A Year of Marvellous Ways Quotes

“There was no point in tears outliving eyes, so she let them fall.”
― Sarah Winman, A Year of Marvellous Ways

“Love just enough. What's enough? Enough to hold. When it hurts, you're loving too much. Just enough to hold. Anything more than a handful and you're in trouble.”
― Sarah Winman, A Year of Marvellous Ways

“Coming back from the dead is not quite the same as coming back to life.”
― Sarah Winman, A Year of Marvellous Ways

“We were the centre of that liquid universe, for we were the night sun and we said to ships, do not come too close, we have rocks at our feet. And the crash of waves sent white spray flying, and I am scared and exhilarated and a little bit in love too.”
― Sarah Winman, A Year of Marvellous Ways

“It was as if a blade had shucked his heart like an oyster and stolen the beauty within. He said his heart never started beating again, it just started working and I never understood the difference, not until I was much older anyway, when I learnt that coming back from the dead is not quite the same as coming back to life.”
― Sarah Winman, A Year of Marvellous Ways

“No atheists at sea, Drake. When the waves are the size of mountains even the godless kneel.”
― Sarah Winman, A Year of Marvellous Ways

“The principles of catching rumours were, in fact, similar to the principals of catching dreams, but because rumour was weightier, the catcher had to be positioned closer to the ground. Rumour flew low, dreams flew high, and somewhere in between were prayers.”
― Sarah Winman, A Year of Marvellous Ways

“So, thought Peace, there was a wall around his heart and she wondered whether she should hoist up her skirt and scale that wall, but she knew she didn’t have the right shoes on for that sort of climb because hers were too sensible for a man like Drake.”
― Sarah Winman, A Year of Marvellous Ways

“Love. It's the only thing to have faith in... Or the moon. Soemthing that turns up every day when you cant. The sun. The moon. Anything. You have to have faith in something.”
― Sarah Winman, A Year of Marvellous Ways

“They sat at a table in the corner of a pub as night grew through the window behind them. The sounds around were generous and soothing. Men chattered, glasses clinked, jokes coasted and a fire crackled, and now and then someone let out an almighty laugh and it was catching and circled the room like a kid playing tag.”
― Sarah Winman, A Year of Marvellous Ways

“She trekked back across the meadow and down through the trees in possession of the oldest secret known to man. She sat on the mooring stone and surrendered immediately to the down of night. She hadn't slept long before she suddenly jolted awake. Thought she had heard the sweet call of a lark ascending. Unaware that it was actually the sound of her soul awakening.”
― Sarah Winman, A Year of Marvellous Ways

“Those left behind prayed constantly for peace but prayers came back with Return to Sender stamped all over them. Only the roll call of the dead grew.”
― Sarah Winman, A Year of Marvellous Ways

“And they held on tight to that beautiful silent moment before words transported them to the realm of the ordinary, to the realm of the inarticulate and mundane.”
― Sarah Winman, A Year of Marvellous Ways

“Marvellous blossomed, having quite forgotten what an exciting and necessary jolt being needed gave.”
― Sarah Winman, A Year of Marvellous Ways

“visited only by ghostly skeins of gorse and bramble that had blown in like rumour from afar.”
― Sarah Winman, A Year of Marvellous Ways

“You can’t shove Doubt. It gives way a little because that’s what Doubt does. But it waits. Waits like a germ for the perfect conditions. Then it spreads. Then it suffocates.”
― Sarah Winman, A Year of Marvellous Ways

“He dived into a bottomless pit of sleep”
― Sarah Winman, A Year of Marvellous Ways

“it was only a matter of time before the pain he swallowed whole bedded down and nestled somewhere warm until it grew like yeast.”
― Sarah Winman, A Year of Marvellous Ways

“Drake said 3 beautiful words to Marvellous: don’t go, stay.”
― Sarah Winman, A Year of Marvellous Ways

“And then just as her lids closed, a dream lined up to take flight across her sleep, a dream that would deposit two images, at last, to the door of her mind: the image of a linnet, tentative and free, flying across the Thames with a chest full of song. The image of a young man looking towards a horizon that promised nothing.
The fog bell mourned.”
― Sarah Winman, A Year of Marvellous Ways

“That Thou, my God, shouldst die for me. Then Jimmy began to sing too, and gradually voices echoed along the shafts until there was the sound of eighty voices, a hundred voices and the sound of waves, and the earth holding itself tight in those tunnels, and those who were above ground swore they could hear that hymn coming from below grass, and the sheer beauty near enough stopped those engine houses. And those voices rose until the twelve miles of working tunnel were ablaze with song, as if that alone was support enough to keep back the weakening stope. And there were men who cried in that space touched by something divine. And as the last voice fell silent, so rose a crescendo of falling waves above just like cymbals. And in that darkness, came the light. And for a moment all fear abated in the hushed stillness of answered grace.”
― Sarah Winman, A Year of Marvellous Ways

“He sat down and picked up a pen. He looked at the photograph of him and his brother just after they’d joined up, and words that had so long evaded his mouth now gathered at the nib of his pen, and he wrote down everything he felt and everything he could see. He wrote to Peace once a week between their courting, and what he couldn’t get down on paper that first week he continued into the second week, then the third. He wrote sitting on a harbour bench, he wrote at the tiller of his boat. Peace got to know her fisherman through his letters. And when they met up she made him read them out loud, so that the words that had gathered at the nib of his pen found their rightful place upon his tongue. 47”
― Sarah Winman, A Year of Marvellous Ways

“Stories, like nature, tend not to end, said Marvellous.”
― Sarah Winman, A Year of Marvellous Ways

“He raised his cup to the sky even though he didn't believe in heaven, but he had to put his brother somewhere and the familiar blue cushion above the estuary was as good a place as any.

To old times, he said.”
― Sarah Winman, A Year of Marvellous Ways

“I had feet not fins, my father's brow and my mother's eyes. But, more importantly, I had my mother's heart.”
― Sarah Winman, A Year of Marvellous Ways

“He wanted to tell her that nothing felt right and he missed his home because how could he make a home in a land that whispered angry words? How could he make a home in a land that didn´t have her?”
― Sarah Winman, A Year of Marvellous Ways

“But I’m not patient, said Marvellous. I’m diligent.”
― Sarah Winman, A Year of Marvellous Ways

“The creek was hers now and yet she felt nothing. It had been the longest walk of her life for no one was at the end waiting for her. She slept through winter. Missed Christmas and awoke to a New Year. She felt so lost. Until the first bluebells and ramsons colored the green-brown floor of her world.”
― Sarah Winman, A Year of Marvellous Ways

“You have to risk failure to become excellent.”
― Sarah Winman, A Year of Marvellous Ways

“The choir sang and the old man sang and Drake couldn't sing, and suddenly he began to cry because of the music, because of the sound of the boys' voices, because of what they might turn into.”
― Sarah Winman, A Year of Marvellous Ways