M.L. Stedman Quotes

Nature allowed only the fit and the lucky to share this paradise-in-the-making.

Here in a place where there's just wind an waves and light, and the intricate machinery that keeps the flame burning and the lantern turning. Always turning. Always looking over its shoulder

He was a practical man: give him a sensitive technical instrument, and he could maintain it; something broken, and he could mend it, meditatively, efficiently. But confronted by his grieving wife, he felt useless.

No one ever has or ever will travel quite the same path on earth ...

Perhaps when it comes to it, no one is just the worst thing they ever did.

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 it the right amount ... No ... we always have a choice. All of us.

Are you sorry you ever met me, Tom?
"I was born to meet you, Izz. I reckon that's what I was put here for," he said and kissed her cheek.

Oh merciful God, grant that the old Adam in this child may be so buried, that the new man may be raised up in her....

It occurs to him that there are different versions of himself to farewell - the abandoned eight-year-old; the delusional soldier who hovered somewhere in hell; the lightkeeper who dared to leave his heart undefended. Like Russian dolls, these lives sit within him.

All you need is patience and a bit of nous.

Perhaps none of this existed, for the inches between them seemed to divide two entirely different realities, and they no longer joined.

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.

A goblin thought jumps onto her shouder: what's the point of tomorrow?

You only have to forgive once. To resent, you have to do it all day, every day.

There was nothing he was going through that the stars had not seen before, somewhere, some time on this earth.

I'm all right on my own. And I'm all right with a bit of company. It's the switching from one to the other that gets me.

between words. "It's coming! The baby's coming.

Tom watches Isabel, waits for her to return his glance, longs for her to give him one of the old smiles that used to remind him of Janus Light - a fixed, reliable point in the world, which meant he was never lost.

He struggles to make sense of it
all this love, so bent out of shape, refracted, like light through the lens ...

Years bleach away the sense of things until all that's left is a bone-white past, stripped of feeling and significance.

cubbies together. She was a bit older, and always had to be

Always slightly off balance. It was a new sensation for him.

Isabel sat up, and looked deep into his eyes. 'What goes on in there, I wonder?

As a fourteen-year-old, Isabel had searched the dictionary. She knew that if a wife lost a husband, there was a whole new word to describe who she was: she was now a widow. A husband became a widower. But if a parent lost a child, there was no special label for their grief. They were still just a mother or a father, even if they no longer had a son or a daughter. That seemed odd. As

To bear witness to the death, without being broken by the weight of it.

Lives gone, traces left.

You have only to forgive once. To resent, you have to doit all day, every day. You have to keep remembering all the bad things" Frank to Hannah Roennfeldt

Then this is how you do it,' and kissed her slowly, letting time fade away. And he couldn't remember any other kiss that felt quite the same.

Needed mothering. Grief and distance bound the wound, perfecting the bond

When it comes to the ocean, anything's possible, I suppose. Anything at all.

Never be sorry for smiling!

the vicar. "Hath this child already

When he wakes sometimes from dark dreams of broken cradles, and compasses without bearings, he pushes the unease down, lets the daylight contradict it. And isolation lulls him with the music of the lie.

Victorious and dead is a poor sort of victory

Tom tingled at the knowledge that he was the only one to hear any of it: the only living man for the better part of a hundred miles in any direction. He thought of the gulls nestled into their wiry homes on the cliffs, the fish hovering stilly in the safety of the

When it comes to their kids, parents are all just instinct and hope. And fear. p.276

I was born to meet you, Izz. I reckon that's what I was put here for,

But it's not always plain sailing, even when you've found the right girl. You've got to be in it for the long haul. You never know what's going to happen: you sign up for whatever comes along. There's no backing out.

History is that which is agreed upon by mutual consent.

There, all gone, Luce." And the little girl continued to open and squint shut her eyes. "All gone," she said eventually. Then, "More 'tato!" and the hunt began again. Inside, Isabel swept the floor in every room, gathering the sandy dust into piles in the corner, ready to gather up. Returning from a quick inspection of the bread in the oven, she found a trail leading all through the cottage, thanks to Lucy's attempts with the dustpan.

Isabel was squeezing the girl to her, sobbing at the touch of her, the legs fitting snugly around her waist and the head slotting automatically into the space beneath her chin, like the final piece of a jigsaw. She was oblivious to anything and anyone else ...
The woman and child were knitted together like a single being, in a world no one could enter.

