Right and wrong can be like bloody snakes: so tangled up that you can't tell which is which until you've shot'em both, and then it's too late.
It is a luxury to do something that serves no practical purpose: the luxury of civilization.
Coming back last time to the house she grew up in, Isabel had been reminded of the darkness that had descended with her brothers' deaths, how loss had leaked all over her mother's life like a stain. As a fourteen-year-old, Isabel had searched the dic...
Oh, but my treasure, it is so much less exhausting. You only have to forgive once. To resent, you have to do it all day, every day. You have to keep remembering all the bad things." - as Frank Roennfeldt
Scars are just another kind of memory.
Sometimes, you're the one who strikes it lucky. Sometimes, it's the other poor bastard who's left with the short straw, and you just have to shut up and get on with it.
Stick to now. Put right the things you can put right today, and let the ones from back then go. Leave the rest to the angels, or the devil or whoever's in charge of it.
What are you suggesting I do Ralph?’ ‘I’m suggesting you tell the bloody truth whatever it is. The only place lying leads is trouble.’ “Sometimes that’s the only place telling the truth get you, too.
If the war had taught her anything, it was to take nothing for granted: that it wasn’t safe to put off what mattered. Life could snatch away the things you treasured, and there was no getting them back.
And the stars: the sky gets crowded at night, and it is a bit like watching a clock, seeing the constellations slide across the sky. It’s comforting to know that they’ll show up, however bad the day has been, however crook things get. That used t...
Christ--the quickest way to send a bloke mad is to let him go on re-fighting his war till he gets it right.
Then he remembered Ralph's words--"no point in fighting your war over and over until you get it right.
From when she was a baby, Tom has taught the girl to respect, but not fear, the forces of nature- the lightning that might strike the light tower on Janus, the oceans that batter the island.
Life could snatch away the things you treasured, and there was no getting them back. She began to feel an urgency, a need to seize an opportunity. Before anyone else did.
Being over there changes a man. Right and wrong don't look so different anymore to some.
That's how life goes on - protected by the silence that anesthetizes shame.
It is so much less exhausting. You only have to forgive once. To resent, you have to do it all day, every day. You have to keep remembering all the bad things ... I would have to make a list, a very, very long list and make sure I hated the people on...
The oceans never stop. They know no beginning or end. The wind never finishes. Sometimes it disappears, but only to gather momentum from somewhere else, returning to fling itself at the island, to make a point which is lost on Tom.
I can leave myself to rot in the past, spend my time hating people for what happened, like my father did, or I can forgive and forget." "But it's not that easy." He smiled that Frank smile. "Oh, but my treasure, it is so much less exhausting. You onl...
