The Lamplighters

It’s the small things that keep a marriage going: things that don’t cost a lot but that tell the other person you love them and don’t ask for anything in return.

Nothing changed, in the aftermath of loss. Songs kept getting written. Books kept getting read. Wars didn't stop....Life renewed itself, over and over, without sympathy. Time surged on in its usual rhythms, those comings and goings, beginnings and ends, sensible progressions that fixed things in place, without a thought to the whistling in the woods on the outskirts of town....

but that was the thing about light, I said, you don't need a lot of it. The other way round, a sliver of dark in a sunny garden, you'd never spot it, the light's stronger and quicker and the eye goes looking for it. If you think of the world like that, it doesn't seem as bad a place.

In all my years I've realized there are two kinds of people. The ones who hear a creak in a dark, lonely house, and shut the windows because it must have been the wind. And the ones who hear a creak in a dark, lonely house, light a candle, and go to take a look. [Helen Black]

In all my years I’ve realized there are two kinds of people. The ones who hear a creak in a dark, lonely house, and shut the windows because it must have been the wind. And the ones who hear a creak in a dark, lonely house, light a candle, and go to take a look.

You might say the problem is with me and your readers will, I’m sure. There’s nothing so hateful as a woman who gets involved with another woman’s husband. Never mind the husband’s part: he was tricked or seduced, most likely, and it’s funny how men insist on power in all aspects of their lives except when it does not suit them, and then they’re content to be feeble and let the women take responsibility

The time I think of you the most is when the sun comes up. The moment before, the minute or two, when night yawns for morning and the sea starts to separate from the sky.

Time gives you a bit of distance where you can look back on whatever's happened to you and not feel all the feelings you once had; those feeling have calmed down and they're not at the forefront of your mind in the way they are at the beginning.

Loneliness hardened in Arthur's stomach.... Frequently he could feel his loneliness: he could locate it with his fingers and if pushed too hard, it hurt. If he ate quickly, it hurt. He drank a lot of water, to flush it out, but it never came. He kept expecting to see it after he'd visited the lavatory. Small and blue. Afraid. He did not know what he would do with it. He did not know what he would do without it.

Arthur wasn't made of that and never had been. He could make a fist but not use it, however much he might like to.

He used to say his daddy was the sun after the sun had gone to bed, and all these years later, I still think that's the best description I've heard.

Maybe it was something I haven’t thought about yet because like my mum said, I don’t know anything. All I know is I don’t know anything at all.

I think it helps to get whatever it is inside your head and put it down on paper so you can look at it and then it seems smaller than before.

The thing about God’s light is it’s easy; it’s not hard to find. There might be moments in your life where you get a little bit of light, say if you have good news or a nice thing happens to you, and I think that’s like flicking a torch on. It’s bright while it lasts but it doesn’t last forever. God’s light lasts.

The way I look at it is there’s light and dark in the world and that’s what the whole world revolves around. There has to be light in order for there to be dark

It’s not like science for all its cleverness gets the answers. Take that about Creation. Science goes back with its theories about the Big Bang, but then it can’t get any further because there’s no reason why any of the stuff that was needed for the Big Bang to happen was there in the first place. All these particles and atoms or whatever was meant to go bang, they don’t come out of nowhere, do they? Bill said that’s why a lot of scientists believe. They know better than anyone that you can’t get something out of nothing.

it’s a waste to live a life where you only think about what’s in front of you and you never consider what else there is.

You don’t have to go to prison to know you’ve done wrong. Aren’t we all accountable, to a certain extent?

Lighthouse-keeping is the best job for someone who’s used to being closed off and living in confined spaces. They’re normally a very disciplined sort too, in being accustomed to a strict way of life.

I never used to bother with planting, but that’s helped me too. It’s about watching what you’ve put in the ground grow and flourish. If you’ve been through an ordeal like ours, you need to see the way life has of coming back again and again, against the odds,

Being on your own doesn’t mean you’re lonely and the other way around: you can be with lots of people, all chattering and nattering and demanding of your presence, and you can be the loneliest person there is.

It takes a special temperament. All the keepers I’ve known have had that shared thing in common, and that’s to be all right with their own company.

a morning so beautiful you wonder that heaven isn’t already here if only we took the time to look up and see,

memories are very intense when they first start up and they keep a powerful grip on you your whole life. You can’t always trust them, though.

They think being married to a lighthouse keeper must be glamorous, because of the mystery of it, but it isn’t.

Lighthouse people are ordinary. You’ll find that out and I hope it doesn’t disappoint you.

Helen remembered her husband in pieces, parched scales that blew about like leaves coming in through the kitchen door. Sometimes she would catch hold of one and be able to look at it properly, but mostly she watched those leaves blowing about her ankles and wondered how on earth she'd find the energy to sweep them up.

When you're seven," said Hannah, "it feels like life's just made up of moments. Pieces of the picture with nothing to connect them. It's not until later you can join the dots.

It’s disorientating to hear about things in the real world, the other world. That world could cease to be and for a time we’d be none the wiser