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

“Jim watched them eat, his eyes fixed on every morsel that entered their mouth. When the oldest of the four soldiers had finished he scraped some burnt rice and fish scales from the side of the cooking pot. A first-class private of some forty years, with slow, careful hands, he beckoned Jim forward and handed him his mess tin. As they smoked their cigarettes the Japanese smiled to themselves, watching Jim devour the shreds of fatty rice. It was his first hot food since he had left he hospital, and the heat and greasy flavour stung his gums. Tears swam in his eyes. The Japanese soldier who had taken pity on Jim, recognising that this small boy was starving, began to laugh good-naturedly, and pulled the rubber plug from his metal water-bottle. Jim drank the clear, chlorine-flavoured liquid, so unlike the stagnant water in the taps of the Columbia Road. He choked, carefully swallowed his vomit, and tittered into his hands, grinning at the Japanese. Soon they were all laughing together, sitting back in the deep grass beside the drained swimming-pool.”
― J.G. Ballard, quote from Empire of the Sun

“It was strange the way he loved her: a sidelong and almost casual love, as if loving her were simply a matter of course, too natural to mention. Like their first meeting on the steps of the gym, when he’d hardly so much as glanced at her. With David and every guy before David, what passed for love had always been eye to eye, nose to nose; she felt watched, observed, like the prize inhabitant of a zoo, and she wound up pacing, preening, watching back, to fit the part. Whereas Mike was always beside her.”
― Chad Harbach, quote from The Art of Fielding

“Scott could feel the contents of his stomach flip over and over on themselves. He turned to the side and retched, frothy yellow bile spilled out onto the newspaper covered floor, filling the room with the putrid stench of previously ingested alcohol.

'Look's like someone can't hold their drink,' McBlane said, and Dominic and Shugg laughed.

Scott was still staring at the steam rising from his evacuated stomach contents as he heard the hammer fall. The dull crack of bone splintering under its weight.”
― quote from The Elephant Tree

“Trudy Bennett, I love you beyond any lyrics I could ever write, or any words I could ever say. I always have, and I always will. Marry me?”
― Samantha Towle, quote from The Mighty Storm

“If I'd written all the truth I knew for the past ten years, about 600 people - including me - would be rotting in prison cells from Rio to Seattle today. Absolute truth is a very rare and dangerous commodity in the context of professional journalism.”
― Hunter S. Thompson, quote from Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail '72

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.