Maggie O'Farrell · 341 pages
Rating: (11.5K votes)
“You young people are always so obsessed with truth. The truth is often overrated.”
― Maggie O'Farrell, quote from The Hand That First Held Mine
“Listen. The trees in this story are stirring, trembling, readjusting themselves. A breeze is coming in gusts off the sea, and it is almost as if the trees know, in their restlessness, in their head-tossing impatience, that something is about to happen.”
― Maggie O'Farrell, quote from The Hand That First Held Mine
“And we forget because we must.”
― Maggie O'Farrell, quote from The Hand That First Held Mine
“There on the landing sits the typewriter. It is clogged with dust, the ribbon dried and flimsy. Looking at it gives Felix a feeling close to vertigo. He realises he can replicate in his head the exact sound it used to make. The clac-clac-a-clac of the metal letters hitting the paper, the ribbon raising itself each time to make the impression. The machine-gun fire of it, when the work was going well. The stops and pauses when it wasn't, to allow for a sigh, a draw on a cigarette. The ding every time the carriage reached its limit. The whirr as the page was snatched out, then the rolling ratcheting as a new one was wound in.”
― Maggie O'Farrell, quote from The Hand That First Held Mine
“He is momentarily filled with a kind of pity for his son. What a task lies ahead of him: to learn literally everything.”
― Maggie O'Farrell, quote from The Hand That First Held Mine
Maggie O'Farrell
Born place: Coleraine, Ireland
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“This kid grew up,” he threatened in a deep voice, grinding his hard-on between my legs. “And you’re gonna fuckin’ find out.” Oh. My. God.”
― Penelope Douglas, quote from Falling Away
“Making It in Hollywood is the most disgusting phrase in the English language. It’s more disturbing than prolific serial killer and rare terminal illness.”
― Caroline Kepnes, quote from Hidden Bodies
“People move on quicker than I can comprehend. People forget you within days, they take new pictures to put on Facebook and they don't read your messages. They keep on moving forward and shove you to the side because you make more mistakes than you should.”
― Alice Oseman, quote from Radio Silence
“Until It’s Gone
“Some people don’t know what they have until it’s gone.”
“But what about the ones who do know? The ones who never took a damn thing for granted? Who tried their hardest to hold on, yet could only look on helplessly while they lost the thing they loved the most.”
“Isn’t it so much worse for them?”
― Lang Leav, quote from The Universe of Us
“I go on writing in both respectable and despised genres because I respect them all, rejoice in their differences, and reject only the prejudice and ignorance that dismisses any book, unread, as not worth reading." -- "On Despising Genres," essay”
― Ursula K. Le Guin, quote from The Birthday of the World and Other Stories
Horns
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