Sarah Moore Fitzgerald > Quotes

“Peace built on lies, is no peace at all.”
― Sarah Moore Fitzgerald, The Apple Tart of Hope

“Kindness is magic.”
― Sarah Moore Fitzgerald, The Apple Tart of Hope

“Y aunque el futuro parece frágil e incierto, el presente tiene algo nuevo. Algo seguro.”
― Sarah Moore Fitzgerald, The Apple Tart of Hope

“La paz construida sobre mentiras no es paz en absoluto.”
― Sarah Moore Fitzgerald

“Nothing is as you think it is. Lots of things are not what they appear to be. Sometimes people need you to keep searching for them, or at least asking questions on their behalf. And very often, people have been silenced and they need other people to speak for them. It's when you stop searching and asking and speaking that they really will be lost.”
― Sarah Moore Fitzgerald, The Apple Tart of Hope

“Goodbye Stevie, I’m sorry for leaving you, but when you find out about me, as you definitely will do one day, then you’ll be glad I’m gone too.”
― Sarah Moore Fitzgerald, The Apple Tart of Hope

“El pesimismo es un sentimiento contagioso, y estaba bastante extendido.”
― Sarah Moore Fitzgerald

“People often ignore the misfortune of others, you see. The world is a heartless place but it’s not always because they don’t care. It’s sometimes because they are embarrassed, or because they don’t know what to say, or because they simply cannot bear to look into the eyes of someone who is suffering.”
― Sarah Moore Fitzgerald, The Apple Tart of Hope

“Papá dice que la amabilidad es mágica. Parece algo dulce y suave visto desde fuera, dice, pero en su interior tiene poderes mágicos. Sé con seguridad que es absolutamente cierto.”
― Sarah Moore Fitzgerald

“The truth a fairly important thing to hold on to when you’ve been pulled out of the sea after wanting to drown in it. I could’ve let the sea take me. I could easily be dead now, which is funny when you think of it. When I say funny, what I actually mean is weird and kind of disturbing.
When there’s the loud sound of a siren screaming in your head it doesn’t take too long before a feeling of not caring what happens washed over you and you become recklessly self- destructive. I used to be full of energy and happiness but I could barely remember those kinds of feelings. The cheerful, childish things I used to think had been replaced. A whole load of new realisations had begun to grow inside me like tangled weeds, and they were starting to kill me. That’s why I’d make the decision that involved heading ogg to the pier on my pike in the middle of the night and cycling off it.”
― Sarah Moore Fitzgerald, The Apple Tart of Hope

“And she said that sometimes you wish for something very hard, it can kind of come true inside your own head, and it can seem real.”
― Sarah Moore Fitzgerald, The Apple Tart of Hope

“And when I'd realised that I'd been wrong, ridiculously, embarrassingly, shamingly wrong... quite quickly the world went from colour to black and white and the magic seemed to drain away and the only thing left for me to do was gather up my personal pride and try to look like the hope I'd had never existed. I acted as if I wan't destroyed of defeated. I acted as if I didn't care.”
― Sarah Moore Fitzgerald, The Apple Tart of Hope

“But it’s no ordinary apple tart. It’s the apple tart of hope. After you’ve taken a bite, the whole world will look almost completely different. Things will start to change and by the time you’ve had a whole slice you’ll realise everything is going to be okay.”
― Sarah Moore Fitzgerald, The Apple Tart of Hope

“The world is a heartless place but its not always because they dont care. Its sometimes because they don't know what to say or because they simply cannot bear to look into the eyes of someone who is suffering”
― Sarah Moore Fitzgerald

“Panic might feel like a bad thing, but in actual fact, it contains thousands of little splinters of hope. When panic is gone, it usually means that those splinters are gone too.”
― Sarah Moore Fitzgerald, The Apple Tart of Hope

“Oscar had a straightforward, dimpled, happy smile. It was one of the hundreds of great things about him.
And after that we were best friends. It had been as simple and inevitable as the striking of a match.”
― Sarah Moore Fitzgerald, The Apple Tart of Hope

“She was being nice, and Oscar was always reminding me that most people are fundamentally decent and that it doesn’t pay to think badly of them.”
― Sarah Moore Fitzgerald, The Apple Tart of Hope

“Deary me, boys, why? Why would someone with so much going for him have... have... ended it all in the way he appears to have done?

