The Stone Angel Quotes

“Privacy is a privilege not granted to the aged or the young.”
― Margaret Laurence, The Stone Angel

“I can't change what's happened to me in my life, or make what's not occurred take place. But I can't say I like it, or accept it, or believe it's for the best. I don't and never shall, not even if I'm damned for it.”
― Margaret Laurence, The Stone Angel

“Too bad to deprive them, but if a person doesn't look after herself in this world, no one else is likely to.”
― Margaret Laurence, The Stone Angel

“To move to a new place -- that's the greatest excitement. For a while you believe you carry nothing with you -- all is canceled from before, or cauterized, and you begin again and nothing will go wrong this time.”
― Margaret Laurence, The Stone Angel

“Bless me or not, Lord, just as You please, for I'll not beg.”
― Margaret Laurence, The Stone Angel

“Pride was my wilderness, and the demon that led me there was fear. I was alone, and never free, for I carried my chains within me, and they spread out from me and shackled all I touched.”
― Margaret Laurence, The Stone Angel

“I could not speak for the salt that filled my throat, and for anger - not at anyone, at God, perhaps, for giving us eyes but almost never sight.”
― Margaret Laurence, The Stone Angel

“Nothing is ever changed at a single stroke, I know that full well, although a person sometimes wishes it could be otherwise.”
― Margaret Laurence, The Stone Angel

“I can't say it. Now, at last, it becomes impossible for me to mouth the words -- I'm fine. I won't say anything.”
― Margaret Laurence, The Stone Angel

“Doris is very religious. She says it is a comfort. Her minister is plump and pink, and if he met John the Baptist in tatters in the desert, stuffing dead locusts into that parched mouth for food, and blazing the New Kingdom out of those terrible eyesockets, he would faint. But so would I, likely.”
― Margaret Laurence, The Stone Angel

“I lost my faith," he says confidingly. "I kind of mislaid it and when I went to look for it, it wasn't there.”
― Margaret Laurence, The Stone Angel

“Above the town, on the hill brow, the stone angel used to stand. I wonder if she stands there yet, in memory of her who relinquished her feeble ghost as I gained my stubborn one, my mother’s angel that my father bought in pride to mark her bones and proclaim his dynasty, as he fancied, forever and a day.”
― Margaret Laurence, The Stone Angel

“The lilacs grew with no care given them, and in the early summer they hung like bunches of mild mauve grapes from branches with leaves like dark green hearts, and the scent of them was so bold and sweet you could smell nothing else, a seasonal mercy.”
― Margaret Laurence, The Stone Angel

“How you see a thing—it depends which side of the fence you're on.”
― Margaret Laurence, The Stone Angel

“Marvin is hairy in shirtsleeves, elbows on the table. High day or holiday or Judgement Day – no difference to Marvin. He would have put his elbows on the table if he’d been an apostle at the Last Supper.”
― Margaret Laurence, The Stone Angel

“He was a mean man, it’s true, but he got ahead. A man gets on by working harder than the rest—that’s what he used to say—and if he doesn’t get anywhere, he hasn’t a soul to blame but himself.”
― Margaret Laurence, The Stone Angel