7 Quotes by Patrick Gale

Might-have-beens are insidious, aren’t they, in the way they don’t ever quite lie still or go away.

He was not a scholar – his brain seemed too sluggish or too dreamy to grasp the things demanded of it – but he was never happier than when left alone among books, and would spend hours turning the pages of atlases, novels or tales from history, alive to the alternative versions of himself they seemed to proffer.

Bad men you want to kiss are the worst; he had only to use the right tone of voice and you offered your throat to the knife.

Grief was a kind of illness, he maintained, and ran a course as predictable as measles or the common cold. Its fever always abated, given time and management, leaving the luckier among them with scars where love had been.

She believed the key element to patriotism was display; that it was all about being seen to support a cause, being seen to wave a flag.

I worry sometimes that we’re apt to confuse forgiveness with forgetfulness. The potency of forgiveness comes precisely from the fact that it must be done while being goaded by an unhappy memory.

You don’t get over sorrow; you work your way right to the centre of it.