The Thorn Birds

by Colleen McCullough

All I had when I got here were a face and a figure and a better brain than women are supposed to have,

And gradually his memory slipped a little, as memories do, even those with so much love attached to them; as if there is an unconscious healing process within the mind which mends us in spite of our desperate determination never to forget.

No matter what had gone or what might come, she confronted it and accepted it, stored it away to fuel the furnace of her being. What had taught her that? Could it be taught?

“It’s not worth getting upset about, Mrs. Dominic. Down in the city they don’t know how the other half lives, and they can afford the luxury of doting on their animals as if they were children. Out here it’s different. You’ll never see man, woman or child in need of help go ignored out here, yet in the city those same people who dote on their pets will completely ignore a cry of help from a human being.”

the ways of our lives lie not in our hands. We met because it was meant to be,

“My boys, my boys!” cried Mrs. Smith, running to them, tears streaming down her face. No, it didn’t matter what they had done, how much they had changed; they were still her little babies she had washed, diapered, fed, whose tears she had dried, whose wounds she had kissed better. Only the wounds they harbored now were beyond her power to heal.

Like the old Celtic legend of the bird with the thorn in its breast, singing its heart out and dying.

to. We can know what we do wrong even before we do it, but self-knowledge can’t affect or change the outcome, can it? Everyone singing his own little song, convinced it’s the most wonderful song the world has ever heard. Don’t you see? We create our own thorns, and never stop to count the cost. All we can do is suffer the pain, and tell ourselves it was well worth it.”

That’s the purpose of old age, Meggie. To give us a breathing space before we die, in which to see why we did what we did.”