A Bird in the House Quotes

“My mother sighed, making me feel that I was placing an intolerable burden on her, and yet making me resent having to feel this weight. She looked tired, as she often did these days. Her tiredness bored me, made me want to attack her for it.”
― Margaret Laurence, A Bird in the House

“I stepped inside the front hall and kicked off my snow boots. I slammed the door behind me, making the dark ruby and emerald glass shake in the small leaded panes. I slid purposely on the hall rug, causing it to bunch and crinkle on the slippery polished oak of the floor.”
― Margaret Laurence, A Bird in the House

“I went upstairs to my room. Momentarily I felt a sense of calm, almost acceptance. Rest beyond the river. I knew now what that meant. It meant Nothing. It meant only silence forever.”
― Margaret Laurence, A Bird in the House

“As a devout Baptist, she believed it was a sin to pray for anything for yourself. You ought to pray only for strength to bear whatever the Lord saw fit to send you, she thought. I was never able to follow this advice, for although I would often feel a sense of uneasiness over the tone of my prayers, I was the kind of person who prayed frantically-"Please, God, please, please, PLEASE let Ross MacVey like me better than Mavis.”
― Margaret Laurence, A Bird in the House

“It was in an atomiser, and she used to squirt it around her bedroom after she had finished a cigarette. On these occasions, my mother always said, "Do you think we are teaching the child deception?" And Aunt Edna always replied , "No, just self-preservation.”
― Margaret Laurence, A Bird in the House

“they should be hidden away in an attic along with the other relics too common to be called antiques and too broken to be of any further use. Yet I was inexplicably drawn to them, too.”
― Margaret Laurence, A Bird in the House