The Keeper of Stories Quotes

“when you are a child, as you don’t ever think of yourself as young. You are just you, and will take up guilt and responsibility without noticing that they are far too large for you and that they are really things an adult should be wearing.”
― Sally Page, The Keeper of Stories

“Please, please, please say you like books.”
― Sally Page, The Keeper of Stories

“I figured out long ago that if I listen to the few people who shout at me, I am making them more important than they are.”
― Sally Page, The Keeper of Stories

“She wonders if part of storytelling is not only about sharing the good things in life but also enabling the storyteller to send the bad things out, to let them disperse like dust in the wind.”
― Sally Page, The Keeper of Stories

“These are other people’s stories. If she does have a part to play in them she knows she is a bit part, an extra.”
― Sally Page, The Keeper of Stories

“While there’s life, there’s hope’.”
― Sally Page, The Keeper of Stories

“Every man should leave a story better than he found it’,”
― Sally Page, The Keeper of Stories

“Perhaps some relationships blossom because they are formed at a specific time and space in your life?”
― Sally Page, The Keeper of Stories

“Those people, the quiet people, seem to have more important things to say.”
― Sally Page, The Keeper of Stories

“I think it's in people stories that you discover the best of what we can be.”
― Sally Page, The Keeper of Stories

“Perhaps guilt is like a disease. You can have it without knowing you do.”
― Sally Page, The Keeper of Stories

“she wonders if the story of life is a tragic comedy or a comic tragedy.”
― Sally Page, The Keeper of Stories

“She thinks maybe people talk to her because she believes in their stories.”
― Sally Page, The Keeper of Stories

“course all libraries have ghosts. Everyone knows ghosts like to read.”
― Sally Page, The Keeper of Stories

“there is extraordinary strength and goodness within normal, everyday people and, because of this, there is always hope.”
― Sally Page, The Keeper of Stories

“In those precious, glorious moments when her hips swayed in rhythm and her arms snuck free from her sides, she really didn’t care what anyone else in the room, or even in the world, thought of her. When she dances she is a lioness.”
― Sally Page, The Keeper of Stories

“Mrs. B now leans forward until she is nearly touching the table. “Janice, what is wrong?” Janice looks quickly at her and in a voice she hardly recognizes, forces herself to say brightly, “Great story, Mrs. B. Thank you for telling me. So the letters, and the deal, yes I can see, that’s how she got away with it.” Immediately, she knows her mistake. She cannot clean this up, cannot tidy it away into a cupboard. The inflection reverberates and she trembles with it: not she, but she. The she that tells of something shared. Janice wants to take that word and bundle it into a dark place where no one will ever find it. She sits completely still, listening to her own breathing, which she makes as quiet as she can, despite the pounding of her heart. Mrs. B sits back and does not say a word. Janice understands that there is no need for her to say anything. No need to tell Mrs. B her secret. The old woman already knows there are two women in this room who have killed someone. And Janice, like Becky, got away with it.”
― Sally Page, The Keeper of Stories

“This is all a warm-up for the main event. Janice has not asked Mrs. B about Becky’s story, although she dearly wants to hear it. Nor has Mrs. B broached the subject, despite the fact that Janice is pretty certain she wants to tell it. It has become a game of chicken. Mrs. B is the first to break, which surprises Janice. But at ninety-two, maybe she feels she hasn’t got time for any more of this shit.”
― Sally Page, The Keeper of Stories

“That’s why I don’t get colds.’ So she asked, how come? And he told her it was because he picked his nose and ate his bogies.”
― Sally Page, The Keeper of Stories

“she is a simple, homely bowl into which they can pour their confidences.”
― Sally Page, The Keeper of Stories

“Like the vicar who said to her friend, ‘The trouble about being a vicar is, if you ask someone how they are, they actually tell you.’ It made me think what that woman’s life must be like and I wonder if anyone ever asks how she is, and means it.”
― Sally Page, The Keeper of Stories

“Never tell your story to a deaf man.”
― Sally Page, The Keeper of Stories

“I don’t think guilt asks permission to come in. I don’t think it knocks and waits politely on the mat.”
― Sally Page, The Keeper of Stories

“I figured out long ago that if I listen to the few people who shout at me, I am making them more important than they are. What they say will stay with me,”
― Sally Page, The Keeper of Stories

“asks herself, if a heart can be broken, can it be put back together … perhaps not the same as before but so it is no longer the shattered wreck it was?”
― Sally Page, The Keeper of Stories

“maybe sometimes life is not about having a story; maybe it’s about finding one perfect moment.”
― Sally Page, The Keeper of Stories

“I had a mother on the bus the other day who was taking her son for an injection – some inoculation or other – and she was trying to explain to the lad how it worked. You know, how you are given a bit of the disease and then your body learns how to fight it. And her son said, ‘That’s why I don’t get colds.’ So she asked, how come? And he told her it was because he picked his nose and ate his bogies.”
― Sally Page, The Keeper of Stories

“Never judge a book by the cover”
― Sally Page, The Keeper of Stories

“Janice pictures herself standing up, leaning across the table, putting her hands either side of this glorious man's face, pulling him towards her, and kissing him full on the mouth. Instead, she asks him what he likes to read.”
― Sally Page, The Keeper of Stories

“I imagine if Charles Dickens had seen sixteen-year-old Becky struggling through the doors be might have rubbed his hands together and picked up his quill.”
― Sally Page, The Keeper of Stories