Midwinter Break Quotes

“What was love but a lifetime of conversations. And silences. Knowing when to be silent. Above all, knowing when to laugh.”
― Bernard MacLaverty, Midwinter Break

“He believed that everything and everybody in the world was worthy of notice but this person beside him was something beyond that. To him her presence was as important as the world. And the stars around it. If she was an instance of the goodness in this world then passing through by her was miracle enough.”
― Bernard MacLaverty, Midwinter Break

“Do all the good you can, by all the means you can, in all the places you can, and so on and so on.”
― Bernard MacLaverty, Midwinter Break

“Every time I open my glasses case nowadays,’ he said. ‘I am pleasantly surprised to find my glasses.”
― Bernard MacLaverty, Midwinter Break

“The heart never taking a break. The bowels never taking a nap. When it stopped, that was the day it was all over.”
― Bernard MacLaverty, Midwinter Break

“To him her presence was as important as the world. And the stars around it. If she was an instance of the goodness in this world then passing through by her side was miracle enough.”
― Bernard MacLaverty, Midwinter Break

“She had a Quality Street tin at home – full to the brim – labelled in her distinctive handwriting ‘keys of unknown origin’. He loved her optimism. Keys kept just in case locks should ever be found to fit them.”
― Bernard MacLaverty, Midwinter Break

“Catholicism was her source of spiritual stem cells. They could turn into anything her spiritual being required.”
― Bernard MacLaverty, Midwinter Break

“She knew that the only way to improve the world, without patronising anyone, was to improve herself.”
― Bernard MacLaverty, Midwinter Break

“In every relationship,’ said Stella, ‘there’s a flower and a gardener. One who does the work and one who displays.”
― Bernard MacLaverty, Midwinter Break

“And where does that leave me? Us?’ ‘In different places.”
― Bernard MacLaverty, Midwinter Break

“The world seemed to recognise only drunk or sober. What about the in-between – the spectrum, the subtle gradations?”
― Bernard MacLaverty, Midwinter Break

“But she had become expert at nipping the memory off before it could get started by concentrating on the physical world around her.”
― Bernard MacLaverty, Midwinter Break

“If it was about anything, architecture was about shedding light.”
― Bernard MacLaverty, Midwinter Break

“Whereas you do man-work. Build something and it’s there for hundreds of years. I cook the food, do the dishes, hang out the sheets, pay gas bills, electricity bills and it all has to be done again the next time. As Virginia Woolf says, “Nothing remains of it.”
― Bernard MacLaverty, Midwinter Break

“In the panic, I forgot.’ ‘Forgot what?’ ‘Conditioner.’ ‘The paparazzi will know. It’ll be all over the papers in the morning.”
― Bernard MacLaverty, Midwinter Break

“Then in an explosion of wings all the pigeons rose and took to the air. ‘Why do they do that?’ ‘What?’ ‘The simultaneous thing. One goes, they all go.’ ‘They must be Catholics.”
― Bernard MacLaverty, Midwinter Break

“But some day, somehow she would move into soul. It happened to everybody who had ever lived since the beginning of time. Soul was her, minus her body.”
― Bernard MacLaverty, Midwinter Break