“We became friends, I suppose, because we lived close to each other and it suited us and because when you are young friendships go unquestioned.”
― Aminatta Forna, quote from The Hired Man
“There's something uncomfortable about looking at pictures of your parents at a time when they made each other happy.”
― Aminatta Forna, quote from The Hired Man
“Here in the hills the rain washing down my face feels good. I lift up my head and open my mouth and let the water in, it is sweet, pure and sweet. I shield my eyes and look in the direction of the town, invisible behind the torrent of water. Let it run, I think, through the streets, down the gutters, into drains until it is carried away by the river. Let it wash away the shit and the pus and the blood, the things that can be washed away. But let it also wash away the fear and the malice and the spite, the things that are harder to erase.”
― Aminatta Forna, quote from The Hired Man
“Whenever he was asked what somebody had died of he'd reply (with immense gravity), "Lack of breath.”
― Aminatta Forna, quote from The Hired Man
“There's nothing new about this story of ours, such things happen. Love misses its mark, arrives too early or too late. Nobody dies, except in novels.”
― Aminatta Forna, quote from The Hired Man
“People said it was a song about drugs, but John Lennon said the name came from a picture his son painted of a girl at school.”
― Aminatta Forna, quote from The Hired Man
“I’d always kept an eye on the house. I don’t mean doing repairs, for as the house didn’t belong to me that was not my place, but rather I’d keep watch over its decline. The changes come slowly, like watching a woman age: another line, the spread of crow’s feet, age spots rising slowly to the surface. One day the face you know is ravaged.”
― Aminatta Forna, quote from The Hired Man
“For a long time, as I waited for her to return, I believed she knew I was there behind the trees and that this was my doing. That she knew I would come. For who else could it have been?”
― Aminatta Forna, quote from The Hired Man
“There are after all, and as Laura said, so many summers.”
― Aminatta Forna, quote from The Hired Man
Aminatta Forna
Born place: Glasgow, The United Kingdom
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“All my girlhood I always planned to do something big…something constructive. It’s queer what ambitious dreams a girl has when she is young. I thought I would sing before big audiences or paint lovely pictures or write a splendid book. I always had that feeling in me of wanting to do something worth while. And just think, Laura…now I am eighty and I have not painted nor written nor sung.”
“But you’ve done lots of things, Grandma. You’ve baked bread…and pieced quilts…and taken care of your children.”
Old Abbie Deal patted the young girl’s hand. “Well…well…out of the mouths of babes. That’s just it, Laura, I’ve only baked bread and pieced quilts and taken care of children. But some women have to, don’t they?...But I’ve dreamed dreams, Laura. All the time I was cooking and patching and washing, I dreamed dreams. And I think I dreamed them into the children…and the children are carrying them out...doing all the things I wanted to and couldn’t.”
― Bess Streeter Aldrich, quote from A Lantern in Her Hand
“Weedon Scott had set himself the task of redeeming White Fang - or rather, of redeeming mankind from the wrong it had done White Fang. It was a matter of principle and conscience. He felt that the ill done White Fang was a debt incurred by man and that it must be paid.”
― Jack London, quote from The Call of the Wild/White Fang
“Your woman wears underwear out in public,”
Sabin said. “Must be nice. How’d you manage that
little miracle?”
“Only the Deity knows.”
― Gena Showalter, quote from The Darkest Surrender
“Intelligence is relatively new to life on Earth, but your hierarchical tendencies are ancient.”
― Octavia E. Butler, quote from Lilith's Brood
“The life of my people is to remember forever; each head granary is full. The life of your people is to forget: your thing granaries ("museums"), and not yourselves, are full.”
― Alice Walker, quote from The Temple of My Familiar
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The Fallen StarBookQuoters 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.
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