Quotes from The Girl Who Came Home

“Life is fragile Grace – it is no more than a petal of cherry blossom; thriving and in full bloom one minute and blown to the ground by a sudden gust of wind the next. We shouldn’t take our life for granted and we should do whatever we can to make ourselves happy.”
― Hazel Gaynor, quote from The Girl Who Came Home

“Now you look here. All your father ever dreamed of for you was to do something you loved in life. He didn't care about fancy qualifications or fancy clothes or cars, just that you were both happy and fulfilled. He was so excited about your dreams for a career.”
― Hazel Gaynor, quote from The Girl Who Came Home

“Never leave yourself open to regret Grace. We can only make a decision when we know the choices we are faced with. If we shy away, turn our backs and hide, we will simply never know. And that is when you end up old and wondering and regretting. Live a life of hope. Don’t live a life of regret.”
― Hazel Gaynor, quote from The Girl Who Came Home

“you can always find a reason to begin again, whatever life has in store for you.”
― Hazel Gaynor, quote from The Girl Who Came Home

“Good news comes in large packages”
― Hazel Gaynor, quote from The Girl Who Came Home

“The girl who had left Ireland was gone to the bottom of the ocean with the rest of them.”
― Hazel Gaynor, quote from The Girl Who Came Home

“I suppose people move on, history moves on, and there will, sadly, always be something more terrible waiting around the corner.”
― Hazel Gaynor, quote from The Girl Who Came Home

“On an unknown path, every foot is slow.’ Take your time,”
― Hazel Gaynor, quote from The Girl Who Came Home

“Life is fragile, she heard Maggie saying, we never know what’s waiting around the corner.”
― Hazel Gaynor, quote from The Girl Who Came Home

“On an unknown path, every foot is slow.’ Take your time, Grace. Take one step at a time.”
― Hazel Gaynor, quote from The Girl Who Came Home

“here now; that it was this almost insignificant old lady who, as”
― Hazel Gaynor, quote from The Girl Who Came Home

“And as the smart ship grew In stature, grace, and hue In shadowy silent distance grew the Iceberg too. —THOMAS HARDY, FROM “THE CONVERGENCE OF THE TWAIN”(LINES ON THE LOSS OF TITANIC), 1912”
― Hazel Gaynor, quote from The Girl Who Came Home

“On an unknown path, every foot is slow.’ Take your time, Grace. Take one step”
― Hazel Gaynor, quote from The Girl Who Came Home

“As the spring months gave way to summer and then the first leaves of autumn started to fall from the trees by the lakeside, Séamus resolved to sell his da’s house and their small plot of land and travel to England with the money to work in the cotton mills. At least there he would have no reminders of the love he had known and lost. At least there he might stand a chance of putting Maggie Murphy and the horrors of Titanic from his mind. Fate had decided his path in life, and he now had to walk that path, wherever it might lead him.”
― Hazel Gaynor, quote from The Girl Who Came Home

“merrymaking. Yes, Katie would enjoy America, Frances thought as she put on her coat and her hat; in fact, America would enjoy Katie. She left her apartment block and, crossing the road, walked the short distance to the Ninth Avenue Elevated line at South Ferry. Although the elevated line took longer, she preferred not to take the subway system, being slightly claustrophobic. The idea of speeding along in a small underground train made her feel dizzy, so she preferred to travel aboveground by the El for her day of work as a domestic at the Walker-Browns’ residence. As she took her familiar journey north that morning, along Greenwich Street and Battery Place to Gansevoort Street in lower Manhattan and on to Ninth Avenue”
― Hazel Gaynor, quote from The Girl Who Came Home

“spend the day cleaning the houses of those businessmen,”
― Hazel Gaynor, quote from The Girl Who Came Home

“Grace loved the wildness of the wind, the way it whispered through the barley fields and sent ripples rushing along the rivers and lakes, and the clouds hurtling across the sky. To a girl who had spent her childhood outdoors, the wind brought a feeling of reckless freedom, reminding her that she was alive, feeding her soul with a new energy.”
― Hazel Gaynor, quote from The Girl Who Came Home

