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The Secret Scripture (McNulty Family) QUOTES

The Secret Scripture (McNulty Family) QUOTES

1 " And whatever my life had been up to that day, it was another life after that. And that is the gospel truth. "

― Sebastian Barry , The Secret Scripture (McNulty Family)

2 " It is not history. But I am beginning to wonder strongly what is the nature of history. Is it only memory in decent sentences, and if so, how reliable is it? I would suggest, not very. And that therefore most truth and fact offered by these syntactical means is treacherous and unreliable. And yet I recognise that we live our lives, and even keep our sanity, by the lights of this treachery and this unreliability, just as we build our love of country on these paper worlds of misapprehension and untruth. Perhaps this is our nature, and perhaps unaccountably it is part of our glory as a creature, that we can build our best and most permanent buildings on foundations of utter dust. "

― Sebastian Barry , The Secret Scripture (McNulty Family)

3 " I was well aware how famously or infamously secretive these old institutions can be, no more than ourselves, a mixture of worry, lost power, perhaps even concern. That the truth may not always be desirable, that one thing leads to another thing, that facts not only lead forward to resolution, but backwards into the shadows, and sometimes into the various little hells we make for each other. "

― Sebastian Barry , The Secret Scripture (McNulty Family)

4 " I suppose therefore God is the connoisseur of filthied hearts and souls, and can see the old, the first pattern in them, and cherish them for that. "

― Sebastian Barry , The Secret Scripture (McNulty Family)

5 " After all the world is indeed beautiful and if we were any other creature than man we might be continuously happy in it. "

― Sebastian Barry , The Secret Scripture (McNulty Family)

6 " It is always worth itemising happiness, there is so much of the other thing in a life, you had better put down the markers for happiness while you can. "

― Sebastian Barry , The Secret Scripture (McNulty Family)

7 " The world begins anew with every birth, my father used to say. He forgot to say, with every death it ends. Or did not think he needed to. Because for a goodly part of his life he worked in a graveyard. "

― Sebastian Barry , The Secret Scripture (McNulty Family)

8 " I wanted to listen to him, but I did not want to answer now. That strange responsibility we feel towards others when they speak, to offer them the solace of any answer. Poor humans! And anyway he had not asked a question. He was merely floating there in the room, insubstantial, a living man in the midst of life, dying imperceptibly on his feet, like all of us. "

― Sebastian Barry , The Secret Scripture (McNulty Family)

9 " I am old enough to know that time passing is just a trick, a convenience. Everything is always there, still unfolding, still happening. The past, the present, and the future, in the noggin eternally, like brushes, combs and ribbons in a handbag. "

― Sebastian Barry , The Secret Scripture (McNulty Family)

10 " It is always worth itemizing happiness, there is so much of the other thing in a life, you had better put down the markers of happiness while you can. "

― Sebastian Barry , The Secret Scripture (McNulty Family)

11 " The human animal began as a mere wriggling thing in the ancient seas, struggling out onto land with many regrets. That is what brings us so full of longing to the sea. "

― Sebastian Barry , The Secret Scripture (McNulty Family)

12 " Roseanne, Roseanne, if I called to you now, my own self calling to my own self, would you hear me? And if you could hear me, would you heed me? "

― Sebastian Barry , The Secret Scripture (McNulty Family)

13 " A child is never the author of his own history. "

― Sebastian Barry , The Secret Scripture (McNulty Family)

14 " The trust of those in dark need is forgiving work. "

― Sebastian Barry , The Secret Scripture (McNulty Family)

15 " I rose and moved towards him. You would have done the same yourself. It is an ancient matter. Something propels you towards sudden grief, or perhaps also sometimes repels. You move away. I moved towards it, I couldn't help it. "

― Sebastian Barry , The Secret Scripture (McNulty Family)

16 " Memory, I must suppose, if it is neglected becomes like a box room, or a lumber room in an old house, the contents jumbled about, maybe not only from neglect but also from too much haphazard searching in them, and things to boot thrown in that don't belong there. "

― Sebastian Barry , The Secret Scripture (McNulty Family)

17 " There are some sufferings that we seem as a creature to forget, or we would never survive as a creature among all the other creatures. "

― Sebastian Barry , The Secret Scripture (McNulty Family)

18 " If it had been a great necessity, if it had been contingents of an army meeting to overwhelm the enemy by stealth, it might not have worked out so neatly. But fate it would seem is a perfect strategist and will work miracles of timing to assist our destruction. "

― Sebastian Barry , The Secret Scripture (McNulty Family)

19 " For I did not want him to see, or to question me, for here contains already secrets, and my secrets are my fortune and my sanity. "

― Sebastian Barry , The Secret Scripture (McNulty Family)

20 " Because it strikes me there is something greater than judgement. I think it is called mercy. "

― Sebastian Barry , The Secret Scripture (McNulty Family)