He bit the narrow end of the flower and sucked the droplet of nectar from its base. 'You only taste it for a second. But it's worth it.' page 333

Izz, I've learned the hard way that to have any kind of a future you've got to give up hope of ever changing your past.

If a lighthouse looks like it's in a different place, it's not the lighthouse that's moved.

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

Akward, like when a mad aunt starts up about Jesus at the dinner table. As Septimus showed him to the door, the sergeant replaced his hat and said quietly, "A cruel piece of mischief-making, looks like. I reckon it's about time to bury the hatchet against Fritz. All a filthy business, but there's no need for pranks like this. I'd keep it under your hat, the note. Don't want to encourage copycats." He shook hands with Septimus and made his way up the long, gum-lined drive. Back in his study, Septimus put a hand on Hannah's shoulder. "Come on, girlie, chin up. Mustn't let this get the better of you.

Your family's never in your past. You carry it around with you everywhere.

Put right the things you can put right today.

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.

Humans withdraw to their homes, and surrender the night to the creatures that own it: the crickets, the owls, the snakes. A world that hasn't changed for hundreds of thousands of years wakes up, and carries on as if the daylight and the humans and the changes to the landscape have all been an illusion.

Tom rarely thought of the house in terms of rooms either. It was just "home." And something in him was saddened at the dissection of the island, the splitting off into the good and the bad, the safe and the dangerous. He preferred to think of it whole.

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.

if a parent loses a child, there was no special label for their grief. They were still just a mother or a father, even if they no longer had a son or daughter. That seemed odd.

Then in 1914 things changed. Partageuse found that it too had something the world wanted. Men. Young men. Fit men. Men who had spent their lives swinging an ax or holding a plow and living it hard. Men who were the prime cut to be sacrificed on tactical altars a hemisphere away.

Once a child gets into your heart, there's no right or wrong about it.

Our own star! Like the world's been made just for us! With the sunshine and the ocean. We have each other all to ourselves.

Lives gone, traces left. And he wondered about the despair of the man, destroyed by grief.

Point Partageuse got its name from French explorers who mapped the cape that jutted from the south-western corner of the Australian continent well before the British dash to colonize the west began in 1826. Since then, settlers had trickled north from Albany and south from the Swan River Colony, laying claim to the virgin forests in the hundreds of miles between. Cathedral-high trees were felled with handsaws to create grazing pasture; scrawny roads were hewn inch by stubborn inch by pale-skinned fellows with teams of shire horses, as this land, which had never before been scarred by man, was excoriated and burned, mapped and measured and meted out to those willing to try their luck in a hemisphere which might bring them desperation, death, or fortune beyond their dreams.

The ones ( life-form) to fear the most stay still, unnoticed, their defenses undetected until you trigger them by accident. They make no distinction. Eat the pretty heart-leaf poison bush, say, and your heart will stop. But Lord help you if you get too close. Only when Isabel was threatened were her defenses awakened.

That was the only thing that had got him through the four years of blood and madness: Know exactly where your gun is when you doze for ten minutes in your dugout; always check your gas mask; see that your men have understood their orders to the letter. You don't think ahead in years or months: you think about this hour and maybe the next. Anything else is speculation p. 33

Awkward, like when a mad aunt starts up about Jesus at the dinner table. As Septimus showed him to the door, the sergeant replaced his hat and said quietly, "A cruel piece of mischief-making, looks like. I reckon it's about time to bury the hatchet against Fritz. All a filthy business, but there's no need for pranks like this. I'd keep it under your hat, the note. Don't want to encourage copycats." He shook hands with Septimus and made his way up the long, gum-lined drive. Back in his study, Septimus put a hand on Hannah's shoulder. "Come on, girlie, chin up. Mustn't let this get the better of you." "But

I warn you, though, he's not the happiest corpse in the morgue. Not much of a talker, Neville Whittnish.

Sometimes the contract to forget is as important as any promise to remember

A lighthouse is for others; powerless to illuminate the space closest to it.

They tried hard to take comfort from the fact that the boys hadn't died in vain: they had been part of a magnificent struggle for right. And there were moments where they could believe that and swallow down the angry, desperate screech that wanted to scrape its way out of their gullets like out of a mother bird.

