The Distant Hours
by Kate Morton
(Pan, 2010)
Children are never really interested in who their parents were before they were born.
Page 13.
I’m just not the type of person who accumulates friends or enjoys crowds. I’m good with words, but not the spoken kind; I’ve often thought what a marvellous thing it would be if I could only conduct relationships on paper.
Page 21.
I get to spend my days playing with words and sentences, helping people to express their ideas and fulfil their reams of publications.
Page 23.
It’s a funny thing, character, the way it brands people as they age, rising from within to leave its scar.
Page 66.
I was babbling, I could hear it but I couldn’t stop it.
Page 69.
Old buildings and old families belong to one another.
Page 87.
Calculating the dead can make one feel quite alone.
Page 88.
Everyone needs something to love.
Page 95.
Sometimes least said really was soonest mended.
Page 135.
I don’t believe in an obligation of full disclosure.
Page 205.
When you love someone you`ll do just about anything to keep them.
Page 225.
I nodded; she fetched; I gulped.
Page 233.
There’s something reassuring about conversations; its ordered pattern provides an anchor to the real world: nothing terrible or unexpected can happen, surely, when the rational exchange of dialogue is taking place.
Page 240.
It isn’t easy for a person to feel they’ve been forgotten.
Page 262.
Conversations waft away the moment they’ve been had, but the written word prevails.
Page 267.
No two people will ever see or feel tings in the same way. The challenge is to be truthful when you write. Don’t approximate. Don’t settle for the easiest combination of words. Go searching instead for those that explain exactly what you think. What you feel..
Page 274.
Love was not wise … it was unmindful of social strictures, cared not for lines of class or propriety or plain good sense.
Page 279.
All houses have hearts; hearts that have loved, hearts that have billowed with contentment, hearts that have been broken.
Page 282.
Love is a thing to be celebrated, not wept over.
Page 305.
Rejection is a cancer … It eats away at a person.
Page 394.
You know your way around sentences.
Page 403.
All’s fair in love, war, and publishing.
Page 406.
Happiness in life is not a given, it must be seized.
Page 421.
It was simply too beautiful not to posses.
Page 423.
To fall in love was to be caught, to be saved.
Page 507.
They can surprise us, can’t they, our parents? The things they got up to before we were born. … Almost like they were real people once.
Page 531.
One doesn’t have a choice when it comes to family.
Page 543.
A person needed their set of dates … it wasn’t enough to retain only the first. A person without a closed bracket could never rest.
Page 614