The Trouble with Goats and Sheep Quotes

“I still hadn’t learned the power of words. How, once they have left your mouth, they have a breath and a life of their own. I had yet to realize that you no longer own them. I hadn’t learned that, once you have let them go, the words can then, in fact, become the owner of you.”
― Joanna Cannon, The Trouble with Goats and Sheep

“After my bedroom, this was my favourite place in the world. It was carpeted, and had heavy bookcases and ticking clocks and velvet chairs, just like someone’s living room. It smelled of unturned pages and unseen adventures, and on every shelf were people I had yet to meet, and places I had yet to visit. Each time, I lost myself in the corridors of books and the polished, wooden rooms, deciding which journey to go on next. Mrs”
― Joanna Cannon, The Trouble with Goats and Sheep

“My mother said I was at an awkward age. I didn't feel especially awkward, so I presumed she meant that it was awkward for them.”
― Joanna Cannon, The Trouble with Goats and Sheep

“People tend to believe things just because everyone else does.' Walter looked at his hands and began biting into the skin next to his fingernails. 'They don't search for proof, they just search for approval from everyone else.”
― Joanna Cannon, The Trouble with Goats and Sheep

“I waited. I had discovered that, sometimes, if you held on to the silence, people couldn’t stop themselves from filling it up.”
― Joanna Cannon, The Trouble with Goats and Sheep

“And I decided it really was true after all. You only really need two people to believe in the same thing, to feel as though you just might belong.”
― Joanna Cannon, The Trouble with Goats and Sheep

“I thought I would like a job where inquiring about everyone else's private business was considered perfectly routine.”
― Joanna Cannon, The Trouble with Goats and Sheep

“You'll understand as you get older. You can spot them a mile off, You'll learn to cross the street.' [...] 'Perhaps that's why they don't mix,' said Tilly, 'because everyone else is on the other side of the street?”
― Joanna Cannon, The Trouble with Goats and Sheep

“The most important thing a garden needs is the shadow of a gardener.”
― Joanna Cannon, The Trouble with Goats and Sheep

“It appeared that Jesus pulled a much bigger crowd if He provided garibaldis.”
― Joanna Cannon, The Trouble with Goats and Sheep

“It’s the small decisions, the ones that slip themselves into your day unnoticed, the ones that wrap their weight in insignificance. These are the decisions that bury you”
― Joanna Cannon, The Trouble with Goats and Sheep

“Mrs Morton’s knitting needles tutting against each other in disapproval.”
― Joanna Cannon, The Trouble with Goats and Sheep

“You only really need two people to believe in the same thing, to feel as though you just might belong.”
― Joanna Cannon, The Trouble with Goats and Sheep

“I stared at the thick gold cross on the altar. It reflected every one of us: the pious and the ungodly; the opportunist and the devout. Each of us had our reasons for being there, quiet and expectant, and secreted between the pages of a hymnbook. How would God manage to answer us all? “Lamb”
― Joanna Cannon, The Trouble with Goats and Sheep

“The only problem with losing your mind was that you never lost the memories you wanted to lose.”
― Joanna Cannon, The Trouble with Goats and Sheep

“He missed her reassurance. The way she stole his disquiet and diluted it, and how her unconcern would pull him through their day. She never dismissed his worries, she just disentangled them, smoothing down the edges and spreading them out until they became thin and insignificant”
― Joanna Cannon, The Trouble with Goats and Sheep

“I looked at the garden, and watched white butterflies dance across dahlias and freesias and geraniums. There was a choir of color, singing for my attention, and it felt as though I were hearing it for the first time.”
― Joanna Cannon, The Trouble with Goats and Sheep

“He walked as the rest of the estate slept, along the avenues and the crescents, through corridors of people drifting out of awareness, and the stillness was an opiate to him, cushioning his mind and unthreading his thoughts.”
― Joanna Cannon, The Trouble with Goats and Sheep

“We’ve decided she probably isn’t dead after all,” I said. “Well, that’s something.” “And now we need God to find her. You have to remember that God is everywhere, Mrs. Morton.”
― Joanna Cannon, The Trouble with Goats and Sheep

“aquariums of people look out into the night.”
― Joanna Cannon, The Trouble with Goats and Sheep

“We sat in silence. I knew straight away that Walter Bishop was the kind of person you could sit in silence with. There were very few people like that, I had found. Most grown-ups liked to fill a silence with conversation. Not important, necessary conversation, but a spray of words that served no purpose other than to cover up the quiet.”
― Joanna Cannon, The Trouble with Goats and Sheep

“The only problem was, when your whole existence is something you have to cope with, you look back one day and find that your strategy has become a way of life.”
― Joanna Cannon, The Trouble with Goats and Sheep

“They assumed I didn't understand the conversation, and it was much easier to let them think that. My mother said I was at an awkward age. I didn't feel especially awkward, so I presumed she meant it was awkward for them.”
― Joanna Cannon, The Trouble with Goats and Sheep

“What do you mean, Jesus?' May Roper pulled the crocheted sea a little further up her legs.
'On the drainpipe. I've seen Him with my own eyes.'
'Have you been in the sun again, Brian?'
'Sheila Dakin thinks it's a sign.'
'A sign she's been at the sherry.”
― Joanna Cannon, The Trouble with Goats and Sheep

“Why does He hate the goats so much?'
[...]
'I'm not sure,' I said. 'He only seems to like sheep.”
― Joanna Cannon, The Trouble with Goats and Sheep

“I still hadn’t learned the power of words. How, once they have left your mouth, they have a breath and a life of their own. I had yet to realize that you no longer own them. I hadn’t learned that, once you have let them go, the words can then, in fact, become the owners of you. I”
― Joanna Cannon, The Trouble with Goats and Sheep

“She can feel it. The big decision, attempting to be nothing, hiding amongst all the small decisions, hoping it will be unseen and unimportant. It’s making its way to the front of the queue, carrying everything in its pockets.”
― Joanna Cannon, The Trouble with Goats and Sheep

“It’s the small decisions, the ones that slip themselves into your day unnoticed, the ones that wrap their weight in insignificance. These are the decisions that will bury you.”
― Joanna Cannon, The Trouble with Goats and Sheep

“Unlike the rest of the avenue, number eleven stood a long way back from the road. It hid behind a group of cedar trees, which gathered on the front lawn like unhappy guests. Whilst the other houses greeted each other in a polite circle, number eleven stood hesitant and apologetic, watching the rest of the avenue and waiting to be invited in.”
― Joanna Cannon, The Trouble with Goats and Sheep

“She never dismissed his worries, she just disentangled them, smoothing down the edges and spreading them out until they became thin and insignificant.”
― Joanna Cannon, The Trouble with Goats and Sheep