The Clockmaker's Daughter

by Kate Morton

He had the preacher’s zeal, a way of expressing opinions that minted them into gleaming currency.

“a human being’s life and prospects must surely be improved by having a decent place to lay his or her head of a night.”

Human beings are curators. Each polishes his or her own favored memories, arranging them in order to create a narrative that pleases. Some events are repaired and buffed for display; others are deemed unworthy and cast aside, shelved belowground in the overflowing storeroom of the mind. There, with any luck, they are promptly forgotten. The process is not dishonest: it is the only way that people can live with themselves and the weight of their experiences.

“A line from which time begins,” he continued. “From the north to the south pole, it splits the earth in two.” So impressive did this sound, so vivid was my child’s imagination, that I suppose it was inevitable the reality would disappoint.

Mrs. Mack used to say that when it rained, it poured—which wasn’t a comment on the weather, although it took me a while to work that out, but an observation of the way misfortune seemed to invite further misfortune.

life is inherently unfair. That the only truly fair thing about it is the randomness of its unfairness.”

have developed a rather perverse streak, I fear; no doubt a consequence of boredom and its miserable twin, frustration.

Leonard got on well with children. With them there was none of the duplicity that adults relied upon to ease their way. They said what they meant and described what they saw, and when they disagreed, they fought and then made amends.

Hora pars vitae. His Latin teacher had made them write it out in lines. Every hour is a part of life.

Serius est quam cogitas, said the sundial in France. A modest construction in the garden of a small church where Leonard’s unit had collapsed, spent, during a muddy retreat. It’s later than you think.

It is no easy feat to invent a whole world, but Edward could do that. A setting, a narrative, characters who live and breathe—he was able to make the story come to life in someone else’s mind. Have you ever considered the logistics of that, Mr. Gilbert? The transfer of an idea? And, of course, a story is not a single idea; it is thousands of ideas, all working together in concert.”

I have lived a long time and I have learned that one must forgive oneself the past or else the journey into the future becomes unbearable.”

You know better than most that the account served up by the papers for public consumption often bears little relation to the truth.

She had recognized in him a kindred spirit, a fellow sufferer: the guilt of the sibling survivor.

Writing wasn’t something she did; it was who she was. How could he not realize that, the man with whom she’d pledged to spend her life, into whose ear she’d whispered her deepest secrets?

There was no going back. Time only moved in one direction. And it didn’t stop. It never stopped moving, not even to let a person think. The only way back was in one’s memories.

If you’re going to spend time with people, it’s important to choose people who can make you laugh.”

Amen!!!

There was a quality to the silence in such places that inspired reverence.

It was one of those occasions that came rarely, in which a parent recognized that what she said next would remain with her child forever.

Experiencing the world at one remove, through the windows of their phones, making images for later so that they do not need to bother seeing or feeling things now.

I have it on good authority that reading when hidden improves the experience immeasurably.”

“unimpeachable evidence of the photograph” and said that from now on nothing would happen without photography being used to create— “A tangible, transferable memory of the occurrence.”