The Coast Road Quotes

“Acceptance was not the same as resignation.”
― Alan Murrin, The Coast Road

“It was his experience that a man often thought his wife insane when she expressed unhappiness with her lot.”
― Alan Murrin, The Coast Road

“The worst thing that she could have ever imagined had already happened to her, and she’d survived it.”
― Alan Murrin, The Coast Road

“Oh, give me a break. It seems to me that some people are able to behave however they want and still go around like they haven’t a care in the world.”
― Alan Murrin, The Coast Road

“And she would not hide away; she would simply retreat. There was work to be done.”
― Alan Murrin, The Coast Road

“But I’m back now and we can hash this out.’ He tried to steady the”
― Alan Murrin, The Coast Road

“If asked by anyone about the greatest trick the Catholic Church played on its congregants, and there were many, Father Brian Dempsey would have said the act of confession. It was the idea of it as an anonymous exchange that was most misleading.”
― Alan Murrin, The Coast Road

“Losing your mother was the worst thing that could happen,”
― Alan Murrin, The Coast Road

“I called Mrs Frawley an old wagon,’ he shouted.”
― Alan Murrin, The Coast Road

“His eyebrows were grey and wiry but his head of tight curls was jet black. He dyes his hair, she thought, and that made her trust him even less.”
― Alan Murrin, The Coast Road

“But I am beginning to think that it was in fact I who could have been anyone, that you were looking for an escape route, a life raft, something to be jettisoned once you had reached dry land.”
― Alan Murrin, The Coast Road

“Forty-five letters – I can only apologise. Could you burn them for me? I am embarrassed by the cliché I have become and I promise you this will be the last letter I write.”
― Alan Murrin, The Coast Road

“Witch, witch, witch, she thought as she moved along the sand, the wind pulling loose strands of her hair. Witch, witch, witch. The mad woman in the cottage, the witch on the hill – she stole husbands and children.”
― Alan Murrin, The Coast Road

“I am pregnant,’ she wrote. ‘At forty-four years old I am pregnant.”
― Alan Murrin, The Coast Road

“I know what you need,’ she said. And for just a moment her husband looked like a little boy, as fear and confusion and panic passed across his face like shadows, and disappeared. She’d meant that what he needed was some woman to lie beneath him every night. But what he’d understood was that he needed a good beating from her father. Like the time early on in their marriage when Donal had pushed her and she fell and caught the corner of her eye on the mantelpiece. And when her father had seen the V-shaped cut near her temple she hadn’t even needed to explain anything. He’d simply waited with her in silence until Donal got home from work and as soon as he’d stepped out of his van her father had escorted him into the living room and shut the door. She’d heard Donal roar. He’d needed three days off work after that until his ribs healed. And he’d never touched her again.”
― Alan Murrin, The Coast Road

“The door’s open, you silly bitch.”
― Alan Murrin, The Coast Road

“They’ll never be satisfied – shower of bastards.”
― Alan Murrin, The Coast Road

“but I don’t think you have to be married to be a good Catholic. However, it is one of the seven sacraments, and . . . well, I think if you bother to go through with it, you should try and stick with it.’ ‘And if it’s too easy to get out of, who’d bother trying?’ she said. ‘In my day the worst thing you could imagine was being unmarried – you just went with the first fellow who asked you.”
― Alan Murrin, The Coast Road