The Library at the Edge of the World Quotes

“It seemed to him that half the fun of a library was stumbling on treasures by chance...
Conor, in The Library at the Edge of the World”
― Felicity Hayes-McCoy, The Library at the Edge of the World

“But reading the same books that your friends read gave you a sense of belonging. The loss of that sense of shared experience was one of the things that had bothered her when she and Mum moved to Ireland.”
― Felicity Hayes-McCoy, The Library at the Edge of the World

“Everything in life has its own time to happen. A time to plant, a time to grow, and a time to harvest. And if you take things steady you’ll bring your harvest home.”
― Felicity Hayes-McCoy, The Library at the Edge of the World

“Jazz herself saw things differently; the most important thing to her was experience—good, bad, and indifferent—”
― Felicity Hayes-McCoy, The Library at the Edge of the World

“Your husband was a cheat and this Slattery man’s a liar. That’s no shame on you, girl. But sitting there snuffling when you should be getting organized! That’s a mortal sin.”
― Felicity Hayes-McCoy, The Library at the Edge of the World

“She must have been one of the lay sisters whom the pupils had occasionally glimpsed in the corridors. Usually they were the daughters of large families, who had gone into the nuns, as people used to say, because they had no dowry to bring to a marriage. But the nuns, too, required a dowry from those who joined the order, so girls without money provided domestic help in the convent. In her school days Hanna had always thought of them as a bit downtrodden, but the woman beside her had a quiet air of confidence that was extraordinarily restful.”
― Felicity Hayes-McCoy, The Library at the Edge of the World

“Trying to photograph the transcendental moment when the blazing disk disappeared into the ocean was ridiculous; in staring through a lens, the eye lost its peripheral vision while the scents and sounds that were part of the experience of a sunset were lost in the attempt to capture it.”
― Felicity Hayes-McCoy, The Library at the Edge of the World

“Glancing in the rearview mirror, Hanna saw her walking back to the house with a spring in her step. It had only been a few minutes spent with an acquaintance but the human contact and the prospect of a couple of books to read and chat about had obviously made her day. No matter how isolated the scattered farms and villages on the peninsula might seem, there was a web of personal and communal relationships that linked people together, offering mutual support.”
― Felicity Hayes-McCoy, The Library at the Edge of the World

“She balanced The Mysterious Affair at Styles and A House Divided on the top of the gate and waved as the van pulled off.”
― Felicity Hayes-McCoy, The Library at the Edge of the World

“This wasn’t the house of her childhood dreams. The naïve young man with his curly-brimmed hat, his flowered waistcoat, and his pink-cheeked wife with her baby and her quilted petticoat, had no place here. This wasn’t a stylish project fit for a design magazine or a perfect retreat from a stressful world. Instead it was a place of compromises. The elegant kitchen that she loved was a secondhand windfall. The dresser by the hearth still belonged more to Maggie, or even to Fury, than to herself. In fact, none of the furniture or possessions that surrounded her were symbols of hard-won independence. They were the story of her reintegration into a community that, for years, she had failed to value and that now might be her salvation.”
― Felicity Hayes-McCoy, The Library at the Edge of the World

“Wasn’t it weird, she said, how, if everyone pulled together you felt you could take on the world?”
― Felicity Hayes-McCoy, The Library at the Edge of the World

“But a librarian should know better than anyone how written words, moving through time and space, could change a person's life.”
― Felicity Hayes-McCoy, The Library at the Edge of the World