Bernard MacLaverty > Quotes

“What was love but a lifetime of conversations. And silences. Knowing when to be silent. Above all, knowing when to laugh.”
― Bernard MacLaverty, Midwinter Break

“He believed that everything and everybody in the world was worthy of notice but this person beside him was something beyond that. To him her presence was as important as the world. And the stars around it. If she was an instance of the goodness in this world then passing through by her was miracle enough.”
― Bernard MacLaverty, Midwinter Break

“Every time I open my glasses case nowadays,’ he said. ‘I am pleasantly surprised to find my glasses.”
― Bernard MacLaverty, Midwinter Break

“The heart never taking a break. The bowels never taking a nap. When it stopped, that was the day it was all over.”
― Bernard MacLaverty, Midwinter Break

“Do all the good you can, by all the means you can, in all the places you can, and so on and so on.”
― Bernard MacLaverty, Midwinter Break

“Whereas you do man-work. Build something and it’s there for hundreds of years. I cook the food, do the dishes, hang out the sheets, pay gas bills, electricity bills and it all has to be done again the next time. As Virginia Woolf says, “Nothing remains of it.”
― Bernard MacLaverty, Midwinter Break

“Then in an explosion of wings all the pigeons rose and took to the air. ‘Why do they do that?’ ‘What?’ ‘The simultaneous thing. One goes, they all go.’ ‘They must be Catholics.”
― Bernard MacLaverty, Midwinter Break

“He could not bear to look up and see the flutter of Union Jacks, and now the red and white cross of the Ulster flag with its red hand.”
― Bernard MacLaverty, Cal

“The fuckin’ cavemen had it right. They knew. An afternoon’s work killing a dinosaur and live off it for a couple of weeks.”
― Bernard MacLaverty, Lamb

“The parade led by Evangelists screaming about sin and death and damnation.”
― Bernard MacLaverty, Cal

“In the panic, I forgot.’ ‘Forgot what?’ ‘Conditioner.’ ‘The paparazzi will know. It’ll be all over the papers in the morning.”
― Bernard MacLaverty, Midwinter Break

“But some day, somehow she would move into soul. It happened to everybody who had ever lived since the beginning of time. Soul was her, minus her body.”
― Bernard MacLaverty, Midwinter Break