Bernard MacLaverty Quotes

"The individual matters," said Mrs Gallagher.

Love is a very strange idea. I never know what it is. When you were young it seemed to be all intensity and no opportunity. Later when you did get the opportunity the fire had gone out of it.

She smiled to prove everything was all right. It was an odd device, this rearrangement of muscles of the face which said everything is all right. No need to enquire within. It could be used as a barrier to fend off emotional intruders.

Now that they had mobile phones, theoretically it should have been easier to keep tabs on one another. But practically it had not helped. In the first instance you had to remember to bring the bloody thing with you. If you had it with you, invariably one or other of the mobiles was switched off or needed charging. And then, even if you did get through, Stella's phone had some mysterious setting which diverted incoming calls straight to 'Leave a message'. And her phone did not ring. And she did not answer it.

There's not much you can do in this world without people getting to know.

The island kids had TV, radio. Their remote surroundings were seen as a deprivation, not something to be enjoyed. They felt cut off from the mainstream. To be on an island was a source of discontent, not as good as the mainland.

She found a large and classy department store. Like any other city, Amsterdam was full of shops which sold things that nobody wanted. Or the kind of things some people wanted but nobody needed.

Look, see, behold. Above all, listen.

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.

You know how vivid things are in extremis. There's something going on in the brain. Chemicals. They make the moment indelible."

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

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.

A thing that really took his breath away was Norman Foster's roof over the Great Court at the British Museum - the audacity and brilliance of it. The approach inside the building from a periphery of darkness into the thrilling light at its centre - the largest covered square in Europe - was utterly wonderful.

"Bitter?" said the barmaid and he nodded. What a strange thing to call a drink. Bitter. Aloes. Sorrow. For something that was supposed to make you feel happy.

In a Portstewart guest house her father liked to play tricks when he had eaten his egg. He would put the shell upside down in someone else's eggcup. The McKennas would sit and watch the next person lift a spoon and cave in the top of the hollow egg.