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

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Popular quotes

“They argue that the modern world was created by private capital. The subcontinent of India, for instance, was owned by the British East India Company, Indonesia by the Dutch East India Company, our neighbors by the British East Africa Company, and the Congo Free State by a one man corporation. Corporate capital was aided by missionary societies. What private capital did then it can do again; own and reshape the Third World in the image of the West without the slightest blot, blemish, or blotch. NGOs will do what the missionary charities did in the past. The world will no longer be composed of the outmoded twentieth-century divisions of East, West, and a directionless Third. The world will become one corporate globe divided into the incorporating and incorporated...to become the first voluntary corporate colony, the first in a new global order..with NGOs relieving us of social services, the country becomes your real estate.”
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“By the light," he said, when he had mastered himself. "I think that beats singing a lullaby to a stormdog for simplicity and economy, Maerad. But I wish I had known that you simply had to blow at Hulls to get rid of them. It would have saved me a few scars.”
― Alison Croggon, quote from The Singing

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― Laurell K. Hamilton, quote from Skin Trade

“Lovers' language, give me an exact and poetic comparison to say what those eyes of Capitu were like. No image comes to mind that doesn't offend against the rules of good style, to say what they were and what they did to me. Undertow eyes? Why not? Undertow. That's the notion that the new expression put in my head. They held some kind of mysterious, active fluid, a force that dragged one in, like the undertow of a wave retreating from the shore on stormy days. So as not to be dragged in, I held onto anything around them, her ears, her arms, her hair spread about her shoulders; but as soon as I returned to the pupils of her eyes again, the wave emerging from them grew towards me, deep and dark, threatening to envelop me, draw me in and swallow me up.”
― Machado de Assis, quote from Dom Casmurro

“The two “idiots” Ginger and Zach, both golden retrievers, both beautiful-looking dogs—and both thicker than bricks when it came to brains—had been out sunning on the bedroom deck. They stood up and barked madly, as if he were an invader. Though if he were a real invader they’d have cowered in terror and stained the carpet as they fled into Jennifer’s room to hide.”
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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.

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