The Black Candle Quotes

“Life was good except for―oh, yes, there was always an except.”
― Catherine Cookson, The Black Candle

“She's only got eight fingers but she's got them stuck in all kinds of pies, and she keeps her thumbs bare for testing new ones.”
― Catherine Cookson, The Black Candle

“And, like the prodigal son, he had returned broken in body and also in mind to the house where he had been born, and he and his child had been welcomed with open arms.”
― Catherine Cookson, The Black Candle

“Fancy feathers make peacocks, but you pluck them and see what's left.”
― Catherine Cookson, The Black Candle

“Platitudes or otherwise, there were no words to ease the agony of living.”
― Catherine Cookson, The Black Candle

“Anyway, as they say, where there's life, there's hope. So let us eat.”
― Catherine Cookson, The Black Candle

“I had said that to him dozens of times over the . . . ’ ‘Yes, we have heard you make that statement already. Now will you”
― Catherine Cookson, The Black Candle

“Yes, I know you and your old maxim you were always quoting: Let him go and you’ll keep him. Not let him go and you lose him. Yes, you did.”
― Catherine Cookson, The Black Candle

“You don’t like possessive people then?’ ‘It isn’t that I don’t like them, I cannot understand what motivates them, unless it is an inadequacy in themselves, some deep want, and in order to alleviate it in some way, they hang on to another human being. It’s a sort of desire for power. Those who run businesses are possessed in a similar way. They have power over people; and very often, on their whims depends a man’s livelihood.”
― Catherine Cookson, The Black Candle

“I’m not against having to work for someone; we’re all working for someone really. We here, in this business, have our masters, but we do seem to have a greater amount of freedom allowed us than in some others, and I’ve always been against the hold one human being has over another, whether it’s in employment or in the family.”
― Catherine Cookson, The Black Candle

“There are people who cannot live unless they possess something or someone. With some it’s money. Lots and”
― Catherine Cookson, The Black Candle

“lots of money and the power it gives them. With others it’s a person. I think that’s the worst kind when it’s applied to a human being.”
― Catherine Cookson, The Black Candle

“I can’t go to my daughter and in any kind of a motherly way say, stop loving your husband so much.’ ‘We are not talking about love, dear; we are talking about possession.”
― Catherine Cookson, The Black Candle

“do you know what you are saying? You’re inferring that Amy’s love has tired him, or is tiring him as much as Henrietta’s.’ He looked at her for a long time before he gave her an answer: ‘I didn’t actually think of it in that way, but as you put it so plainly, yes, I think it might. You see, you and I love each other. We know we can’t love each other more than we do, it’s impossible, we’re never happy when we’re apart, yet you give me my freedom and I give you yours. We both have a hobby, as it were. Our businesses are our hobbies. If I had wanted to paw over you and hold your hand for twenty-four hours a day you, being who you are, would have tired of me . . .”
― Catherine Cookson, The Black Candle

“she had come to realise of late that when one faced oneself, one found some displeasing facets, and one of them was a strong will, which became wilfulness when displayed at Amy’s age.”
― Catherine Cookson, The Black Candle

“Bertha here, it was different. For him, there was a glowing warmth emanating from this little woman, and, although he couldn’t tell her, he knew that for the rest of his life he would feel that wherever she was, he must be near her, at least within visiting distance, and that often.”
― Catherine Cookson, The Black Candle

“in at night, seein’ you out in the mornin’, the memory of that’ll last me.’ ‘Oh, Bertha.’ He leant forward and caught her hand, and she lifted it up and pressed it against her cheek, and at the contact he asked himself, how many kinds of love were there? Because here he was telling himself that he loved this little woman in a way that he had never loved his mother, because he had never been able to talk to his mother, at least his mother had never been able to talk to him, as Bertha had. Looking back, he thought that his mother had buried herself in the quicklime that had covered his stepfather. She had only been half-alive all those years, living only because she had to bring him up. It had been a sad life and the sadness had impregnated him. Yet, with”
― Catherine Cookson, The Black Candle

“in at night, seein’ you out in the mornin’, the memory of that’ll last me.’ ‘Oh, Bertha.’ He leant forward”
― Catherine Cookson, The Black Candle

