M.J. Hyland > Quotes

“It is always sad when two people have been thinking the same thing at the same moment and neither can find a way to say it out loud.”
― M.J. Hyland, How the Light Gets In

“I often remember in this false, distorted way, and the memories are often cloaked in the colour of the sun. Sometimes I feel nostalgia for things I knew I hated when they were happening, for days spent at the beach or the swimming pool with my sisters.
When I pick my memories apart, I realise my mind has merely played back the objective ingredients, the clichéd apparatus of happiness, the sun, the sound of splashing water, ice-cream on parched lips and cold fizzy drink on a hot tongue, and laugher too. My memory often peddles on the falsehood of past happiness. I should know this.”
― M.J. Hyland, How the Light Gets In

“We remember the best fiction as though experienced, and we finish the greatest works with access to the inner-lives of the mind in a way life refuses us.”
― M.J. Hyland

“She said she was breaking up with me because I didn't know how to express my emotions. The thing is, I didn't have that many. As far as I was concerned, it was pretty simple. I was in love with her and I liked our life and we laughed a lot and it felt so good to be in bed with her and have her touching me. I liked what we had.”
― M.J. Hyland, This Is How

“I write that I will learn a language and take up the piano. Margaret can teach me. This might help her get back to what she misses and loves to do. I write a promise that I will do extremely well at school, sleep well and write for the school newspaper. I will swim in the mornings before school to get fit and develop legs like Bridget’s. I will fulfil my enormous potential, learn a new word every day, read a novel every week and become the world’s most impressive autodidact and polymath. I will go the university and live in student digs.”
― M.J. Hyland, How the Light Gets In

“I like him and I wonder what I would be like if I had a different father.”
― m.j. hyland