The House at the Edge of Night Quotes

“Sometimes grief needed a focus, an object”
― Catherine Banner, The House at the Edge of Night

“The stories that the poor loved best, it seemed, were sad ones.”
― Catherine Banner, The House at the Edge of Night

“Не бе осъзнавал, че отглеждането на деца ще бъде такова - един бавен процес на изгубването им.”
― Catherine Banner, The House at the Edge of Night

“He seemed to be living a life not of his own devising in those days, an odd, dreamlike existence.”
― Catherine Banner, The House at the Edge of Night

“The kind of place one could not love without effort, and yet, she understood now, the only place on the face of the whole earth that she herself loved.”
― Catherine Banner, The House at the Edge of Night

“Tell her your stories. For Amadeo had never discovered any means more certain of winning a person's heart.”
― Catherine Banner, The House at the Edge of Night

“Tell her all the things you could never have told her before, when you couldn’t speak our language. Tell her about your childhood, your youth. The ordinary things that lovers talk about. You’re a stranger to her now, at least a little. Tell her your stories. Bring her round to you that way.” For Amedeo had never discovered any means more certain of winning a person’s heart.”
― Catherine Banner, The House at the Edge of Night

“He had not known bringing up children would be like this, a slow process of losing.”
― Catherine Banner, The House at the Edge of Night

“Pina Vella told him the story of the House at the Edge of Night. “It’s the second-oldest building on the island,” she said. “The old people consider it unlucky. It was the last place where the famous curse of weeping still remained, all those centuries ago. The islanders tried to pull the house down. But the walls were too thick—they couldn’t do it. It’s survived four earthquakes and a landslide besides. It’s won a kind of respect.”
― Catherine Banner, The House at the Edge of Night

“In the inside pocket of his battledress, he kept his book of stories. The gold fleur-de-lis on the cover wore away; the leather became dull. But stories, he found, like the photograph, bore witness to the truth that there was another world than this. Chiefly, his duty was to remind his patients of this fact when nothing else could be done.”
― Catherine Banner, The House at the Edge of Night

“Father Ignazio leaned toward Amedeo. “You’ll have no peace, I’m afraid,” he said. “We haven’t had a doctor on the island since the first Greek sailors landed here two millennia ago. The islanders will be bringing you their bunions and piles, their sick cats and hysterical daughters, their whole backlog of medical complaints. And their stories. Many more stories. Be warned.”
― Catherine Banner, The House at the Edge of Night

“to see”
― Catherine Banner, The House at the Edge of Night

“«На этом острове все знают, что ты сделаешь, еще до того как ты сам это поймешь; здесь старые вдовы осыпают тебя молитвами, воспитывают тебя забулдыги-картежники; здесь рыбаки зовут тебя по имени еще до твоего рождения; на этом острове все еще возможно обладать душой глубокой, как океан, и непроницаемой, как ночная тьма.»”
― Catherine Banner, The House at the Edge of Night

“..., няма никакъв смисъл да се поздравяваш за отглеждането на дете до десетата му годишнина, защото по-голямата част от истинските проблеми тепърва предстоят.”
― Catherine Banner, The House at the Edge of Night

“In the bar, there was some disagreement over how the trouble had started, for all the newspapers seemed to tell them different things. Some of the customers maintained that it had begun with two rich Americans, Freddie and Fannie, others that it had started with two brothers called Lehman, still others that it was something to do with a city called Northern Rock.”
― Catherine Banner, The House at the Edge of Night

“If he knew she had passed on the stairs, he would rush to stand in the air she had breathed,”
― Catherine Banner, The House at the Edge of Night

“We’ve all lost people, you know,” she said, slightly scoldingly, when Amedeo wept.”
― Catherine Banner, The House at the Edge of Night

“He had come to look on Amedeo not as a foster son but as a son outright, although he could not find within himself the phrases to say so. Meanwhile, Amedeo sought about for thanks, but could only shake the doctor’s hand. Thus they parted. They were never again to see each other alive.”
― Catherine Banner, The House at the Edge of Night

“give things up did not seem to Maria-Grazia the loss it would have been in city places.”
― Catherine Banner, The House at the Edge of Night

“Cazzo—must I report everything I do to you? Are you my jailer as well as my father?”
― Catherine Banner, The House at the Edge of Night

“she understood that the girl who had loved him, a girl barely free of the trappings of adolescence, had been superseded altogether in her by a woman of greater stature.”
― Catherine Banner, The House at the Edge of Night

“She bent and touched the cool tiles before her, without knowing why, until it came to her that it was the ground of home that she was touching. His predicament frightened her: to be condemned never to return home to the earth that had made you, never to be lulled by the familiar noise and hush of its ocean, never to be comforted and infuriated by the narrowness of its walls.”
― Catherine Banner, The House at the Edge of Night

“What was it they wanted from her, they with their shames furled within them, their guilty eyes, piling upon her these troubles”
― Catherine Banner, The House at the Edge of Night

“all she wanted was to run free and to be left alone!”
― Catherine Banner, The House at the Edge of Night

“This wakefulness infuriated her. She felt goaded by it, as if by a mosquito.”
― Catherine Banner, The House at the Edge of Night

“Always she felt herself to be trailing behind: trying to keep hold of their attention, cross with herself for wanting it.”
― Catherine Banner, The House at the Edge of Night

“Books—there’s something indecent about it!”
― Catherine Banner, The House at the Edge of Night

“when you’ve got to my age you only say a thing one time.”
― Catherine Banner, The House at the Edge of Night

“So he did not immediately fit, but still he felt himself, in some obscure, important way, to belong.”
― Catherine Banner, The House at the Edge of Night

“He was almost forty. It was time to embark on the real existence he had always believed to be waiting for him.”
― Catherine Banner, The House at the Edge of Night