'Oh father, you see, it could be for any number of reasons ,' Andy said, serious and fluent, as if he was an expert on the subject. 'Personally I think it's a miracle that any of us survives.'

What do you mean? said the Priest.

'I mean' continued Andy, 'there's this one moment as you're growing up when the world suddenly feels more or less pointless- when the terribleness of reality lands on you, like something falling from the sky.'

'Something falling? Like what? asked Father Frank, trying his best.

'Something big, like a piano, say, or a fridge. And when that happens, there's no going back to the time when it hadn't landed on you.'

‘But what about the pleasures and the joy and the purpose, like sport, music, girls and the like?’ Father Frank was nearly pleading now.

‘Fiction,’ sighed Andy. ‘Mirages in the desert of life, to make people feel like it might be worth it.’

‘Oh,’ said Father Frank. ‘Oh I see, and do all you youngsters get this feeling?’

‘Yes, I think so,’ said Andy, not even asking anyone else for their opinion, but most of us learn to live with it.’

‘Well that’s a relief, I suppose.”
― Sarah Moore Fitzgerald

“I don’t remember now who took the photo of us, but I’ve had it in my room for years. We’re leaning out of our windows and we’re laughing at each other with joyfulness purer than anything to do with the polite smiling you get used to doing when you get older. The photo has the kind of proper smiles that happen when you’re looking straight into the face of someone who’s been your best friend for a long time.”
― Sarah Moore Fitzgerald, The Apple Tart of Hope

“Dear Oscar

I don’t know how to say this any other way but, you see, I need to explain something. I can’t stop thinking about that night when you rescued Barney with you tart – and how good and kind I realise you’ve always been. It wasn’t until this morning when you sent me an apple tart of my own that I finally knew what it is that I have to tell you.
The timing is pretty terrible, but, you see, the reason I haven’t wanted to go away is because I’ve wanted to stay here, and the reason I’ve wanted to stay here is because of you.
I’ve nothing against New Zealand or anything but because of how I feel, specifically about you, the whole world looks different.
I don’t know whether it’s because of everything has got darker or lighter. I guess that depends on how you feel about me which is, I hope, the same.
So anyways, look, you’ve convinced me that I should, as you say ‘embrace the adventure’ so that is what I have decided to do. It was the taste of you apple tart that finally made up my mind to give this my all. But I need to know you’ll be here when I come back.
I love you Oscar Dunleavy.
I’ve been falling in love with you since that day we first met.
I need to have some idea about whether you feel the same way about me. Send me a sign.
Anything will do.
Love,
Meg”
― Sarah Moore Fitzgerald, The Apple Tart of Hope

“I know what you might be thinking here on your own, but those thoughts won’t last for ever,’ I said. ‘You won’t always feel like this. This will pass. Homer will be here for you, and the sun will rise and you’ll find your reasons again. The ones you think have deserted you. Isn’t that right, Meg?”
― Sarah Moore Fitzgerald, The Apple Tart of Hope

“But here is proof, if ever we needed it , that wonderful things can grow out of even the darkest of times.”
― Sarah Moore Fitzgerald, The List of Real Things

“A feeling of slow motion came upon me then, and parts of my bike scratched against bits of my body. Slimy seaweed tangled around my ankles and my shoes slipped off my feet. My arms and legs were dragged in different directions as if there was an underwater force making me dance to a morbid tune.

I felt light. I felt slow. I felt fast - all in quick succession, but I couldn't think of anything except the quite relaxing idea that soon everything was going to be over.

I was alone. All around the wet rocks were silent and slimy. I couldn't feel any pleasure or any purpose. My decision seemed to make a terrible kind of sense My panic had gone. I was finished making decisions. I didn't think I'd ever have any more to make.

