Jill > Jill's Quotes

“People were buying milk, or filling their cars with petrol, or even posting letters. And what no one else knew was the appalling weight of the thing they were carrying inside. The superhuman effort it took sometimes to be normal, and a part of things that appeared both easy and everyday. The loneliness of that.”
― Rachel Joyce, The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry

“He had learned that it was the smallness of people that filled him with wonder and tenderness, and the loneliness of that too. The world was made up of people putting one foot in front of the other; and a life might appear ordinary simply because the person living it had been doing it for a long time. Harold could no longer pass a stranger without acknowledging the truth that everyone was the same, and also unique; and that this was the dilemma of being human.”
― Rachel Joyce, The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry

“In order to succeed he must remain true to the feeling that had inspired him in the first place. It didn’t matter that other people would do it in a different way; in fact, this was inevitable. …. He had a different map, one made up of all the people and places he had passed.”
― Rachel Joyce, The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry

“She would owe this understanding to her time in New York, and even more to Louise. That's what spending time with the young can do--it's the big payoff for all the pain. The young can exasperate, of course, and frighten, and condescend and insult, and cut you with their still unrounded edges. But they can also drag you, as you protest and scold and try to pull away, right up to the window of the future, and even push you through.”
― Laura Moriarty