The old clock on the kitchen wall still clicked its minutes with fussy punctuality. A life had come and gone and nature had not paused a second for it. The machine of time and space grinds on, and people are fed through it like grist through the mill. Isabel had managed to sit up a little against the wall, and she sobbed at the sight of the diminutive form, which she had dared to imagine as bigger, as stronger – as a child of this world. 'My baby my baby my baby my baby,' she whispered like a magic incantation that might resuscitate him. The face of the creature was solemn, a monk in deep prayer, eyes closed, mouth sealed shut: already back in that world from which he had apparently been reluctant to stray. Still the officious hands of the clock tutted their way around. Half an hour had passed and Isabel had said nothing.

No one was quite sure how to treat this mourning that wasn't for a death.

Or I can forgive and forget ... 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 ... we always have a choice.

improbable to Tom that such endless space could exist

All night, far above him the light stood guard, slicing the darkness like a sword.

But he wishes the people really knew who they were mourning: the Isabel he had met on the jetty, so full of life and daring and mischief. His Izzy. His other half of the sky.

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.

They [the stars] just kept shining, no matter what was going on. I think of the light here like that, like a splinter of a star that's fallen to earth: it just shines, no matter what is happening.

Christ
the quickest way to send a bloke mad is to let him go on re-fighting his war till he gets it right.

Life,' thought Septimus, ... 'you could never trust the bastard. What it gives with one hand, it takes away with the other.

The only thing we can do is love that little girl as much as she deserves. And never, never hurt her!

If a wife lost a husband, there was a whole new word to describe who she was: she was now a widow. A husband became a widower. But if a parent loses a child, there was no special label for their grief. They were still just a mother or a father, even if they no longer had a son or daughter.

Sometimes it's good to leave the past in the past.

As long as one has good things in the mind, one can be happy. This I know.

The town draws a veil over certain events. This is a small community where everyone knows that sometimes the contract to forget is as important as any promise to remember. Children can grow up having no knowledge of the indiscretion of their father in his youth or the illegitimate sibling who lives fifty miles away and bears another man's name. History is that which is agreed upon by mutual consent. That's how life goes on; protected by the silence that anaesthetises shame.

Perhaps the same labeling obsession caused cartographers to split this body of water into two oceans, even though it is impossible to touch an exact point at which their currents begin to differ. Splitting. Labeling. Seeking out otherness. Some things don't change.

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.

The oceans never stop ... the wind never finishes. Sometimes it disappears, but only to gather momentum from somewhere else, returning to fling itself at the island ... Existence here is on the scale of giants. Time is in the millions of years; rocks which from a distance look like dice cast against the shore are boulders hundreds of feet wide, licked round by millennia ...

He's lived the life he's lived. He's loved the woman he's loved. No one ever has or ever will travel quite the same path on this earth and that's all right by home.

We can't rightly ever talk about the future, if you think about it. We can only talk about what we imagine or wish for. It's not the same thing.

Such a mysterious business, motherhood. How brave a woman must be to embark on it.

It's like a whole … a whole galaxy waiting for you to find out about. And I want to find out about yours.

Other blokes might take advantage, but to Tom, the idea of honor was a kind of antidote to some of the things he'd lived through.

Soon enough the days will close over their lives, the grass will grow over their graves, until their story is just an unvisited headstone.

Being over there changes a man. Right and wrong don't look so different anymore to some.

This focusing outward ... painful as it was, saved her from a more intolerable examination.

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.

Sometimes life turns out hard, Isabel. Sometimes it just bites right through you. And sometimes, just when you think it's done its worst, it comes back and takes another chunk.

He must return to something solid, because if he didn't, who knew where his mind or soul could blow away to, like a balloon without ballast.

But how? How can you just get over these things, darling? ... You've had so much strife but you're always happy. How do you do it?'
'I choose to ... 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 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 it the right amount. That I did a proper job of hating, too: very Teutonic! No' - his voice became sober- 'we always have a choice. All of us.' p.323

You've had a whole life, a whole story, and I've come in late. I'm only trying to make sense of things. Make sense of you.

What your wife's going to say you did or didn't do, if

it, she decided to experiment.

Well, you just had to count your blessings and be thankful things weren't worse.

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 dictionary. She knew that if a wife lost a husband, there was a whole new word to describe who she was: she was now a widow. A husband became a widower. But if a parent loss a child, there was no special label for their grief. They were still just a mother or a father, even if they no longer had a son or daughter. That seemed odd. As to her own status, she wondered whether she was still technically a sister, now that her adored brothers had died.