“I'll understand if you don't want me. But I will be heartbroken. You are all I ever dreamed of and hoped for. You are much, much more. Please know that I didn't think I was mean-minded. But I realize I am. I don't want you to put your arms around me and say it's all right, that you forgive me. I want you to be sure that you do, and my love for you will last as long as I live. I can see no lightness, no humour, no joke to make. I just hope that we will be able to go back to when we had laughter, and the world was coloured, not black and white and grey. I am so sorry for hurting you. I could inflict all kinds of pain on myself, but it would not take back any I gave to you. - David Power”
― Maeve Binchy, quote from Echoes
“Angela was being reassuring. Someone must have been getting at the child. Wouldn’t you think they’d be delighted to see someone try to get on? Give some encouragement and support. But it had never been the way. “I do worry a bit. I don’t want to be abnormal.” Clare was solemn. “Well, I hope you’re not bigheaded enough to think that you’re something special. That would be a sin of Pride you know.” “I suppose so.” “You can know it, not suppose it. It’s there in black and white in the catechism. The two great sins against Hope are Pride and Despair. You mustn’t get drawn toward either of them.”
― Maeve Binchy, quote from Echoes
“There are some things that are neither right nor wrong. You can’t have rules laid down for. Would you understand that?” “Yes,” Clare said immediately, “I would. Like the Holy Ghost.” “Like what?” “Like the Holy Ghost. We have to believe in Him without understanding Him. He’s not a bird and He’s not a great wind. He’s something though, and that should be enough without understanding it.” “I don’t think that’s the same at all,” said Agnes, troubled. “But if it helps you to understand the problems of trade in a small town, then for heaven’s sake, use”
― Maeve Binchy, quote from Echoes
“There are some things that are neither right nor wrong. You can’t have rules laid down for. Would you understand that?” “Yes,” Clare said immediately, “I would. Like the Holy Ghost.” “Like what?” “Like the Holy Ghost. We have to believe in Him without understanding Him. He’s not a bird and He’s not a great wind. He’s something though, and that should be enough without understanding it.” “I don’t think that’s the same at all,” said Agnes, troubled. “But if it helps you to understand the problems of trade in a small town, then for heaven’s sake, use it.”
― Maeve Binchy, quote from Echoes
“Now when she had been hoping for a cigarette and a look at the paper she had to waltz this ridiculous nun downtown to buy a postcard or whatever it was she wanted. “Why don’t they allow you out on your own, Mother? I’m delighted to accompany you of course, but I’ve often wondered.” “It’s part of our Rule,” Immaculata said smugly. Angela felt like punching her in the face. “Are they afraid you’ll make a run for it?” she asked. “Hardly, Miss O’Hara.” “Well there must be some reason but I suppose we’ll never know.” “We rarely question the Rule.” “No, I suppose you don’t. That’s where you have my wholehearted admiration. I’d question it from morning to night.” The nun gave a tinny little laugh. “Oh, I’m sure you would, Miss O’Hara.”
― Maeve Binchy, quote from Echoes
“Here, you can read the letter. . . . See if you know what he wants. See if you know what I’m meant to do.” Angela didn’t reach out to take the ill-written pages on their lined paper. She sat with her elbows on her knees and her head in her hands. There was a silence for a while. “I don’t need to read the letter. I know what he wants,” Angela said eventually. “He wants you to make the decisions. He wants you to take on the responsibility.” Clare was surprised. “Why?” “Because you’re not Chrissie, who wouldn’t know what day it was, and you’re not your mother who would cry her eyes out, and you’re not your father who would get into a temper and you’re not Ben and Jim who are too young to be taken into account. And because you’re bright and got a scholarship, that’s going to fit you and make you ready for any burden from now on.”
― Maeve Binchy, quote from Echoes
“She sat icy and withdrawn. She had hoped he would touch her, put his arms around her. Now she felt she would kill him if he tried.”
― Maeve Binchy, quote from Echoes
“Nolan said his mother had got a bit better about things and that she had agreed to go away next summer for a holiday by the sea. Nolan’s whole family had been wanting to do this for ages but his mother had always said the seaside was full of rats and beetles and sea snakes. St. Patrick had only got rid of the land snakes according to Nolan’s mother, but he had no power over the huge snakes calling themselves eels which came in on beaches all over the country.”
― Maeve Binchy, quote from Echoes
“She looked nice, he thought, when she was being enthusiastic and cheering him up, she looked young herself. It was when her face was discontented that she developed the pouting, double-chinned look of her mother—a woman who had been born disagreeable and lived to make life disagreeable for everyone round her until last year when she got a coronary right in the middle of complaining that she hadn’t got enough presents for her seventieth birthday.”
― Maeve Binchy, quote from Echoes
Maeve Binchy
Born place: in Dalkey, County Dublin, Ireland
Born date May 28, 1940
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