Bernard MacLaverty Quotes

He continued talking. "When you find out about real education you can never leave it alone. I don't mean A-levels and things like that - you are just proving something to yourself with them - but books, ideas, feelings. Everything to do with up here." He tapped his temple. "And here." He tapped the middle of his chest.

It's a bad day when the biggest thing you catch is a seagull.

Sit down, son, don't loom.

They are angry men with vision, Brother, and by God their anger is justified. Ireland has not much longer to suffer. Her misery will soon be over and we'll be a united country again." "Yes," said Brother Sebastian, "but I don't like their methods." "Nor do I, Brother. Nor do I. But do you like the methods of the British Government any better?

Cal, the world is full of gulpins who don't care who they hurt.

Neil offered his arm as she lowered herself from the step to the ground. "What a polite young man." "That's my mother's fault."

"But listen to this," Kathleen laughed and wheezed. "We had been talking about books. He tells me he reads a lot - as a matter of fact he's book mad - and when I came in with the tea I said 'Do you like Earl Grey?' and he says, 'I don't know. What did he write?' Isn't that marvellous?" Mary smiled and nodded while Kathleen giggled uncontrollably.

He no longer believed in any of it. Faith was a bit like luck. Spiritual luck. By the end of his novitiate it had begun to drain away. He struggled and prayed to retain it but each morning that he awoke he realized that he had less of it. He had sprung a leak and he didn't know where to mend it. Nevertheless he took his final vows. He did not know what else he could do. To back out at that stage would have killed his father. He was convinced of it. Once he had discussed the problem with his Novice Master but he had averted his face and told him to pray. After this his prayers carried an extra phrase - if You exist. God, if You exist, help me. But this compromise eventually gave way to not praying at all. He felt totally trapped. [...] It was funny in a way that it was his love for his father and a desire not to hurt him that kept him for so long in the Brothers. But when his father died everything changed.

Suddenly a police Land Rover with its hee-haw siren blaring swung into the main road behind them with a squeal of tyres. It roared along and overtook them so fast its body tilted at an angle to the chassis. Someone said, "Jesus, they'll sell no ice cream going at that speed."

I come from the kind of house where if my father saw me with a book in my hand he'd say, "Can you not find something better to do?"

A summer insect flew into the metal dome of the Anglepoise and knocked around like a tiny knuckle.

It's all going far too well," said Gerry. "A bad omen.

I wish I was artistic," said Liz, "then I could be temperamental.

On the wall above the desk was an ikon he had bought in Thessaloníki - he afterwards discovered that he had paid too much for it. It had been hanging for some months before he noticed, his attention focused by a moment of rare idleness, that Christ had a woodworm hole in the pupil of his left eye. It was inconspicuous by its position, and rather than detracting from the impact, he felt the ikon was enhanced by the authenticity of this small defect.

When they finally got into the foyer there were some enlarged black and white photographs. Anne in her school playground before the war. Anne in the street with friends. Anne at a desk, writing.