“And so, now you know why I nearly ate you up the day you landed on the doorstep in the rain. I was lonely. I look back an’ I know I’ve been lonely every day since Willie died. But from the minute you stepped into the kitchen, as I told you, me life seemed to change. Lad, if you walked out the morrow and I never saw you again, the memory of these last few weeks, waitin’ for you comin”
― Catherine Cookson, The Black Candle

“whatever you intend to do, don’t waste it, lad. You’ve only got one life. But, you know, you never realise this until you are halfway through it, that’s if you get the chance to reach that stage. Often life is taken from people before they realise that they value it. I used to be always sorry when I heard of life being snatched from the young. But then again, it might have been better that way for them, for it may have saved them suppin’ sorrow. You know, Joseph, I’m a very healthy woman. I’ve never known a day’s illness in me life and yet I’ve known such unhappiness that at times I would have swapped it for the peace which some chronic invalids seem to have inside themselves. D’you know what I mean?”
― Catherine Cookson, The Black Candle

“whatever you intend to do, don’t waste it, lad. You’ve only got one life. But, you know, you never realise this until you are halfway through it, that’s if you get the chance to reach that stage. Often life is taken from people before they realise that they value it. I used to be always sorry when I heard of life being snatched from the young. But then again, it might have been better that way for them, for it may have saved them suppin’ sorrow. You know, Joseph, I’m a very healthy woman. I’ve never known a day’s illness in me life and yet I’ve known such unhappiness that at times I would have swapped it for the peace which”
― Catherine Cookson, The Black Candle

“eaten in debt, we have been waited on in debt. Yes, many a time I knew those servants hadn’t been paid. That’s why they left, they weren’t dismissed. And all the time I partook of the whole; yet I must admit, with shame at times. But’ – he now looked along the length of the old building – ‘I am now earning my living, and it has got to keep me and pay a man. And I can sleep easy at nights.”
― Catherine Cookson, The Black Candle

“Our family’s fate seems to have hung on money for the last two generations, on money that we have never earned. We have lived in debt for so long: we have”
― Catherine Cookson, The Black Candle

“Those last few minutes with him this evening had been a revelation. They weren’t words of self-pity, but more like confession of guilt, the guilt of having wasted a life and the pity that there was no second chance. You had one and that was all. He must”
― Catherine Cookson, The Black Candle

“and at the same time you are so lucky to have this house, this atmosphere. Yes, that’s what I mean, atmosphere, in which to hide and heal your sores.”
― Catherine Cookson, The Black Candle

“, entertaining friends, and using your money to spread largesse, sometimes even in a way that wouldn’t touch your emotions.”
― Catherine Cookson, The Black Candle

“You are so fortunate, aren’t you? What troubles you have in life you have picked them up, sort of gathered them to yourself, such as Victoria, and Joe, and Lily and her child. Yet, you needn’t have done any of these things, you could have stayed happily in this haven and led the life it suggests, peace and tranquillity”
― Catherine Cookson, The Black Candle

“so I repeat, quite soon, you would meet someone that could match your mentality and would be a friend to you as well as a husband. Because that is what is needed in marriage . . . friendship. And that is why there are so many unhappy people in the world, because when love flies up the chimney the heat goes out of the ashes. And love does fly up the chimney, my dear, that love that drives you . . . ’ He stopped; then inclining his head on one side, he asked, ‘Dare I say it to you, you a young lady, that the love that drives you to bed with its first flush fades. It’s bound to fade, and then, as I said, if it doesn’t leave friendship behind, life becomes a withered thing. I speak from experience, my dear, for I have so many clients that are walking about dead because they didn’t prepare for love dying on them.”
― Catherine Cookson, The Black Candle

“neatly clipped beech hedge.”
― Catherine Cookson, The Black Candle

“Joe and the Gladiator The Nipper Rory’s Fortune Our John Willie Mrs. Flannagan’s Trumpet Go tell It To Mrs Golightly Lanky Jones Bill and The Mary Ann Shaughnessy AUTOBIOGRAPHY Our Kate Let Me Make Myself Plain Plainer Still The Black Candle Bridget Deane Mordaunt was a woman of some consequence in her own part of the world.”
― Catherine Cookson, The Black Candle