Quotes from The Hand That First Held Mine

“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

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Popular quotes

“ощущение независимости достигается, как мы считаем, высвобождением или пробуждением трех способностей: включённости в настоящее, спонтанности и близости”
― Eric Berne, quote from Games People Play

“A mí cada vez que alguien me hablaba me entraban ganas de tirarme por la ventana o de escapar en el ascensor. La gente, simplemente, no me resultaba interesante. Quizá no tenía por qué serlo. Pero los animales, los pájaros, incluso los insectos lo eran. No podía entenderlo.”
― Charles Bukowski, quote from Hollywood

“I told Tamsin that I didn’t believe in happily ever after anymore. I believed my heart was broken beyond repair and that anyone this broken could not possibly be happy and, therefore, never have a happy ending. I believed Trik was gone, that he had chosen a life of darkness over me. Turns out I was wrong, not about the happy part, but about Trik. He had chosen me. He saved me, or what was left of me. But I have not chosen him. I can’t. He is not what I crave and what I crave I cannot have. So I can’t choose Trik, and all that is left for me to choose is existence or death. Flip the coin, tails stares back at me. Death it is.”
― Quinn Loftis, quote from Elfin

“You know who you are you just have to believe it.”
― Elizabeth Scott, quote from Stealing Heaven

“Faith, thought Eszter . . . is not a matter of believing something, but believing that somehow things could be different; in the same way, music was not the articulation of some better part of ourselves, or a reference to some notion of a better world, but a disguising of the fact of our irredeemable selves and the sorry state of the world, but no, not merely a disguising but a complete, twisted denial of such facts: it was a cure that did not work, a barbiturate that functioned as an opiate.”
― László Krasznahorkai, quote from The Melancholy of Resistance

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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.