Felicity Hayes-McCoy > Quotes

“This book tells my story. I’m writing it in Ireland, in a house on a hillside. The house sits low in the landscape between a holy well and the site of an Iron Age dwelling. It was built of stones ploughed out of the fields by men who knew how to raise them with their hands and to lock one stone to the next so each was firm. It’s a lone house on the foothills of the last mountain on the Dingle peninsula, the westernmost point in mainland Europe. At night the sky curves above it like a dark bowl, studded with stars.
…
From the moment I crossed the mountain, I fell in love with the place, which was more beautiful than any I’d ever seen. And with a way of looking at life that was deeper, richer, and wiser than any I’d known before.”
― Felicity Hayes-McCoy, The House on an Irish Hillside

“Everyone who's every lived has been the sum of their ancestor's choices. That's the human condition.”
― Felicity Hayes-McCoy, Summer at the Garden Café

“But reading the same books that your friends read gave you a sense of belonging. The loss of that sense of shared experience was one of the things that had bothered her when she and Mum moved to Ireland.”
― Felicity Hayes-McCoy, The Library at the Edge of the World

“It seemed to him that half the fun of a library was stumbling on treasures by chance...
Conor, in The Library at the Edge of the World”
― Felicity Hayes-McCoy, The Library at the Edge of the World

“Honestly, Louisa, everyone who’s ever lived has been the sum of their ancestors’ choices. That’s the human condition. We just have to get on with things and play the hand we’re dealt.”
― Felicity Hayes-McCoy, Summer at the Garden Cafe

“Everything in life has its own time to happen. A time to plant, a time to grow, and a time to harvest. And if you take things steady you’ll bring your harvest home.”
― Felicity Hayes-McCoy, The Library at the Edge of the World

“She missed her outings with Tom, and the times when her birthday and their anniversary were celebrated with dinner and a night in a hotel. Tom used always to be planning treats and surprises for her. In fact, whatever the begrudgers might say of him, it had been his greatest joy in life.”
― Felicity Hayes-McCoy, Summer at the Garden Cafe

“In purely practical terms the elderly have good reason to be selfish; our strength needs to be hoarded not only to deal with grief, disappointment and apprehension but with the minor physical aches and pains that are part of growing old.”
― Felicity Hayes-McCoy, Summer at the Garden Café

“There was no point in asking someone for more than they could give. All that ever happened was that both of you got hurt.”
― Felicity Hayes-McCoy, The Mistletoe Matchmaker

“Glancing in the rearview mirror, Hanna saw her walking back to the house with a spring in her step. It had only been a few minutes spent with an acquaintance but the human contact and the prospect of a couple of books to read and chat about had obviously made her day. No matter how isolated the scattered farms and villages on the peninsula might seem, there was a web of personal and communal relationships that linked people together, offering mutual support.”
― Felicity Hayes-McCoy, The Library at the Edge of the World

“When I first came to Corca Dhuibhne I heard a proverb that means 'enough is plenty.' I wrote it down then because of its concise use of Irish and, if I thought about its meaning at all, I assumed it applied to food and drink. Now I think it applies to all the appetites, including our appetite for work and for personal challenge. Too much or too little of anything means lack of balance. The Celts believed that the health of each individual affects the health of the universe. I don't know if that's true. But I do know that the essence of health is balance. And I think the route to finding it is awareness in stillness.”
― Felicity Hayes-McCoy, The House on an Irish Hillside

“She balanced The Mysterious Affair at Styles and A House Divided on the top of the gate and waved as the van pulled off.”
― Felicity Hayes-McCoy, The Library at the Edge of the World

“There’s a kind of a rhythm you have to get used to, though. Life here happens when it happens and it takes the time it takes. Trying to make it happen doesn’t make it happen any quicker.”
― Felicity Hayes-McCoy, Dingle and its Hinterland: People, Places and Heritage

“But a librarian should know better than anyone how written words, moving through time and space, could change a person's life.”
― Felicity Hayes-McCoy, The Library at the Edge of the World

“Enough is plenty: the essence of health is balance and the route to finding balance is awareness in stillness.”
― Felicity Hayes-McCoy, The House on an Irish Hillside

“I remember a woman called Máirín na Yanks Ni Mhurchú, who owned a shop near Mrs Hurley's.... I used to buy chocolate from her when I first came here, and sometimes we'd meet on the roads, picking blackberries. A few years ago, shortly before she died, she was interviewed for an Irish language television series. It was called Bibeanna, which is the Irish word for the wraparound aprons women here used to wear in the house and the farmyard. They were made of dark fabric, patterned with little flowers. I remember watching the series on television and thinking that Máirín's quiet voice hadn't changed since I'd first heard it. Sitting by her fire, wrapped in her flowery apron, she described her life, looking back on her childhood and the years she'd spent in her shop. She talked about the pleasure she took in the company of neighbours who'd drop in for a chat. Then she summed it all up in a sentence. 'I'm calm and easy in myself; I take each day as it comes and I keep my door open.”
― Felicity Hayes-McCoy, The House on an Irish Hillside

