House of Trelawney

Can you miss someone you haven’t seen for longer than you knew them? Maybe we rue the time not the person.

. . . family is a thing you have to put up with. You hope to respect them, even like them, but it’s better not to set the bar too high.

Capriciousness is the preserve of the old. So marvelous to be able to let random thoughts pour from the mind to the tongue without pause or retribution.

He’d never understood women; men were so simple by comparison. Centuries of absolute power had dulled the male brain, whereas women, forced for so long to cajole and manipulate, had evolved into far more complex and capable beings.

You have an opportunity to help someone, and if there’s one thing I’ve learned in life,” Alvira continued, “it’s better to be needed than wanted. Desire and romantic love pass, leaving little trace. But dependency has an afterglow, the satisfaction of having done something good.

The mundanity of those chores, the repetition, acts as a kind of meditation. I start each day with a series of numbers and questions written on a piece of paper, put them in my pocket and get on with the business of farming. By mid morning the answers are clear.

He's so clear about who he is and what he stands for. Joshua doesn't try to prove anything or seek confirmation.. His parents must have adored him. That kind of confidence only comes with unconditional love.

whether people are with us or not, the relationship keeps on going. The dead only leave the room; they remain firmly in our lives.

Simply repeating customs and adopting past traditions are the preserves of the lazy and the unimaginative.

I’m not sure love makes sense even to those who are involved. If we could simply explain it like an algorithm or a theory, we might lose interest.

What happens between two people is mystifying; the opposite of what you think can be closer to the truth.

She dismissed the fantasy immediately; love was the preserve of the young, or of demented optimists, and she was a middle-aged rationalist.

One of the most unfair things about capitalism is that once you’ve made a lot of money, it becomes easier to make more: the wealthy don’t have to do a lot.

Real intimacy was a delicate cloth of shared experiences stitched together by tiny accretions of time, mutual trust and support. It wasn’t something that could be folded, put away and shaken out when the need presented itself.

Maybe I've got to that age when a woman turns to God, gardening or genealogy.

She let hope in—hope for a different kind of future and another long-lost dream: the longing to make someone else happy.

Is it about lack of closure, unfinished business?" he asked. "Or perhaps that, whether people are with us or not, the relationship keeps on going. The dead only leave the room; they remain firmly in our lives.

History is like waves on a seashore: tides come and go but nothing really changes.

Anastasia's letter had made her realise something: Jane didn't miss wealth, or youth; what she missed desperately was friendship.

Our ability to tell, create and believe in stories is Homo sapiens’s most powerful weapon. It’s how we organise ourselves, how we control each other, how we justify our decisions. If we didn’t have them, we’d be like fleas or rabbits or any other member of the animal kingdom, beings just trying to get through the day. Religion is just a story. Waitrose tells a better story than Lidl. Most things you learn at school are irrelevant, but you’ve been assured they’re important. You buy your car from one company over another because a salesman told you a better tale about its gearbox or revolutions per minute.

Trelawney is just a film set for our dreams and fantasies. Take away the script, the razzamatazz, the people or prestige, the power or money, and it’s just bricks and mortar.

After a while they came through a clearing and emerged in a deep cleft of a valley whose high banks were covered in wild flowers and grasses. Blaze gasped; it was enchanting. There was an open pasture planted with mature oaks and beech trees and through the middle a meandering river with sheep grazing on one side, cattle on the other. Occasionally there was a break in the ribbon of green made by a drystone wall, a rambling hedge or a small copse, but otherwise the valley seemed endless.

Aren’t we formed by the landscape we came from? I am a product of that earth and of the water that bubbles up from the springs. I can feel the floorboards under my feet, picture the rafters over my head, which came from the woods we played in. At night my dreams are full of the ghosts and echoes of my forebears; I am woken by their laughter and sighs. At Trelawney, I was part of a continuum, a pattern, but here in London I am nothing, no one. My tap water has been through eight other bodies, none of whom I will know or ever meet. Maybe I walk past them in the street, maybe not. I eat food grown in a country I’ll never visit. At Trelawney I had an identity. Here I am simply a statistic.

He loved Blaze for her awkwardness and lack of guile. He often wondered how, with all her success and business acumen, she had failed to develop better mechanisms for coping with life. Only a fragile membrane separated her feelings from the outside world. She was beautiful but could only see the ugly scar on her face. She polished her cleverness like a shield until it shone so brightly that others had to protect their minds from its piercing rays.