The Misremembered Man Quotes

“Perhaps, she mused, we never really stop being the children we once were.”
― Christina McKenna, The Misremembered Man

“[Lydia tut-tutted on seeing the grocer's apostrophe]”
― Christina McKenna, The Misremembered Man

“they understood that to be bound by another’s needs and wishes was perhaps, in essence, a far more fearful state than being on one’s own.”
― Christina McKenna, The Misremembered Man

“All he wanted was to somehow get there, and taste that joy which everyone but him seemed to be experiencing.”
― Christina McKenna, The Misremembered Man

“He would scrub the floors on his hands and knees, beat the rugs, wash the windows and pound the bed linen in the tin bath at the outdoor pump. All those heavy chores he knew intimately; his identity lay in the dirt others left behind and his salvation lay in cleaning it up.”
― Christina McKenna, The Misremembered Man

“How interesting, she mused, that we pick up and repeat the qualities of those closest to us, like walking reflections, whether they be good for us or not. But, thought Lydia, our freedom lies in being aware of this very fact and in shattering those illusions that do not suit us.”
― Christina McKenna, The Misremembered Man

“Gladys. Places, of themselves, were rarely at fault, but rather the people who inhabited them.”
― Christina McKenna, The Misremembered Man

“The forty-one-year-old man felt only able to catch and avenge his early suffering through a series of small victories: eating sweet food when he wanted, letting the hearth-fire burn when the sun burned high, leaving the front door open both day and night.”
― Christina McKenna, The Misremembered Man

“A bit of a lazy clat. The type that would keep a shovelful of dung on the table to keep the flies off the butter, as they say.”
― Christina McKenna, The Misremembered Man

“While in the kitchen preparing her mother’s breakfast, she pondered her situation more deeply. What would happen if she suddenly decided to collapse the walls of her tight little world and indeed “live a little?”
― Christina McKenna, The Misremembered Man

“Places, of themselves, were rarely at fault, but rather the people who inhabited them.”
― Christina McKenna, The Misremembered Man

“(Paddy wondered why a mannequin would need breasts; Jamie wondered why a woman would.)”
― Christina McKenna, The Misremembered Man

“How interesting, she mused, that we pick up and repeat the qualities of those closest to us, like walking reflections, whether they be good for us or not.”
― Christina McKenna, The Misremembered Man

“The burdens he carried in daytime became the demons he fought at night. He”
― Christina McKenna, The Misremembered Man

“God give you the face you have on you because He thought it went with the rest of you”
― Christina McKenna, The Misremembered Man

“The loss of a mother is a singular and incomparable event.”
― Christina McKenna, The Misremembered Man

“to it first and”
― Christina McKenna, The Misremembered Man

“There’s nothing a woman likes more than a silent man;”
― Christina McKenna, The Misremembered Man

“Those institutions—the so-called “industrial schools,” orphanages and “Magdalene” laundries—were run by certain religious orders in Ireland for the better part of a century, and were little more than places of slave labor, from which the Roman Catholic Church profited substantially at the expense of orphaned children, or children forcibly removed from single mothers. The cruelty and inhumanity of such regimes only came to light in the early 1990s. The last such institution was closed in 1996.”
― Christina McKenna, The Misremembered Man

“The fitting room was small and Jamie felt like an elephant in a shoebox.”
― Christina McKenna, The Misremembered Man

“She was a dedicated churchgoer, devoted do-gooder, and throbbing artery of village gossip. She sharpened her tongue on the loose lives of others and judged each member of the community by the dazzling light of her own unattainable standards.”
― Christina McKenna, The Misremembered Man

“That’s the spirit, James!”
― Christina McKenna, The Misremembered Man

“should take a wee read at them before you meet her, just”
― Christina McKenna, The Misremembered Man

“leaving a chink through which Rose could reach to help build for Jamie a whole, hitherto unimagined future. Chapter four “The doctor will see you now, Mr. McCloone.” Jamie, head buried”
― Christina McKenna, The Misremembered Man

“Chapter nineteen”
― Christina McKenna, The Misremembered Man

“Matty carried the attitude of the eternal pessimist; a man who felt badly when he felt good for fear he’d feel worse when he felt better.”
― Christina McKenna, The Misremembered Man

“It took him longer than usual. Every sound—the clanking of the mug as he retrieved it from the crammed sink, the gushing and spitting of the water from the tap, the teaspoon stirred in the mug—all contrived to assault his fragile senses. As he sank into the tattered armchair, nursing the mug on the armrest, fishing in his pocket for the first cigarette of the day, he vowed never to drink again. But it was only a thought and it would pass.”
― Christina McKenna, The Misremembered Man

“through such experiences they understood that to be bound by another’s needs and wishes was perhaps, in essence, a far more fearful state than being on one’s own.”
― Christina McKenna, The Misremembered Man