Anne Griffin > Quotes

“There was a love, but of the Irish kind, reserved and embarrassed by its own humanity.”
― Anne Griffin, When All Is Said

“Loneliness, that fecker again, wreaking his havoc on us mortals. It's worse than any disease, gnawing away at our bones as we sleep, plaguing our minds when awake.”
― Anne Griffin, When All Is Said

“Granted, back in your mother's day, the bank queues in Duncashel moved fierce slow, but every five or six steps you got to one of the pillars lining the route for a bit of a lean. Then there'd be a pile-up forming behind you, until you pushed yourself away again, freeing it up for the next man. Magnificent building, you wouldn't remember it. They had it knocked down and rebuilt by the time you toddled along. Thick doors that required your whole weight to open them. High ceilings and red-flecked marble counters. I'd have taken that over a church any day.”
― Anne Griffin, When All Is Said

“Some sat while others paced. Some rocked as others mumbled. And then some stood perfectly still. Pyjamaed people totally separate in their togetherness.”
― Anne Griffin, When All Is Said

“I tried to order the words jumbling about in my head. But they scurried about like a pack of frightened sheep, not one of them brave enough to take the lead.”
― Anne Griffin, When All Is Said

“When I met your mother, it felt like she'd filled a small piece of the hole that Tony'd left behind. Certainly, her love took the edges off his loss a bit. It was like bubble wrap in a way. Keeping him safe and settled within me, the sharpness gone. But as mad as it sounds, I sort of resented her for robbing that little bit of him from me.”
― Anne Griffin, When All Is Said

“I often wondered, did those hands that pocketed our cash ever ache for the touch of the soil as they held the smooth glass or the cold concrete or the dusty coal of their new lives?”
― Anne Griffin, When All Is Said

“But having spent half my life distracted by what was outside - my deals, my empire - I often forgot to see what lay inside and how precious it was.”
― Anne Griffin, When All is Said Five toasts Five people One lifetime

“But her story is like the wind under the front door, whistling its way through the crevices, getting through the cracks in my skin.”
― Anne Griffin

“No one, no one really knows loss until it’s someone you love. The deep-down kind of love that holds on to your bones and digs itself right in under your fingernails, as hard to budge as the years of compacted earth. And when it’s gone … it’s as if it’s been ripped from you. Raw and exposed, you stand dripping blood all over the good feckin’ carpet. Half-human, half-dead, one foot already in the grave.”
― Anne Griffin