Maggie O'Farrell · 277 pages
Rating: (21.4K votes)
“We are all, Esme decides, just vessels through which identities pass: we are lent features, gestures, habits, then we hand them on. Nothing is our own. We begin in the world as anagrams of our antecedents.”
― Maggie O'Farrell, quote from The Vanishing Act of Esme Lennox
“It is a terrible thing to want something you cannot have. It takes you over. I couldn't think straight because of it. There was no one else, I realized, whom I could possibly tell.”
― Maggie O'Farrell, quote from The Vanishing Act of Esme Lennox
“Two and a half thousand left-handed people are killed every year using things made for right-handed people.”
― Maggie O'Farrell, quote from The Vanishing Act of Esme Lennox
“She walks slowly. She wants to feel the prick, the push of every bit of gravel under her shoe. She wants to feel every scratch, every discomfort of this....her leaving walk.”
― Maggie O'Farrell, quote from The Vanishing Act of Esme Lennox
“We begin in the world as anagrams of our antecedents.”
― Maggie O'Farrell, quote from The Vanishing Act of Esme Lennox
“Two women in a room. One seated, one standing”
― Maggie O'Farrell, quote from The Vanishing Act of Esme Lennox
“Her grandmother keeps announcing that Esme will never find a husband if she doesn't change her ways. Yesterday, when she said it at breakfast, Esme replied "Good" and was sent to finish her meal in the kitchen.”
― Maggie O'Farrell, quote from The Vanishing Act of Esme Lennox
“It was always the meaningless tasks that endure: the washing, the cooing, the clearing, the cleaning. Never anything majestic or significant, just the tiny rituals that hold together the seams of human life.”
― Maggie O'Farrell, quote from The Vanishing Act of Esme Lennox
“The dress bunched up like loose skin round her neck. It wouldn't behave, wouldn't act as if it was really hers. Wearing it was like being in a three legged race with someone you didn't like.”
― Maggie O'Farrell, quote from The Vanishing Act of Esme Lennox
“ear, ‘did you know that two and a half thousand left-handed people are killed every year using things made for right-handed people?”
― Maggie O'Farrell, quote from The Vanishing Act of Esme Lennox
Maggie O'Farrell
Born place: Coleraine, Ireland
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“Real, sane, mature love—the kind that pays the mortgage year after year and picks up the kids after school—is not based on infatuation but on affection and respect.”
― Elizabeth Gilbert, quote from Committed: A Skeptic Makes Peace with Marriage
“Someone is watching you. Or, someone is probably watching you. Or, you feel like someone’s watching you. So you follow the rules whether someone’s watching you or not.”
― E. Lockhart, quote from The Disreputable History of Frankie Landau-Banks
“Language is the continuation of coercion by other means."
"Bullshit. It's cooperation." Both theories explained what had happened plausibly. I resisted, because it felt trite, saying that they weren't as contradictory as they sounded.”
― China Miéville, quote from Embassytown
“People need meaning as much as they need air. Lucky for us, we can give meaning to each other for free. Just by being alive.”
― Daniel H. Wilson, quote from Robopocalypse
“Maybe he does show himself to us, but we don’t see. Maybe it’s not our senses that are the problem, but our minds.”
― Ted Dekker, quote from The Complete Circle Series
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