Gaze Quote by Cath Crowley
““Michael comes to the door with Frederick. ‘Lucky I was here playing Scrabble,’ Frederick says, as they take Henry off my hands. I follow with the wallet and keys that have fallen from his pocket. ‘My father,’ Henry says as they tumble through the door. ‘My son,’ his dad replies, helping him towards the fiction couch. ‘Amy’s going out with Greg Smith,’ I say to explain why Henry’s drunk. ‘I found him in the girls’ toilets.’ ‘In my defence, I was too drunk to know it was the girls’ toilets,’ Henry says. ‘Go to sleep,’ his dad tells him. ‘It’ll seem better in the morning.’ ‘No offence, Dad,’ Henry says, ‘but unrequited love is just as shit in the morning as it is at night. Possibly worse, because you have a whole day ahead of you.’ ‘No offence taken,’ Michael says. ‘You’ve got a point there.’ ‘They should just kill the victims of unrequited love,’ Henry says. ‘They should just take us out the second it happens.’ ‘That would certainly thin the population,’ Michael says, as he tucks a blanket around him.””
About This Quote
Source Novel: The Girl Who Was Not There, Cath Crowley, 2015
A chaotic scene reveals characters coping with grief, love, and absurdity through dark humor and fragmented dialogue.
In simple terms: People deal with pain and confusion in strange, humorous ways.
Find humor amid chaos.
Themes
Mood
Type
When to use this quote
- family conflict
- addiction
- mental health crises
- nighttime conversations
Key Concepts
Questions to Reflect On
- What does the absurdity reveal about coping?
- How does humor affect tragedy?
The dialogue is disjointed, making the core message hard to pin down.