The First Day of Spring Quotes

“Mam always liked God, even when she didn’t like me.”
― Nancy Tucker, The First Day of Spring

“When someone you knew died, you didn't die with them. You carried on, and you went through phases and chapters so different they felt like whole different lives, but in all of those lives the dead person was still dead. Dead whether you were sad or happy, dead whether you thought about them or didn't, dead whether you missed them or not. If it didn't last, it wasn’t real dying, it was just someone caring so little they disappeared.”
― Nancy Tucker, The First Day of Spring

“You couldn’t understand about fair and unfair when you had a mammy who made scones and a da who put your name into songs.”
― Nancy Tucker, The First Day of Spring

“Missing him was a smoke burn in my middle: a small round hole, black at the edges.”
― Nancy Tucker, The First Day of Spring

“I did lots of bad things. It felt nice to be held. I liked going limp in their arms and hearing them say, ‘There. Well done for calming down. Good girl, Chrissie. Good girl.’ It was almost like I wasn’t bad at all.”
― Nancy Tucker, The First Day of Spring

“It was one of the things I had thought about on the train, during the peace of Molly’s sulk. ‘Perhaps I could get back here,’ I thought. ‘I could find someone else to sleep with, and start again with a different baby, and not mess things up. I could be better. I could follow what the book says more carefully. I’m good at starting again. It’s the only thing I’m good at.’ It had been a cold, deadening thing to think, because I knew it wouldn’t work. If Molly was a gift and no-kid was neutrality, then a not-Molly kid was a curse. I could throw away my life and replace it with a new one over and over again, but it wouldn’t work with her. She wasn’t disposable.”
― Nancy Tucker, The First Day of Spring

“It seemed extravagantly cruel that there was no biological system for keeping Molly with me always, no way of carrying her around in a pouch above my pelvis like a joey.”
― Nancy Tucker, The First Day of Spring

“When someone you knew died, you didn’t die with them. You carried on, and you went through phases and chapters so different they felt like whole different lives, but in all of those lives the dead person was still dead. Dead whether you were sad or happy, dead whether you thought about them or didn’t, dead whether you missed them or not. If it didn’t last, it wasn’t real dying, it was just someone caring so little they disappeared.”
― Nancy Tucker, The First Day of Spring

“If I did or said something she didn’t like she stormed out, shouting, ‘I’m never coming to visit you again,’ and stayed away for so long I believed her. But it was never forever. She always came back. We were bonded by something thicker than water, thicker than blood: a tar-dark soup of hate-want-need.”
― Nancy Tucker, The First Day of Spring

“I didn’t need to look behind me to see if Linda was following. She always followed. That was the whole point of Linda.”
― Nancy Tucker, The First Day of Spring

“Linda’s mammy wasn’t a very cuddly sort of mammy. She was the sort of mammy who smelt of church and ironing,”
― Nancy Tucker, The First Day of Spring

“Tired,’ she said. She flopped over so she was lying on the ground. I looked at her orange hair, coiling between blades of grass. Like a tiger. Like a flame.”
― Nancy Tucker, The First Day of Spring

“No I can’t,’ he said. His voice sounded like a window with a crack that was letting in rain. ‘I can’t.”
― Nancy Tucker, The First Day of Spring

“No, Chrissie,’ she said. ‘You’ll not come. It’s not your home.”
― Nancy Tucker, The First Day of Spring

“She looked how kids look when they come to school on their birthday wearing a birthday badge – puffed up and pink.”
― Nancy Tucker, The First Day of Spring

“If you want to, you figure it out. Most of the time it’s really hard and boring, but it’s not impossible. You just have to really want to do it.”
― Nancy Tucker, The First Day of Spring

“I learnt a lot. The two lines came up like swearing fingers.”
― Nancy Tucker, The First Day of Spring

“Christmas in her fist. ‘We had a party and there was missing-toe, you kiss people under it, me and Abigail didn’t kiss, we just rubbed our noses together, can I eat this now?”
― Nancy Tucker, The First Day of Spring

“Told myself the next morning I would hurt someone, anyone, as many-one as I liked. Took a lump of pillow in my mouth and roared.”
― Nancy Tucker, The First Day of Spring

“She didn’t start crying again. We both sat in our rooms, listening to each other listening to each other.”
― Nancy Tucker, The First Day of Spring

“Because any kid who stayed with me would grow up a jigsaw of rotted, crumbling parts.”
― Nancy Tucker, The First Day of Spring

“When I was so bored I thought my brain was going to slither out through my nose like snot,”
― Nancy Tucker, The First Day of Spring

“Her face seemed bigger and brighter than usual, like she had swallowed a bit of the sun, and she was smiling such a big smile it looked like her mouth was going to break.”
― Nancy Tucker, The First Day of Spring

“Can we? I’ve got coins.’ She took four pennies and a tiddlywink from her pocket”
― Nancy Tucker, The First Day of Spring

“Look at that sky,’ he said, pointing above our heads. I looked. It was all blue. ‘Yeah,’ I said. ‘First day of spring,”
― Nancy Tucker, The First Day of Spring

“What’s she crying for?” asked Linda. “Don’t know,” I said. I knew.”
― Nancy Tucker, The First Day of Spring

“Why is everything so big? Why is everything so loud? What do I do now?”
― Nancy Tucker, The First Day of Spring

“All day I had the same words in my ears. Da is dead, Da is dead, Da is dead. I didn’t cry because I never cried, but at school I was even badder than usual.”
― Nancy Tucker, The First Day of Spring

“It was quite a disappointment. I had hoped it might be something really interesting, like a badger.”
― Nancy Tucker, The First Day of Spring

“I felt pretty cross with her, because she had made me think something actually exciting had happened. Like the vicar had died or something.”
― Nancy Tucker, The First Day of Spring