7 Quotes by Kathleen MacMahon

Fifty-one years old and still only slowly coming to some understanding of my life, I sat on a beach on the Costa Brava, digesting the terrifying knowledge that we hold in our hands each other's fragile hearts, and can treat them as gently or roughly as we please.

It was exhausting to me, and touching at the same time, how my friends took such care to gather up every morsel of her life. They collated these shards of her history with all the white-glove care of archaeologists gathering up the fragments of some precious artefact.

The pain was still there, the pain was always there, but I had a soothing feeling on top of it, like when you apply a cooling gel to sunburn.

A man is tested only a few times in his life, that's what Hugh said afterwards. He will seldom recognise the test when it comes along. And by the time he realises that it was a test, it will be too late. But how he behaves in that moment, that's what defines him. That's the mark of the man.

I understood for the first time how correct it was to say that she was 'survived by her husband'. I had seen that expression used in obituaries without ever giving it a thought, but it turned out to be a term of great precision. I had survived Mary Rose only barely. I was struggling to survive her.

I know what you're saying, and of course there will be a moment of sadness, always, that Mary Rose isn't there. But the happy occasions will still be happy occasions, because that's how life works. Happiness trumps sadness, every time. If it didn't, we couldn't survive.

She's a reader, she's always searching out the story