“I look placid, you see, that's why people think I'm fine. Inside I worry a lot.”
― Maeve Binchy, quote from Tara Road
“She put her head down on the table and cried all the tears that she knew she should have cried in the past year and a half. But they weren't ready then, they were now.”
― Maeve Binchy, quote from Tara Road
“If you had your time all over again....? She was keen to know.
You can't rewrite history. I have no idea what I'd do.”
― Maeve Binchy, quote from Tara Road
“Listen to me, Ria. It will be different when you and I have a home. It will be a real home, one that people will want to come running back to.”
― Maeve Binchy, quote from Tara Road
“It was quite possible that she had lost the capacity to love and care anymore and that this is how she was going to be for the rest of her life.”
― Maeve Binchy, quote from Tara Road
“He had not known it was possible to love a little human being as he loved Annie.”
― Maeve Binchy, quote from Tara Road
“anyway, encouraging her daughter in breaking up another man’s family, having the baby of a married man? Some help and example she must have been to Bernadette if this is the way things turned out. But then Ria realized that it could not have been what that woman wanted for her daughter either. Possibly she had been horrified by it all as Ria would be horrified if her own Annie were to get involved with a middle-aged married man. Possibly the mother hadn’t been told that Danny was married at the start. And had then become suspicious. Suddenly Ria remembered the woman who had telephoned her, the voice demanding to know if she was Mrs. Danny Lynch. This was the woman. Danny had concocted some cock-and-bull story at the time, but had later admitted it. Ria would have done the same if Annie were to be involved with a married man. She would have called the house to check if his wife really existed. To speak to the enemy. This woman probably loved her daughter too. She would have wished for a boyfriend who was young and single. But who could know what a daughter was going to do? Was seeing Bernadette better than not seeing her? She sat in the car biting her lip and wondering. Possibly better. It meant that now there was no more imagining. It had cleared that area of speculation from her mind. It didn’t make it any more bearable that she was so young. Or forgivable. There was a knock on the car window and Ria jumped. For a mad moment she thought Bernadette and her mother were about to confront her. But it was the anxious face of a traffic warden. “You were not even thinking about”
― Maeve Binchy, quote from Tara Road
“well. The term “frocky” was used a lot as a derogatory description for women that Eileen and Stephanie thought were dressing just to please male egos. Yet”
― Maeve Binchy, quote from Tara Road
“would want if she were able to speak, Nora”
― Maeve Binchy, quote from Tara Road
“he must not know how much power he had to move her.”
― Maeve Binchy, quote from Tara Road
“He called everyone sweetheart. There was nothing particularly special about it.”
― Maeve Binchy, quote from Tara Road
Maeve Binchy
Born place: in Dalkey, County Dublin, Ireland
Born date May 28, 1940
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“Everything is more complicated than you think. You only see a tenth of what is true. There are a million little strings attached to every choice you make; you can destroy your life every time you choose. But maybe you won't know for twenty years. And you'll never ever trace it to its source. And you only get one chance to play it out. Just try and figure out your own divorce. And they say there is no fate, but there is: it's what you create. Even though the world goes on for eons and eons, you are here for a fraction of a fraction of a second. Most of your time is spent being dead or not yet born. But while alive, you wait in vain, wasting years, for a phone call or a letter or a look from someone or something to make it all right. And it never comes or it seems to but doesn't really. And so you spend your time in vague regret or vaguer hope for something good to come along. Something to make you feel connected, to make you feel whole, to make you feel loved.”
― Charlie Kaufman, quote from Synecdoche, New York: The Shooting Script
“that city, wherever it was, they had managed to create for themselves a pleasant, cultured way of life. And that was the cardinal sin for which they were now paying so dearly.”
― Miklós Nyiszli, quote from Auschwitz: A Doctor's Eyewitness Account
“She asked another question: "What does it matter if the rhinos die out? Is it really important that they are saved?"
This would normally have riled me... but I had come to think of her as Dr. Spock from Star Trek - an emotionless, purely logical creature, at least with regards to her feelings for animals. Like Spock, though, I knew there were one or two things that stirred her, so I gave an honest reply.
"... to be honest, it doesn't matter. No economy will suffer, nobody will go hungry, no diseases will be spawned. Yet there will never be a way to place a value on what we have lost. Future children will see rhinos only in books and wonder how we let them go so easily. It would be like lighting a fire in the Louvre and watching the Mona Lisa burn. Most people would think 'What a pity' and leave it at that while only a few wept”
― Peter Allison, quote from Whatever You Do, Don't Run: True Tales Of A Botswana Safari Guide
“...they were exactly what the other needed; the missing piece that made everything else magically click into place.”
― Jennifer McMahon, quote from Don't Breathe a Word
“[...] I look in the mirror every day, when I brush my teeth or wash my face or comb my hair. It's just I tend to look at myself in pieces and avoid joining them up all together. I don't know why; it just feels safer that way.
But tonight I force myself to look at the whole thing. And suddenly I see how the bits and pieces add up to someone I'm not familiar with, someone I never intended to be.”
― Kathleen Tessaro, quote from Elegance
Tilt
This Song Will Save...
The Queen
Hostage to Pleasure
Naked Empire
In the Belly of the...BookQuoters is a community of passionate readers who enjoy sharing the most meaningful, memorable and interesting quotes from great books. As the world communicates more and more via texts, memes and sound bytes, short but profound quotes from books have become more relevant and important. For some of us a quote becomes a mantra, a goal or a philosophy by which we live. For all of us, quotes are a great way to remember a book and to carry with us the author’s best ideas.
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