“Ruth once told me when I went to visit her at HMP Highpoint that it is surprising how much of what you imagine to be your innate sense of self actually comes from things that aren't one's self at all:… — Alexander Masters Copy Share Image
“I have a great sense of Stuart and silence on these nights. The village, wrapped in sleep; owls glide between the yew trees, badgers poddle across the graves. Then Stuart, cleaving the peacefulness. All people, gone. No educational experts, medical specialists, bullies, policemen. His mother's disapproval, hot on his heels, runs out of breath after half a mile. It is… — Alexander Masters Copy Share
“And it is strange: a few moments after the cars that brought us down drive off, I become aware that already I have discovered something new. Because we do not have a place of our own, nor will have for the next three days, we must invent one. I catch myself, and the eyes of one or two others, searching… — Alexander Masters Copy Share
Twenty miles on, we have spotted a roadside sign: 'CHAINSAW CARVED MUSHROOMS'. Troubles promptly forgotten, Stuart falls to gawping at the road ahead. What could it all be about? 'As one victim to another,' his body language seems to marvel, 'What's a mushroom done to deserve that kind of abuse?' Not even in the worst days of street-fighting did he… — Alexander Masters Copy Share
“You'd think the homeless would despise the rest of us, but it seems the thing they want to do most is talk. If only… — Alexander Masters Copy Share Image
I don't know, Alexander, sometimes it gets so bad you can't think of nothing better to do than make it worse. — Alexander Masters Copy Share Image
“Disobedience is one of the few tricks you have left to hang on to the idea that you continue to exist distinctively and are… — Alexander Masters Copy Share Image
“Sometimes Stuart seems like an irritable fisherman. He bobs about, on the disruption of his life, a small, unsteady figure, fishing for order. Then… — Alexander Masters Copy Share Image
And so on, until you arrive at the other side, among the purely abstract self-harming: the grinding over your failures, the refusal to remember anything good, the determination to ensure - if anyone falls into the mistake of making it clear they actually like you - that the next time round they change their opinion pronto. Emotional self-cannibalism, in other… — Alexander Masters Copy Share
“Is this what real homelessness is like? Not just a particular set of roof and walls gone, but a sense of the death of… — Alexander Masters Copy Share Image
It's a question I often ask myself: what would I do with me? And I don't know the answer. I don't know what I'd… — Alexander Masters Copy Share Image
“As his mother drove him away on the day he was let out, Stuart broke the cardinal prison rule: like Lot's wife, he looked… — Alexander Masters Copy Share Image
