50 Quotes by Gilly Macmillan

Were they being kind by not contacting me? Was that a thoughtful response? Or had they backed off now that I was tainted by misfortune, now that I was the person to whom the worst had happened, the one at the sharp end of the statistical wedge, where nobody else wants to be. I.

John couldn’t stand the waiting. He wanted to do something, so he spent most of the night driving around, circling the woods, following the routes back into Bristol, just in case. Each time he returned, he sat in my car and asked me to go over what had happened. ‘I’ve told you,’ I said, when he asked for the third time.

In the eyes of others, we’re often not who we imagine ourselves to be.

I should have celebrated my life as it was, imperfections, sadness and all, and not forensically examined its faults. Those faults were largely in the eyes of a critical and sharp-edged society anyhow, and I had learned to recognize them by osmosis, by following the herd. I had not yet learned to use my intelligence, or to trust in my instincts. I see more clearly now, and I shall never make that mistake again.

I didn’t realize that your mind could fall sick without your even noticing: incrementally, darkly, irrevocably.

There are some events and uncertainties that you take to the grave, and they threaten to tumble you every single step of the way. If.

Think for a moment of your life as a path that you’re moving forward on, not a place you’re stuck in. You can deal with this appropriately, and respectfully, and if you do that it will be possible to put it behind you.

The way she said his name, the tenderness in those two words, the loss, told me that it was Charlie who she mourned above all.

I believe that if you are lucky enough to have a child, then you should love them, whether or not society labels them as flawed, whether or not you label them as flawed. “You.