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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“Life's sloppy...You think you know how tomorrow's going to be, you've made your plans, everything is set in place, and then the unimaginable happens. Life catches you by surprise. It always does. But there's good mixed in with the bad. It's there. You just have to recognize it.”
― Susan Beth Pfeffer, quote from This World We Live In
“Would 'sorry' have made any difference? Does it ever? It's just a word. One word against a thousand actions.”
― Sarah Ockler, quote from Bittersweet
“Before they were done, he'd bought her tons of new clothes, underwear, perfume-because a saleslady had accosted them and he decided she definitely needed to smell like what was on that little white card-a new sketchbook, a watercolor of the Golden Gate Bridge he bought from a woman on the street, and a top-of-the-line MacBook with a pink carry case.”
― Trinity Faegen, quote from The Redemption of Ajax
“I am much better at saying how I feel when I no longer feel it.”
― Jeanette Winterson, quote from Gut Symmetries
“Lost friend, lost child, lost parent, sister, brother, husband, wife, we will not so discard you! You shall hold your cherished places in our Christmas hearts, and by our Christmas fires; and in the season of immortal hope, and on the birthday of immortal mercy, we will shut out Nothing!”
― Charles Dickens, quote from A Christmas Carol, The Chimes and The Cricket on the Hearth
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