I'm not exactly sure what I'd been hoping for next. Brightness and song possibly. Beautiful music perhaps, say a harp or something playing in the distance and warmth to soothe my numb, frozen, sopping, scraped body. I definitely wasn't expecting what happened next.”
― Sarah Moore Fitzgerald, The Apple Tart of Hope

“Yes. I heard that everyone liked you enormously.’
‘Yeah,’ I said, ‘maybe some people did. Maybe they meant in the past, before everything changed. Anyway. It’s easy for people to like you when you’re dead. It’s a pity none of them could see their way to liking me when it mattered to me, when I was alive.’
‘You’re still alive, Oscar. You’re not dead. Had you forgotten?’
‘Look, I don’t want to talk about whether I’m alive or dead, and I don’t want to talk about my old life. I don’t want to about any of that.’
‘Why not?’
‘’Because I’m ashamed, I said.”
― Sarah Moore Fitzgerald, The Apple Tart of Hope

“He reminded me that he himself had been very frightened on this same spot, once, not so long ago. He told me he knew exactly what it was like to feel what I was feeling, and he didn't envy me. But now he said that I didn't have to think about another thing for the moment, because he was calling the shots. He was the one who was going to decide what happened next, which suddenly was OK with me. At that particular moment I would have followed him anywhere.”
― Sarah Moore Fitzgerald, The Apple Tart of Hope

“people often ignore the misfortune of others, you see. The world is a heartless place but it's not always because they don't care. It's sometimes because the are embarrassed, or because they don't know what to say, or because they simply cannot beat ro look into the eyes of someone who is suffering.”
― Sarah Moore Fitzgerald

“I’d never have predicted I would lose touch with him – before, that is, I did. I thought I had my reasons. But it turns out that they weren’t good reasons. It turns out that you should never lose contact with the people who are supposed to be important in your life. There is no excuse in doing that.”
― Sarah Moore Fitzgerald, The Apple Tart of Hope

“You shouldn’t give up on people when they vanish. You shouldn’t go, ‘ what a terrible pity but, oh well, that’s that.’
In actual fact the disappearance of someone is exactly everyone’s cue to get out and search, and keep searching and not stop until there’s dirt under their fingernails and wretchedness in their souls from the number of rocks they have pushed aside to see whether I’m under one of them.
If you want to know my opinion, coming to terms with someone’s disappearance is a bit of an offence. It’s an insult to someone’s memory.
I learned a lot though. As the days passed, I learned that staying lost made it’s made its own sort of sense. I learned that there’s not much of a difference between pretending to be dead and really dead. As far as I cans see, both seem to amount to the same thing.
I learned that if someone you know disappears you shouldn’t automatically jump to conclusions. You should ask questions, and look, and search until you know for sure. Don’t write them off until you’ve exhausted every avenue. Keep hope in your heart,”
― Sarah Moore Fitzgerald, The Apple Tart of Hope

“Might he have been unhappy, Stevie? Do you think something could have happened to make him want to, you know, do something like that?’
‘Look everyone gets a bit sad once in a while. Doesn’t make them suicidal.’
‘Yeah I know, but maybe..’
‘Meg,’ he said, holding up his hand like a little shield. ‘I need to be able to rely on you to keep the faith. You have to believe that he’s alive. If we stop believing that, then nobody will be rooting for him, and wherever he is right now, he needs someone on his side. Don’t you see? It’s obvious he’s just gone somewhere for a while. I know he’s coming back. Our job is to find out where that somewhere is, and do whatever we need to do to help him come home. This is not the time for any doubt, Meg. It’s really important. In fact, it is the most important thing we’ll ever have to believe in our whole lives.”
― Sarah Moore Fitzgerald, The Apple Tart of Hope

“No,” I said, “there isn’t.” After that, getting ready to leave stopped feeling like a big negative chore and began to feel more like a celebration. “Be sure to say thank you to Oscar for that tart,” my mum had said, looking kind of mystified and happy, while Dad had nodded dreamily in the background. “Okay, I will,” I said. Who would’ve guessed that something so specific, so definite, so full of butter and sugar would have been the answer to my fears? It turns out, though, that Oscar’s tart was the solution. Such a simple thing. Oscar said that now that I was committed to the trip, it was going to be better than even he’d predicted. As soon as I arrived, everything was going to be instantly fantastic—I was going to have a wonderful time and it was all going to work out perfectly brilliantly. But along with these new warm feelings, there was something else too. The thing that had been haunting me swelled up inside me again, and I”
― Sarah Moore Fitzgerald, The Apple Tart of Hope