjoying yourself frightening us to death while you fooled around with killing yourself? We should have known it. Where it would end. Why did you have to be like that? Why? Why?"

"We were tired, so tired. My first-born brother and the man had to lift our grandfather from stone to stone where we found places to cross the rivers. Our grandmother is strong but her feet were bleeding. We could not carry the basket on our head any longer, we couldnt carry anything except my little brother. We left our things under a bush. As long as our bodies get there, our grandmother said."

"They had smashed his camera and locked him up like a black and he hated them and their government and everything they might do, whether it was good or bad."

"The curtains are open upon the dark, at night. When he gets up in the morning he closes them. By now they are on fire with the sun. The day pressing to enter. But his back is turned; he is an echo in the chamber of what was once the hotel."

"The boy would perhaps become an accountant, certainly something one rung above his father, because each generation must better itself, as they had done by emigrating."