“This wasn’t the house of her childhood dreams. The naïve young man with his curly-brimmed hat, his flowered waistcoat, and his pink-cheeked wife with her baby and her quilted petticoat, had no place here. This wasn’t a stylish project fit for a design magazine or a perfect retreat from a stressful world. Instead it was a place of compromises. The elegant kitchen that she loved was a secondhand windfall. The dresser by the hearth still belonged more to Maggie, or even to Fury, than to herself. In fact, none of the furniture or possessions that surrounded her were symbols of hard-won independence. They were the story of her reintegration into a community that, for years, she had failed to value and that now might be her salvation.”
― Felicity Hayes-McCoy, The Library at the Edge of the World

“Your husband was a cheat and this Slattery man’s a liar. That’s no shame on you, girl. But sitting there snuffling when you should be getting organized! That’s a mortal sin.”
― Felicity Hayes-McCoy, The Library at the Edge of the World

“Trying to photograph the transcendental moment when the blazing disk disappeared into the ocean was ridiculous; in staring through a lens, the eye lost its peripheral vision while the scents and sounds that were part of the experience of a sunset were lost in the attempt to capture it.”
― Felicity Hayes-McCoy, The Library at the Edge of the World

“I've moved from wanting anonymity to rediscovering identity; and from wanting things now to wanting to wait for them to happen in their own time. I'm learning to live in the present, and to know that I can't control what may come next. In finding a balance. . . .”
― Felicity Hayes-McCoy, The House on an Irish Hillside

“I looked out to the west, with the wind on my face and a chunk of chocolate in my hand. Then the clouds shifted, the islands were furled in mist, and I remembered the bar of chocolate I ate on the high cliff on my first day here at Mrs Hurley's. That day, more than half a lifetime away, I had a glimpse of something I'm still looking for. Awareness in stillness.”
― Felicity Hayes-McCoy, The House on an Irish Hillside

“Anyway, don’t you know yourself what it’s like when you fall for a librarian? You can’t keep away.”
― Felicity Hayes-McCoy, Summer at the Garden Cafe

“I thought of the first morning I woke up in Corca Dhuibhne when I heard Mrs. Hurley's voice outside my door. 'Tá roinnt bricfeasta ullamh anois agam duit, a chailin.' 'I have a share of breakfast ready now for you, girl.' I didn't know it then, but what I'd heard was a world view contained in an idiom: the food spread on the table wasn't my breakfast, it was my share of breakfast.... People here know that too much or too little of anything means lack of balance. Balance brings contentment. And if no one takes more than their share in life, we can all be satisfied.”
― Felicity Hayes-McCoy, The House on an Irish Hillside

“She must have been one of the lay sisters whom the pupils had occasionally glimpsed in the corridors. Usually they were the daughters of large families, who had gone into the nuns, as people used to say, because they had no dowry to bring to a marriage. But the nuns, too, required a dowry from those who joined the order, so girls without money provided domestic help in the convent. In her school days Hanna had always thought of them as a bit downtrodden, but the woman beside her had a quiet air of confidence that was extraordinarily restful.”
― Felicity Hayes-McCoy, The Library at the Edge of the World

“The thing about dreams, Mum had said, was that sometimes they turned into prisons. You should never, ever deny yourself the freedom to move on and change.”
― Felicity Hayes-McCoy, Summer at the Garden Café

“We've bought into the idea that we're morally required to "challenge" ourselves. So we give ourselves lectures about how we ought to be, instead of listening in silence to see how we are.”
― Felicity Hayes-McCoy, The House on an Irish Hillside

“A couple of her friends were already talking about settling down with guys they were dating, but Ameena thought that was dumb. How could you settle down without seeing what else might be out there? Not just who you might spend your life with, but what you might do on your own. She wasn’t quite sure herself of what she’d do or where she’d go, but she was determined to keep her options open.”
― Felicity Hayes-McCoy, Summer at the Garden Cafe

“I've often heard younger women here envy their mothers' and grandmothers' spiritual and emotional strength. They call them 'mighty women' and admire their serenity and resilience. Those women had an inner strength that kept them going, an intuitive sense of balance and a deep belief in God.”
― Felicity Hayes-McCoy, The House on an Irish Hillside

“Wasn’t it weird, she said, how, if everyone pulled together you felt you could take on the world?”
― Felicity Hayes-McCoy, The Library at the Edge of the World

“Jazz herself saw things differently; the most important thing to her was experience—good, bad, and indifferent—”
― Felicity Hayes-McCoy, The Library at the Edge of the World