The Hired Man Quotes

“There's something uncomfortable about looking at pictures of your parents at a time when they made each other happy.”
― Aminatta Forna, The Hired Man

“People said it was a song about drugs, but John Lennon said the name came from a picture his son painted of a girl at school.”
― Aminatta Forna, The Hired Man

“We became friends, I suppose, because we lived close to each other and it suited us and because when you are young friendships go unquestioned.”
― Aminatta Forna, The Hired Man

“Here in the hills the rain washing down my face feels good. I lift up my head and open my mouth and let the water in, it is sweet, pure and sweet. I shield my eyes and look in the direction of the town, invisible behind the torrent of water. Let it run, I think, through the streets, down the gutters, into drains until it is carried away by the river. Let it wash away the shit and the pus and the blood, the things that can be washed away. But let it also wash away the fear and the malice and the spite, the things that are harder to erase.”
― Aminatta Forna, The Hired Man

“I’d always kept an eye on the house. I don’t mean doing repairs, for as the house didn’t belong to me that was not my place, but rather I’d keep watch over its decline. The changes come slowly, like watching a woman age: another line, the spread of crow’s feet, age spots rising slowly to the surface. One day the face you know is ravaged.”
― Aminatta Forna, The Hired Man

“There's nothing new about this story of ours, such things happen. Love misses its mark, arrives too early or too late. Nobody dies, except in novels.”
― Aminatta Forna, The Hired Man

“Whenever he was asked what somebody had died of he'd reply (with immense gravity), "Lack of breath.”
― Aminatta Forna, The Hired Man

“Vinka Pavić is an angry woman and her anger shows in the set of her teeth, the lines around her mouth into which her lipstick bleeds, the way she folds her arms. When she laughs it is to mock and in this she finds an ally in her son. But Anka, Anka was born with joy in her soul, to which they feel she has no right. Behind it all, as with so many things in life and in death, lies envy. In the end it gets the better of them.”
― Aminatta Forna, The Hired Man

“There are after all, and as Laura said, so many summers.”
― Aminatta Forna, The Hired Man

“For a long time, as I waited for her to return, I believed she knew I was there behind the trees and that this was my doing. That she knew I would come. For who else could it have been?”
― Aminatta Forna, The Hired Man