Christmas on the Island Quotes

“Baby steps – one at a time. One day at a time, one breath at a time. That’s the only way anyone gets through anything, okay?”
― Jenny Colgan, Christmas on the Island

“Life was short and loss was long and if anyone could find a bit of happiness – a tiny bit – they had to cling onto it like a lifebelt thrown to a drowning man,”
― Jenny Colgan, Christmas on the Island

“He had to take his life as he had had to take it for the last five years: to have no expectations as to what each day would bring. In fact, to expect nothing. To grab joy if he could. To hold fast. To try never to be surprised.”
― Jenny Colgan, Christmas on the Island

“On Mure, midwinter had been celebrated long, long before the Christians had arrived in the northern lands; way back as long as there had even been people, they had marked with standing stones the position of the heavens, and the changing of the seasons, and the very centre of the dark. Midwinter is a far deeper, wilder magic than Christmas. It began before religious divisions and is older than religion itself, beyond nativities or other portrayals. Midwinter is a human concern rooted in the earth and the body, not the heavens and the soul.”
― Jenny Colgan, Christmas on the Island

“Next to Flora was Agot, who was clearly furious not to be involved in proceedings. She was wearing something strange (it was, in fact, Fintan’s old angel costume) and muttering, ‘STICKY STICKY STICK STICK’ in a tone just loud enough to be irritating and just quiet enough that she was getting away with it.”
― Jenny Colgan, Christmas on the Island

“a huge claw-foot bathtub in the black and white bathroom.”
― Jenny Colgan, Christmas on the Island

“If you can’t enjoy having a motherfucking baby with the motherfucking woman you love, fuck you, son. And also. Fuck you.”
― Jenny Colgan, Christmas on the Island

“Mark very much believed in exposing cracks to the air. He thought that was the only way anything started to heal.”
― Jenny Colgan, Christmas on the Island

“No experimental cures. No life-prolonging – and misery-prolonging – chemotherapy. As far as Colton was concerned, he had made his plans and said his goodbyes and was now letting the tide go out, ever so slightly; the waves came less far up the beach; the sea got further and further from view, bit by bit.”
― Jenny Colgan, Christmas on the Island

“Beware the snow dancers. They are beautiful, and pale, and oh they can dance; and you will think they are going to carry you away. They arrive with the tinkling of bells, and swirl and swish and you will run out to dance with them, and they will surround you, and beckon, ‘Come with us, child—you can dance for ever more.’ And many is the lost child who chased and ran, as the flakes swirled and laughed and moved on, leaving them frozen by the shore, craving their distant bells forever, as they heard stories of ice mountains and deep ice kings. And sometimes the child is entirely engulfed; is taken and lost by the snow dancing and never seen again. And perhaps they are happy dancing in the frozen ballroom of the Deep King. But perhaps they are not. So. Best not to risk it, la.”
― Jenny Colgan, Christmas on the Island

“JOEL!’ ‘Sorry . . . that must make me sound like a dickhead.’ ‘I can’t remark professionally on that,’ said Mark as Marsha nodded emphatically in the bed next to him.”
― Jenny Colgan, Christmas on the Island