The Other Side of the Bridge Quotes

“Suddenly he saw himself as others in the crowd must surely see him; a silent, solitary figure, standing apart from the rest. He looked out at the hoardes of singing, laughing people and felt more alone than he'd ever felt in his life. Was this how it was going to be then? Was this who he was? A man apart from his fellows, making the journey through life alone?”
― Mary Lawson, The Other Side of the Bridge

“You'd have thought that after suffering such a loss nothing else would matter to her but that didn't seem to be how it worked. She was fearful about everything now. It was as if she had finally seen the awful power of fate, it's deviousness, the way it could wipe out in an instant the one thing you had been certain you could rely on, and now she was constantly looking over her shoulder, trying to work out where the next blow might fall.”
― Mary Lawson, The Other Side of the Bridge

“Good luck. Maybe that’s all it was. Maybe the whole of life depended not on how hard you tried, how determined you were, how sensible, how smart: maybe the whole shooting match depended on luck.”
― Mary Lawson, The Other Side of the Bridge

“When he was younger, Ian had assumed that as you got older things became clear. Adults had seemed so sure, so knowledgeable, not just about facts and figures but about the big questions: the difference between right and wrong; what was true and what wasn't; what life was about. He'd assumed that you went to school because you had to learn things, starting off with the easy stuff and moving on to the bigger issues, and once you'd learned them that was it, the way ahead opened up and thereafter life was simple and straightforward. what a joke. The older he got, the more complicated and obscure everything became. He understood nothing anymore--nothing and nobody, including himself.”
― Mary Lawson, The Other Side of the Bridge

“It was so easy for women,their arms opened out instinctively and they gathered in whatever hurt there was and that was that, they didn't even have to think about it.”
― Mary Lawson, The Other Side of the Bridge