31 quotes found
“Scars are just another kind of memory.”
“Your family's never in your past. You carry it around with you everywhere.”
“That's how life goes on - protected by the silence that anesthetizes shame.”
“Such a mysterious business, motherhood. How brave a woman must be to embark on it.”
“Being over there changes a man. Right and wrong don't look so different anymore to some.”
“This focusing outward...painful as it was, saved her from a more intolerable examination.”
“From when she was a baby, Tom has taught the girl to respect, but not fear, the forces of nature- the lightning that might strike the light tower on Janus, the oceans that batter the island.”
“We can't rightly ever talk about the future, if you think about it. We can only talk about what we imagine or wish for. It's not the same thing.”
“If the war had taught her anything, it was to take nothing for granted: that it wasnt safe to put off what mattered. Life could snatch away the things you treasured, and there was no getting them b...”
“Life, thought Septimus, ... you could never trust the bastard. What it gives with one hand, it takes away with the other.”
“Oh, but my treasure, it is so much less exhausting. You only have to forgive once. To resent, you have to do it all day, every day.”
“You have only to forgive once. To resent, you have to doit all day, every day. You have to keep remembering all the bad things" Frank to Hannah Roennfeldt”
“You've had so much strife but you're always happy. How do you do it? " "I choose to," he said. "I can leave myself to rot in the past, spend my time hating people for what happened...or I can forgi...”
“It is so much less exhausting. You only have to forgive once. To resent, you have to do it all day, every day. You have to keep remembering all the bad things ... I would have to make a list, a ver...”
“I can leave myself to rot in the past, spend my time hating people for what happened, like my father did, or I can forgive and forget.""But it's not that easy."He smiled that Frank smile. "Oh, but ...”
“Coming back last time to the house she grew up in, Isabel had been reminded of the darkness that had descended with her brothers' deaths, how loss had leaked all over her mother's life like a stain...”
“And the stars: the sky gets crowded at night, and it is a bit like watching a clock, seeing the constellations slide across the sky. Its comforting to know that theyll show up, however bad the day ...”
“He was a practical man: give him a sensitive technical instrument, and he could maintain it; something broken, and he could mend it, meditatively, efficiently. But confronted by his grieving wife, ...”
“Life could snatch away the things you treasured, and there was no getting them back. She began to feel an urgency, a need to seize an opportunity. Before anyone else did.”
“The only thing we can do is love that little girl as much as she deserves. And never, never hurt her!”
“What are you suggesting I do Ralph?Im suggesting you tell the bloody truth whatever it is. The only place lying leads is trouble.Sometimes thats the only place telling the truth get you, too.”
“Stick to now. Put right the things you can put right today, and let the ones from back then go. Leave the rest to the angels, or the devil or whoever's in charge of it.”
“Sometimes, you're the one who strikes it lucky. Sometimes, it's the other poor bastard who's left with the short straw, and you just have to shut up and get on with it.”
