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
See more on GoodReads
“But free will is what it means to be human, and no one can determine the path you take through this universe. Choice is our greatest right, our greatest gift-and our greatest responsibility.”
― Amie Kaufman, quote from Their Fractured Light
“Hope had stolen into his life just as he was growing comfortable with despair.”
― David Leavitt, quote from The Lost Language of Cranes
“It is almost another kind of love, being loved. It is the same heat but from another room; it is the same sound but from a high window...”
― Andrew Sean Greer, quote from The Confessions of Max Tivoli
“... it is the purpose of this history to trace not the mere outlines of a life but the inner plan, not the external markings but the secret soul.”
― Steven Millhauser, quote from Edwin Mullhouse: The Life and Death of an American Writer 1943-1954 by Jeffrey Cartwright
“child of Amber may walk among them, and such was my heritage. You may call them parallel worlds if you wish, alternate universes if you would, the products of a deranged mind if you care to. I call them shadows, as do all who possess the power to walk among them. We select a possibility and we walk until we reach it. So, in a sense, we create it.”
― Roger Zelazny, quote from The Guns of Avalon
Life Without Princip...
The Garden of The Pr...
Do Yourself a Favor....
A Choir of Ill Child...
Queen of DreamsBookQuoters 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.
