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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“In no country has such constant care been taken as in America to trace two clearly distinct lines of action for the two sexes, and to make them keep pace one with the other, but in two pathways which are always different. American women never manage the outward concerns of the family, or conduct a business, or take a part in political life; nor are they, on the other hand, ever compelled to perform the rough labor of the fields, or to make any of those laborious exertions which demand the exertion of physical strength.
No families are so poor as to form an exception to this rule. If on the one hand an American woman cannot escape from the quiet circle of domestic employments, on the other hand she is never forced to go beyond it. Hence it is that the women of America, who often exhibit a masculine strength of understanding and a manly energy, generally preserve great delicacy of personal appearance and always retain the manners of women, although they sometimes show that they have the hearts and minds of men.
Nor have the Americans ever supposed that one consequence of democratic principles is the subversion of marital power, of the confusion of the natural authorities in families. They hold that every association must have a head in order to accomplish its object, and that the natural head of the conjugal association is man. They do not therefore deny him the right of directing his partner; and they maintain, that in the smaller association of husband and wife, as well as in the great social community, the object of democracy is to regulate and legalize the powers which are necessary, not to subvert all power.”
― Alexis de Tocqueville, quote from De la Démocratie en Amérique, tome II
“Our heart is wide enough to embrace the world and hands are long enough to encompass the world.”
― Amit Ray, quote from Nonviolence: The Transforming Power
“That's what we do. We sex things up.”
― Lauren Layne, quote from The Trouble with Love
“Mr. Offerman clasps his hand on top of hers. “It’s a good hobby for you, dear. It gets you out of the kitchen.”
I straighten my spine. Are we in the fifties here? “Out of the kitchen?”
― Lauren Blakely, quote from Big Rock
“Whether it's his training or his natural disposition, Deacon is charming. The kind of charming that makes you feel like you're the only person in the world who matters. Until you don't anymore.”
― Suzanne Young, quote from The Remedy
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