The Clockmaker's Daughter

Parents and children. The simplest relationship in the world and yet the most complex. One generation passes to the next a suitcase filled with jumbled jigsaw pieces from countless puzzles collected over time and says, ‘See what you can make out of these.

Human beings are curators. Each polishes his or her own favoured memories, arranging them in order to create a narrative that pleases. Some events are repaired and polished for display; others are deemed unworthy and cast aside, shelved below ground in the overflowing storeroom of the mind. There, with any luck, they are promptly forgotten. The process is not dishonest: it is the only way that people can live with themselves and the weight of their experiences.

People value shiny stones and lucky charms, but they forget that the most powerful talismans of all are the stories that we tell to ourselves and to others.

Each clock is unique,’ he used to tell me. ‘And just like a person, its face, whether plain or pretty, is but a mask for the intricate mechanism it conceals.

She used to say that the human heartbeat was the first music that a person heard, and that every child was born knowing the rhythm of her mother's song.

I have learned that one must forgive oneself the past or else the journey into the future becomes unbearable

It struck her now that maybe she needed to let go a bit more often. To try and, yes, occasionally to fail. To accept that life is messy and sometimes mistakes are made; that sometimes they’re not even really mistakes, because life isn’t linear, and it comprises countless small and large decisions every day.

Being a parent’s a breeze,” came Alan’s cheerful voice on the wind. “No more difficult than flying a plane with a blindfold on and holes in your wings.

There was no going back. Time only moved in one direction. And it didn't stop. It never stopped moving, not even to let a person think. The only way back was in one's memories.

There are very few certainties in this world, Mr. Gilbert, but I will tell you something I know: the truth depends on who it is that’s telling the story.

Sentimentality was mawkish and cloying, where nostalgia was acute and aching. It described yearning of the most profound kind: an awareness that time’s passage could not be stopped and there was no going back to reclaim a moment or a person or to do things differently.

The camera is ubiquitous. They all carry one now. Even as I watch, they traipse through the rooms of the house, pointing their devices at this chair or those tiles. Experiencing the world at one remove, through the windows of their phones, making images for later so that they do not need to bother seeing or feeling things now.

We are traveling each towards his sunset.

Love—that’s what she felt, an odd, strong, general love that seemed to flow from everything she saw and heard: the sunlit leaves, the dark hollows beneath the trees, the stones of the house, the birds that called as they flew overhead. And in its glow, she glimpsed momentarily what religious people must surely feel at church: the sense of being bathed in the light of certainty that comes with being known from the inside out, from belonging somewhere and to someone. It was simple. It was luminous, and beautiful, and true.

No matter what evil might come one's way to be loved is to be protected.

What a dignified object was a book, almost noble in its purpose.

he was always so brave. So resilient, I suppose—that seems to be the word du jour. It wasn’t that he didn’t feel things—many’s the time I saw him weep—but he dealt with his disappointment, with his hardship and grief; he picked himself up and went on, every time. And not like a mad person who refuses to recognize adversity, but like someone who accepts that life is inherently unfair. That the only truly fair thing about it is the randomness of its unfairness.” She topped up their glasses. “I’m telling you all this not because I feel like a stroll down memory lane or because I like to tell my young friends sad stories on sunny Friday evenings; I just— I wanted you to understand. I wanted you to see what a balm love is. What it is to share one’s life, to really share it, so that very little matters outside the certainty of its walls. Because the world is very noisy, Elodie, and although life is filled with joy and wonder, there’s evil and sorrow and injustice, too.

I don’t think I was planned exactly.” “I should say not,” he agreed. “But you were loved, which is arguably more important.

Don't slide down the rabbit hole. The way down is a breeze, but climbing back's a battle.

life’s only nod to fairness was the blindness with which it dealt unfair blows.

Stories have to be told or else they die.

Life is long” was all he’d said, his voice calm; he hadn’t looked up from the film. “Being human isn’t easy.

Human beings had ever been captivated by the great burning sphere in the heavens, he said, 'for not only does it give us warmth, but also light. The foremost craving of our souls.

Time is a strange and powerful beast. It has a habit of making the impossible possible.

I have come to understand that loss leaves a hole in a person and holes like to be filled. It is the natural order.

It wasn’t that he didn’t feel things—many’s the time I saw him weep—but he dealt with his disappointment, with his hardship and grief; he picked himself up and went on, every time. And not like a mad person who refuses to recognize adversity, but like someone who accepts that life is inherently unfair. That the only truly fair thing about it is the randomness of its unfairness.

Some nights she lay awake wondering how she could best divide her lifetime: there simply wasn’t enough of it for a person to ensure that they learned everything they wished to know.

What was real, he knew now, was the soil beneath a man's feet. The earth, the natural world, from which could be derived every necessity. and on which were preserved the imprints of every man, woman, and child that had ever lived.

Which wasn’t to say that loyalty wasn’t important, because Elodie believed strenuously that it was; only—maybe, just maybe—things weren’t as black-and-white as she had always believed. As her father and Tip kept trying to tell her, life was long; being a human wasn’t easy. And who was she to judge, anyway?

one must forgive oneself the past or else the journey into the future becomes unbearable.