Mary Lawson > Quotes

“Suddenly he saw himself as others in the crowd must surely see him; a silent, solitary figure, standing apart from the rest. He looked out at the hoardes of singing, laughing people and felt more alone than he'd ever felt in his life. Was this how it was going to be then? Was this who he was? A man apart from his fellows, making the journey through life alone?”
― Mary Lawson, The Other Side of the Bridge

“You see the suffering of children all the time nowadays. Wars and famines are played out before us in our living rooms, and almost every week there are pictures of children who have been through unimaginable loss and horror. Mostly they look very calm. You see them looking into the camera, directly at the lens, and knowing what they have been through you expect to see terror or grief in their eyes, yet so often there’s no visible emotion at all. They look so blank it would be easy to imagine that they weren’t feeling much.
And though I do not for a moment equate what I went through with the suffering of those children, I do remember feeling as they look. I remember Matt talking to me--- others as well, but mostly Matt--- and I remember the enormous effort required even to hear what he said. I was so swamped by unmanageable emotions that I couldn’t feel a thing. It was like being at the bottom of the sea.”
― Mary Lawson, Crow Lake

“He'd assumed that you went to school because you had to learn things, starting off with the easy stuff and moving on to the bigger issues, and once you'd learned them that was it, the way ahead opened up and thereafter life was simple and straightforward. What a joke. The older he got, the more complicated and obscure everything became. ”
― Mary Lawson

“You'd have thought that after suffering such a loss nothing else would matter to her but that didn't seem to be how it worked. She was fearful about everything now. It was as if she had finally seen the awful power of fate, it's deviousness, the way it could wipe out in an instant the one thing you had been certain you could rely on, and now she was constantly looking over her shoulder, trying to work out where the next blow might fall.”
― Mary Lawson, The Other Side of the Bridge

“We are all bumbling along,side by side, week in, week out, our paths similar in some ways and different in others, all apparently running parallel. But parallel lines never meet.”
― Mary Lawson, Crow Lake

“Tomorrow is forever, and years pass in no time at all”
― Mary Lawson, Crow Lake

“Laurie was just one more dropped stitch in a family tapestry already full of holes.”
― Mary Lawson, Crow Lake

“That last stretch of the journey from Toronto to Crow Lake always takes me by the throat. Partly it's the familiarity; I know every tree, every rock, every boggy bit of marshland so well, that even though I almost always arrive after dark I can feel them around me, lying there in the darkness as if they were my own bones.”
― Mary Lawson, Crow Lake

“Arthur found himself staring down at the knife embedded in his foot. There was a surreal split second before the blood started to well up and then up it came, dark and thick as syrup.

Arthur looked at Jake and saw that he was staring at the knife. His expression was one of surprise, and this was something that Arthur wondered about later too. Was Jake surprised because he had never considered the possibility that he might be a less than perfect shot? Did he have that much confidence in himself, that little self-doubt?

Or was he merely surprised at how easy it was to give in to an impulse, and carry through the thought which lay in your mind? Simply to do whatever you wanted to do, and damn the consequences.”
― Mary Lawson

“The lake hadn’t been frozen long and of all them had been expressly forbidden to go out on it, but Norman Pye, who was older than the rest of them, said that it would be safe if they slid out on their bellies. So they did. “We thought it was exciting as all get out,” Miss Vernon said. “We could hear the ice cracking but it didn’t give, and we slid across it like seals. Oh, it was tremendous fun. The ice was clear as glass and you could see right to the bottom. All the stones lying there, brighter and more colourful than they ever are when you look through the water. You could even see fish swimming about. And then all at once there was this loud crack and the whole sheet gave way, and there we were in the water.”
― Mary Lawson, Crow Lake

“Feeling must have rendered her numb.”
― Mary Lawson, Crow Lake

“Maybe it’s a matter of tenses. Of grammar. Our love existed, it does exist, it will exist. On the great continuum of time, perhaps it is the tenses that will cease to be. What does the scientist in you think of that?”
― Mary Lawson, A Town Called Solace

“Matt had told me that cold was just the absence of heat, but it didn’t feel like that. It felt like a presence. It felt stealthy, like a thief. You had to wrap your clothes tight around you or it would steal your warmth, and when all your warmth was gone you’d just be a shell, empty and brittle as a dead beetle.”
― Mary Lawson, Crow Lake

“Good luck. Maybe that’s all it was. Maybe the whole of life depended not on how hard you tried, how determined you were, how sensible, how smart: maybe the whole shooting match depended on luck.”
― Mary Lawson, The Other Side of the Bridge

“I would like to be able to say that I threw myself into the spirit of it all, but the truth is, I still felt a bit dazed. A bit abstracted. It's going to take time, I guess. If you’ve thought in a certain way for many years, if you’ve had a picture in your mind of how things are and that picture is suddenly shown to be faulty, well, it stands to reason that it will take a while to adjust. And during that time, you’re bound to feel … disconnected”
― Mary Lawson, Crow Lake

“children have very little concept of time. Tomorrow is forever, and years pass in no time at all.”
― Mary Lawson, Crow Lake

“Here's a truth about marriage, he thought, staring at the ceiling at three in the morning. People should be warned: think twice before you take those vows, because there is nothing, absolutely nothing, as lonely as a bad marriage.”
― Mary Lawson, A Town Called Solace

“When he was younger, Ian had assumed that as you got older things became clear. Adults had seemed so sure, so knowledgeable, not just about facts and figures but about the big questions: the difference between right and wrong; what was true and what wasn't; what life was about. He'd assumed that you went to school because you had to learn things, starting off with the easy stuff and moving on to the bigger issues, and once you'd learned them that was it, the way ahead opened up and thereafter life was simple and straightforward. what a joke. The older he got, the more complicated and obscure everything became. He understood nothing anymore--nothing and nobody, including himself.”
― Mary Lawson, The Other Side of the Bridge

“It was so easy for women,their arms opened out instinctively and they gathered in whatever hurt there was and that was that, they didn't even have to think about it.”
― Mary Lawson, The Other Side of the Bridge

“Most children suffer from a crippling lack of stimulation. The brain is like any other muscle; use it, and it develops. Ignore it, and it atrophies.”
― Mary Lawson, Crow Lake

“They all lived in their own little clouds.”
― Mary Lawson, Road Ends

“If only. The two most pointless words in the English language.”
― Mary Lawson, Road Ends

“...he could see now that it was possible; that someone might be in so much pain they couldn't even hear what anyone else said, far less be comforted by it.”
― Mary Lawson, Road Ends

“The other ponds, our pond included, are just as they have always been.”
― Mary Lawson, Crow Lake

“My Great Grandmother Morrison fixed a book-rest to her spinning wheel so that she could read while she was spinning, or so the story goes. And one Saturday evening she became so absorbed in her book that when she looked up she found that it was half-past midnight and she had spun for half an hour on the Sabbath Day. Back then, that counted as a major sin.”
― Mary Lawson, Crow Lake

“Janie gave me a pen. Mrs. Tadworth gave me a doll. Matt”
― Mary Lawson, Crow Lake