Catherine Cookson > Quotes

“The Girl was gone, buried in the past. She never wanted to hear that name again. She was a woman for better for worse. Whatever the future might bring she could face it as a woman, Ned Ridley's woman.”
― Catherine Cookson, The Girl

“You have never kissed me. Patted me, hugged me, but you've never kissed me."
"Oh, Rosie, Rosie." His face looked on the point of laughter, then his lips fell gently on hers and he held the kiss for some time. Now, pressing her face from him, he said "That's merely an introduction. When your cheek is better I'll do it properly.”
― Catherine Cookson, The Obsession

“Oh God, I'm sorry I bring trouble on people. I don't mean to, you know that, you know that. And don't punish me by taking Ned. Keep him safe that's all I ask. That's all I'll ever ask again, just keep him safe.”
― Catherine Cookson, The Girl

“You make your son out to be to be almost an idiot; well let me tell you something, Mrs Loan, if he were a complete idiot, drooling at the mouth, he'd still be a better person then you.”
― Catherine Cookson, The Girl

“Life was good except for―oh, yes, there was always an except.”
― Catherine Cookson, The Black Candle

“And, like the prodigal son, he had returned broken in body and also in mind to the house where he had been born, and he and his child had been welcomed with open arms.”
― Catherine Cookson, The Black Candle

“She's only got eight fingers but she's got them stuck in all kinds of pies, and she keeps her thumbs bare for testing new ones.”
― Catherine Cookson, The Black Candle

“John was a man of few words and many grunts and one of his grunts could express a volume. He had a variety of them which he adapted as the situation arose. But they all seemed to express his view on life, the principle of which was, ‘you leave me be, and I’ll leave you be’;”
― Catherine Cookson, Saint Christopher and the Gravedigger

“Fancy feathers make peacocks, but you pluck them and see what's left.”
― Catherine Cookson, The Black Candle

“You're born but you're not buried yet.”
― Catherine Cookson, Feathers in the Fire

“Fear is the enemy, fear is the foe, if you run before it down you’ll go. But if you stand and look it in the face, God will pour into you the bravery of grace.”
― Catherine Cookson, The Tide of Life

“Come and sit down girl, for days you've been flying around there like a bluebottle.”
― Catherine Cookson, The Golden Straw

“said it back there, feelings are stronger than chains, you’ll never see him as he really is because of your feeling for him, and if you’ve made up your mind to spend the rest of your days with him”
― Catherine Cookson, The Tide of Life

“Anyway, as they say, where there's life, there's hope. So let us eat.”
― Catherine Cookson, The Black Candle

“Platitudes or otherwise, there were no words to ease the agony of living.”
― Catherine Cookson, The Black Candle

“whatever you intend to do, don’t waste it, lad. You’ve only got one life. But, you know, you never realise this until you are halfway through it, that’s if you get the chance to reach that stage. Often life is taken from people before they realise that they value it. I used to be always sorry when I heard of life being snatched from the young. But then again, it might have been better that way for them, for it may have saved them suppin’ sorrow. You know, Joseph, I’m a very healthy woman. I’ve never known a day’s illness in me life and yet I’ve known such unhappiness that at times I would have swapped it for the peace which”
― Catherine Cookson, The Black Candle

“...but what he had learned over these past weeks was that people were entwined one with the other, and that you couldn't isolate yourself from them and say, 'I am going to be happy', because their emotions penetrated you and cast a shadow over your happiness, they tinged your love with sadness and fear until you were being forced to believe that sadness and fear were part of love.”
― Catherine Cookson, The Man Who Cried

“Our family’s fate seems to have hung on money for the last two generations, on money that we have never earned. We have lived in debt for so long: we have”
― Catherine Cookson, The Black Candle

“I had said that to him dozens of times over the . . . ’ ‘Yes, we have heard you make that statement already. Now will you”
― Catherine Cookson, The Black Candle

“The fellow had said that education had nothing to do with intelligence and that half the so-called educated were numskulls.”
― Catherine Cookson, The Moth

“Hannah sat down again and leant back against the tall head of the hall chair. He was right. Yes, he was right. She must have been mad to go on like she had. Good Lord! She hadn’t given him the message from Mrs Beggs. Again she was on her feet, but her voice still sounded angry as she called down the hall, ‘I forgot to give you a message, from Mrs Beggs. She wanted to know if you were going there tomorrow or Saturday.’ There was a moment’s silence before his door opened and he came back into the hall and went to the telephone. She remained standing where she was until she heard him say, ‘Hello, Beggie.”
― Catherine Cookson, The Thursday Friend

“passages.”
― Catherine Cookson, Before I Go

“The Nice Bloke The Glass Virgin The Invitation The Dwelling Place Feathers in the Fire Pure as the Lily The Invisible Cord The Gambling Man The Tide of Life The Girl The Cinder Path The Man Who Cried The Whip The Black Velvet Gown A Dinner of Herbs The Moth The Parson’s Daughter The Harrogate Secret”
― Catherine Cookson, The Black Candle

“, entertaining friends, and using your money to spread largesse, sometimes even in a way that wouldn’t touch your emotions.”
― Catherine Cookson, The Black Candle

“Her stories do not bring in a realism in which”
― Catherine Cookson, The Black Candle

“Try not to worry, for time is a great healer.' Such words were futile.”
― Catherine Cookson, The Black Candle

“eaten in debt, we have been waited on in debt. Yes, many a time I knew those servants hadn’t been paid. That’s why they left, they weren’t dismissed. And all the time I partook of the whole; yet I must admit, with shame at times. But’ – he now looked along the length of the old building – ‘I am now earning my living, and it has got to keep me and pay a man. And I can sleep easy at nights.”
― Catherine Cookson, The Black Candle

“This subject had hit John with such intensity that he could no longer remain unaware of his deeper thinking. He became so much aware of it, in fact, that he was worried by it and therefore he was determined to do something about it. This breaking out of his cocoon did not surprise John, for being the least introspective of men, he had not been aware that he lived in a cocoon.”
― Catherine Cookson, Saint Christopher and the Gravedigger

“You don’t like possessive people then?’ ‘It isn’t that I don’t like them, I cannot understand what motivates them, unless it is an inadequacy in themselves, some deep want, and in order to alleviate it in some way, they hang on to another human being. It’s a sort of desire for power. Those who run businesses are possessed in a similar way. They have power over people; and very often, on their whims depends a man’s livelihood.”
― Catherine Cookson, The Black Candle

“the touch of some friendly hand. He was lost in that vast, unknown and terrible continent of loneliness; it stretched on and on, very white and hopeless, and quite bare.”
― Catherine Cookson, Kate Hannigan: A Novel