Fall on Your Knees

Memory plays tricks. Memory is another word for story, and nothing is more unreliable.

She's no lady. Her songs are all unbelievably unhappy or lewd. It's called Blues. She sings about sore feet, sexual relations, baked goods, killing your lover, being broke, men called Daddy, women who dress like men, working, praying for rain. Jail and trains. Whiskey and morphine. She tells stories between verses and everyone in the place shouts out how true it all is.

Hope is a gift. You can't choose to have it. To believe and yet to have no hope is to thirst beside a fountain.

Do you think there's such a thing as a ghost who masquerades as a person? Do you believe that there are people whose bodies are still alive here on earth but whose souls are already in hell?

Everything in New York is a photograph. All the things that are supposed to be dirty or rough or unrefined are the most beautiful things. Garbage cans at the ends of alleyways look like they've been up all night talking with each other. Doorways with peeling paint look like the wise lines around an old feller's eyes. I stop and stare but can't stay because men always think I'm selling something. Or worse, giving something away. I wish I could be invisible. Or at least I wish I didn't look like someone they want to look at. They stop being part of the picture, they get up from their chess game and come out of the frame at me, blocking my view.

They are so young, they forget that the world is not as in love with them as they are.

I am burning. I have to live, I have to sing, I want to transform myself into a thousand different characters and carry their life with me onto the stage where it's so bright and so dark at the same time, just knowing there are three thousand people out there longing to be swept away by the passion that's about to flood out from scarlet curtains, to this I consecrate my body and my soul, I can give no more than all of myself, I feel my heart is a throbbing engine and my voice is the valve, like a wailing train, it has to sing or blow up, there's too much fuel, too much fire, and what am I to do with this voice if I can't let it out, it's not just singing. I am here as a speck, but I don't feel scared or about to be blown away, I feel like all New York is a warm embrace just waiting to enfold me. I am in love. But not with a person. I am passionately in love with my life.

Under a smoky streetlamp I stood face to face with my beloved and pricked my fingers against the diamond studs of her immaculate shirt front. Being tall, she slipped her hands naturally about my hips and pulled me close. And being bold, I put my mouth on hers and this time went inside and told her all the things I’d been longing to. Dark and sweet, the elixir of love is in her mouth. The more I drink, the more I remember all the things we’ve never done. I was a ghost until I touched you. Never swallowed mortal food until I tasted you, never understood the spoken word until I found your tongue. I’ve been a sleep-walker, sad somnambula, hands outstretched to strike the solid thing that could awaken me to life at last. I have only ever stood here under this lamp, against your body, I’ve missed you all my life.

To believe and yet to have no hope is to thirst beside a fountain.

You think you're safe. Until you see a picture like that. And then you know you'll always be a slave to the present because the present is more powerful than the past, no matter how long ago the present happened.

The thief you must fear the most is not the one who steals mere things.

Materia had been just six when they docked in Sydney Harbour and her father said, 'Look. This is the New World. Anything is possible here.' She's been too young to realize that he was talking to her brother.

Lies like that are not a sin, they are a sacrifice.

What is the good of believing fervently in God if you wind up hating Him?

The world should not be organized to require heroines, and when one is required but fails to appear, we should not judge.

She learns a valuable lesson: if you think you are good, just try doing good. You’ll soon find out how inadequate your little drop of goodness is.

Having experienced her own disappearance, she is conscious of how important it is for people to be seen, so when she looks at them --even the blind one--she also looks for them, just in case they too have got lost and need finding.

My first advantage: I have everything. My second advantage: this is just another island. My third advantage: I am bigger than it all.

He would have enough money...for a family that would fill his house with beautiful music and the silence of good books.

She wonders when it was that she began to despair. All these years she mistook it for pious resignation. Now she sees the difference. Such a fine line between a state of grace and a state of mortal sin. What is the good of believing fervently in God if you wind up hating Him?

He thought his heart would kill him, he'd had no clue what it was capable of.

She is why purgatory was invented.

It's his last thrill and his last sting of love, as fresh and painful as youth transplanted over time and an ocean. There is nothing left for him now except to die, but that will take a while because he is a creature of habit, and he has got into the habit of being alive.

An unhappily married woman is necessarily a bad cook.

But I have discovered something about modest people. They're just waiting for the call. Then they are the first over the wall and into the temple.

The world should not be organized to require heroines, and when one is required but fails to appear we should not judge. We should just say, poor Camille, she turned into a bitch the way most people would have—and stay out of her way.

Memory plays tricks. Memory is another word for story, and nothing is more unreliable.” ― Ann-Marie MacDonald, Fall on Your Knees

Books were not an expense; they were an investment.

From the book: Fall On Your Knees pg. 124 One day, I'll sit down with all my books around me, and just start reading.