79 Quotes by Maggie O'Farrell

  • Author Maggie O'Farrell
  • Quote

    But there is nothing. A high whine of nothing, like the absence of noise when a church bell falls silent.

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  • Author Maggie O'Farrell
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    I find,′ he says, his voice still muffled, ’that I am constantly wondering where he is. Where he has gone. It is like a wheel ceaselessly turning at the back of my mind. Whatever I am doing, wherever I am, I am thinking: Where is he, where is he? He can’t have just vanished. He must be somewhere. All I have to do is find him. I look for him everywhere, in every street, in every crowd, in every audience. That’s what I am doing, when I look out at them all: I try to find him, or a version of him.

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  • Author Maggie O'Farrell
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    And Agnes finds she can bear anything except her child’s pain. She can bear separation, sickness, blows, birth, deprivation, hunger, unfairness, seclusion, but not this: her child, looking down at her dead twin. Her child, sobbing for her lost brother. Her child, racked with grief.

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  • Author Maggie O'Farrell
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    Love is not changed by death and nothing is lost, and all in the end is harvest.

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  • Author Maggie O'Farrell
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    He can feel Death in the room, hovering in the shadows, over there beside the door, head averted, but watching all the same, always watching. It is waiting, biding its time. It will slide forward on skinless feet, with breath of damp ashes, to take her, to clasp her in its cold embrace, and he, Hamnet, will not be able to wrest her free.

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  • Author Maggie O'Farrell
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    That the things in life which don’t go to plan are usually more important, more formative, in the long run, than the things that do.

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