Three Things About Elsie Quotes

“You can see the fracture lines in people sometimes, if you search hard enough. You can see where they’ve broken and tried to mend themselves.”
― Joanna Cannon, Three Things About Elsie

“Perhaps the most important moments of all turn out to be the ones we walk through without thinking, the ones we mark down as just another day. Just another day we have to get through before something more interesting comes along. We benchmark our lives with birthdays and Christmases and holidays, but perhaps we should think more about the ordinary days. The days which pass by and we don’t even notice. Elsie once said that you can’t tell how big a moment is until you turn back and look at it, and I think, perhaps, that she was right.”
― Joanna Cannon, Three Things About Elsie

“It’s strange, because you can put up with all manner of nonsense in your life, all sorts of sadness, and you manage to keep everything on board and march through it, then someone is kind to you and it’s the kindness that makes you cry. It’s the tiny act of goodness that opens a door somewhere and lets all the misery escape.”
― Joanna Cannon, Three Things About Elsie

“Sometimes, you go through an experience in life that slices into the very bones of who you are, and two different versions of yourself will always sit either side of it, like bookends.”
― Joanna Cannon, Three Things About Elsie

“I think the hardest part of losing anyone is that you still have to live with the same scenery. It's just the person you are used to isn't a part of it any more, and all you notice are the gaps where they used to be. It feels as though, if you concentrated hard enough, you could find them again in those empty spaces. Waiting for you.”
― Joanna Cannon , Three Things About Elsie

“You've got to find forgiveness, Elsie said; I just didn't realise she meant I had to find it for myself. Perhaps that's the most important moment. Not the moment of the mistake itself, but the moment in which you finally forgive yourself for making it.”
― Joanna Cannon, Three Things About Elsie

“It’s always the small decisions that change a life.”
― Joanna Cannon, Three Things About Elsie

“There is something special about a coastal morning. The day seems to have so much more potential when there’s a seaside attached to it. Perhaps it’s the brightness from the water, scrubbing everything clean like a front step, ready for you to start again.”
― Joanna Cannon, Three Things About Elsie

“It’s nice to have a bit of company, because nothing in this world sounds more lonely than one knife and fork rattling on a dinner plate.”
― Joanna Cannon, Three Things About Elsie

“It’s the greatest advantage of reminiscing. The past can be exactly how you wanted it to be the first time around.”
― Joanna Cannon, Three Things About Elsie

“There was no horizon. I never thought I would lose the horizon along with everything else, but when you get old you realize whichever direction you choose to face, you find yourself confronted with a landscape filled up with loss.”
― Joanna Cannon, Three Things About Elsie

“Now we were old. Now we were different people, and it felt as though everything we went through had happened to someone else, and we had just stood and watched it all from the future.”
― Joanna Cannon, Three Things About Elsie

“If you ever open a drawer, Florence. If you ever open a drawer and find something there you weren't expecting, just remember there is so very much more to us than the worst thing we have ever done. Remember that, Florence. Please remember, even when I'm not here to remind you.”
― Joanna Cannon, Three Things About Elsie

“Everyone ages, Cyril.” Jack used his most reasonable voice. “On the outside, maybe. But on the inside, I’m the same person I was sixty years ago.” He jabbed at his chest, to show us where his insides are. “It’s just the packaging that’s changed.”
― Joanna Cannon, Three Things About Elsie

“It’s when you catch the clock, holding on to a second for just a fraction longer than it should. When the world gives you just a little bit more time to make the right decision. There are long seconds all over the place. We just don’t always notice them.”
― Joanna Cannon, Three Things About Elsie

“There is a special kind of silence when you live alone. it hangs around, waiting for you to find it. You try to cover it up with all sorts of other noises, but always there, at the end of everything else, expecting you.”
― Joanna Cannon, Three Things About Elsie

“Sometimes, you feel a memory before you see it. Even though your eyes can't quite find it, you can smell it and taste it, and hear it shouting to you from the back of your mind.”
― Joanna Cannon, Three Things About Elsie

“Stop hurrying off into the future, hunting down catastrophes.”
― Joanna Cannon, Three Things About Elsie

“She always undid the stitches of other people’s worrying and made them disappear. That’s the second thing you should know about Elsie. She always knew what to say to make me feel better.”
― Joanna Cannon, Three Things About Elsie

“I think the hardest part of losing anyone is that you still have to live with the same scenery. It's just that the person you are used to isn't a part of it anymore, and all you notice are the gaps where they used to be. It feels as though, if you concentrate hard enough, you can find them again in those empty spaces. Waiting for you.”
― Joanna Cannon, Three Things About Elsie

“Because sometimes you need to run away. You need to believe in something without looking for proof. You need to enjoy a thing, without finding a need to measure its value. You need to run away from a familiar life, into something quite unfamiliar. Even if you are so old, the only running away you will ever do again is in your mind.”
― Joanna Cannon, Three Things About Elsie

“Because sometimes you need to sing and dance. Even if you are eighty. Even if your bones push into your flesh, and the slightest breeze could steal you away.”
― Joanna Cannon, Three Things About Elsie

“If we'd stopped to think when we were younger, that one day we would be back here, stooped and gray, if we'd given a moment to think how we would struggle against the wind to stay upright, and how our feet would feel afraid and uncertain; perhaps then we would have taken a little more time over things. We would have enjoyed the soft, easy days of childhood a little more. Arms and legs full of confidence and energy. Minds free from hesitation. Perhaps we would have danced through our youth a little more slowly.”
― Joanna Cannon, Three Things About Elsie

“No matter how long or how short a time you are here, the world is ever so slightly different because you existed. Although I’m not sure how anyone can ever prove it.” “Perhaps we don’t have to,” said Simon. “Perhaps just knowing that is enough.”
― Joanna Cannon, Three Things About Elsie

“Everyone's soul is clogged up with something. We collect it as we travel through life.”
― Joanna Cannon (author), Three Things About Elsie

“When your days are small, routine is the only scaffolding that holds you together.”
― Joanna Cannon (author), Three Things About Elsie

“I never used to be like this, and if you're not in charge of the inside of your own head, what are you in charge of?

Miss Ambrose says that it doesn't just happen to old people.

Perhaps there are times when life is so unbearably miserable, but the only part of you that can run away from it and leave, is your mind.”
― Joanna Cannon, Three Things About Elsie

“I will watch Harry Potter before I die.”
― Joanna Cannon, Three Things About Elsie

“more time over things. We would have enjoyed the soft, easy days of childhood a little more. Arms and legs full of confidence and energy. Minds free from hesitation. Perhaps we would have danced through our youth a little more slowly.”
― Joanna Cannon, Three Things About Elsie

“I need you to find a forgiveness,” Elsie said. I just didn’t realize she meant I had to find it for myself. Perhaps that’s the most important moment. Not the moment of the mistake itself but the moment in which you finally forgive yourself for making it.”
― Joanna Cannon, Three Things About Elsie