“On an unknown path, every foot is slow.”
― Hazel Gaynor, quote from The Girl Who Came Home

“Never leave yourself open to regret, Grace. We can only make a decision when we know the choices we are faced with. If we shy away, turn our backs and hide, we will simply never know. And that is when you end up old and wondering and regretting. Live a life of hope. Don’t live a life of regret.”
― Hazel Gaynor, quote from The Girl Who Came Home

“Life is fragile, Grace—it is no more than a petal of cherry blossom: thriving and in full bloom one minute and blown to the ground by a sudden gust of wind the next. We shouldn’t take our life for granted, and we should do whatever we can to make ourselves happy.”
― Hazel Gaynor, quote from The Girl Who Came Home

“Her father had once told her that water has a memory; that every rock, every stone, every grain of muddy sediment leaves something of a fingerprint in the water that flows over it. Grace liked this idea, imagining the water of the great lakes and oceans of the world to echo with the memories of the places, people, and events it had passed on its journey.”
― Hazel Gaynor, quote from The Girl Who Came Home

“We shouldn’t take our life for granted, and we should do whatever we can to make ourselves happy.”
― Hazel Gaynor, quote from The Girl Who Came Home

“Life is fragile Grace – it is no more than a petal of cherry blossom; thriving and in full bloom one minute and blown to the ground by a sudden gust of wind the next. We shouldn’t take our life for granted and we should do whatever we can to make ourselves happy.’ She”
― Hazel Gaynor, quote from The Girl Who Came Home

“way through the crowd that had gathered on”
― Hazel Gaynor, quote from The Girl Who Came Home

“If something’s worth doing, then it’s worth doing properly, even if it is only offering a biscuit with a cup of tea.”
― Hazel Gaynor, quote from The Girl Who Came Home

“It wasn’t worth agonizing over or wishing for things to be different or declaring that life was cruel in its playing out; that was just how it was, and how it would always be.”
― Hazel Gaynor, quote from The Girl Who Came Home

About the author

Popular quotes

“THE DEMAND TO be safe in relationship inevitably breeds sorrow and fear. This seeking for security is inviting insecurity. Have you ever found security in any of your relationships? Have you? Most of us want the security of loving and being loved, but is there love when each one of us is seeking his own security, his own particular path? We are not loved because we don't know how to love.”
― Jiddu Krishnamurti, quote from Freedom from the Known

“Type of men who gather up seven of themselves to attack two women in the middle of the night generally won't go back for dead friends.”
― Mindy McGinnis, quote from Not a Drop to Drink

“I’m just saying that when there is little left to lose, the consequences of one’s actions don’t carry the same weight…painful or otherwise.”
― Amy A. Bartol, quote from Under Different Stars

“In Jerusalem, as elsewhere in Palestine, the Haganah's basic strategy reflected a philosophy propounded by David Ben-Gurion. What the Jews had, they must hold. No Jew was to leave his home, his farm, his kibbutz, his office without permission. Every outpost, every settlement, every village, no matter how isolated, was to be clung to as though it were Tel Aviv itself.”
― Larry Collins, quote from O Jerusalem

“The American punctuation rule sticks in the craw of every computer scientist, logician, and linguist, because any ordering of typographical delimiters that fails to reflect the logical nesting of the content makes a shambles of their work.”
― Steven Pinker, quote from The Sense of Style: The Thinking Person's Guide to Writing in the 21st Century

Interesting books

About BookQuoters

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.

We thoughtfully gather quotes from our favorite books, both classic and current, and choose the ones that are most thought-provoking. Each quote represents a book that is interesting, well written and has potential to enhance the reader’s life. We also accept submissions from our visitors and will select the quotes we feel are most appealing to the BookQuoters community.

Founded in 2023, BookQuoters has quickly become a large and vibrant community of people who share an affinity for books. Books are seen by some as a throwback to a previous world; conversely, gleaning the main ideas of a book via a quote or a quick summary is typical of the Information Age but is a habit disdained by some diehard readers. We feel that we have the best of both worlds at BookQuoters; we read books cover-to-cover but offer you some of the highlights. We hope you’ll join us.