Patricia O'Brien > Quotes

“He had illuminated the heartbreaking cruelty of war: When men who fight become nothing, only packages of bones and blood deposited in the earth with no clarion call to memory, those they love are left without a way to make such devastating loss hold meaning.”
― Patricia O'Brien, The Glory Cloak: A Novel of Louisa May Alcott and Clara Barton

“The women who went to the field, you say...
A few names were writ, and by chance live to-day;
But's a perishing record fast fading away,
Of those we recall, there are scarcely a score...
And what would they do if war came again?...
They would stand with you now, as they stood with you then,
The nurses, consolers, and saviors of men.”
― Patricia O'Brien, The Glory Cloak: A Novel of Louisa May Alcott and Clara Barton

“I was seeing what a writer can do with the tatters of truth, the unfinished stories that give us no rest. ”
― Patricia O'Brien, The Glory Cloak: A Novel of Louisa May Alcott and Clara Barton

“I continued up the stairs, this time on wings, suspecting for the first time that Louisa's book might outlive us all. ”
― Patricia O'Brien, The Glory Cloak: A Novel of Louisa May Alcott and Clara Barton

“...brooding only feeds the strange pleasure of melancholy...”
― Patricia O'Brien, Harriet and Isabella

“She had joined that sad sisterhood called disappointed women; a larger class than many deem it to be, though there are few of us who have not seen members of it. Unhappy wives; mistaken or forsaken lovers; meek souls, who make life a long penance for the sins of others; gifted creatures kindled into fitful brilliancy by some inner fire that consumes but cannot warm. These are the women who fly to convents, write bitter books, sing songs full of heartbreak, act splendidly the passion they have lost or never won; who smile, and try to lead brave uncomplaining lives, but whose tragic eyes betray them, whose voices, however sweet or gay, contain an undertone of hopelessness, whose faces sometimes startle one with an expression which haunts the observer long after it is gone.”
― Patricia O'Brien, The Glory Cloak: A Novel of Louisa May Alcott and Clara Barton