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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“The cultural work done in the past by gods and epic sagas is now done by laundry-detergent commercials and comic-strip character”
― Roland Barthes, quote from Mythologies
“Why is it their business? They expect me to go sit at their fucking picnic—alone—and watch them with their happy fucking little families, and I’m supposed to pretend like the one person in this town I give a damn about doesn’t even exist?” “Uh….” I couldn’t really think of anything to say to that. I couldn’t believe that he had said any of it and was pretty sure he wouldn’t have on any normal day. But it didn’t matter. He was still talking, and the pull on the back of my head had resumed.”
― Marie Sexton, quote from Promises
“Truth and trust are the means by which civilization holds off barbarism.”
― Mercedes Lackey, quote from Alta
“got a kick in the ass from one of our clients. He’d lost his sight in an accident—hard enough, but he was a surgeon. His career, in his mind, was over.” “Was it?” “Of course not. He couldn’t do surgery, but he could other things. Over time, and with a lot of nagging, he began to accept that. He restarted his life, reinvented himself.” “You saved him.” She shook her head, embarrassed. “No. I was just his friend.”
― Karen Rose, quote from I Can See You
“I've developed contours for his elbows and knees and bum, and nobody else quite fits into me in quite the same way”
― Nick Hornby, quote from How to Be Good
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