Helen Laycock

“Maybe it’s like this, Max--you know how, when you are working on a long and ordered piece, all sorts of bright and lovely ideas and images intrude. They have no place in what you are writing, and so if you are young, you write them in a notebook for future use. And you never use them because they are sparkling and alive like colored pebbles on a wave-washed shore. It’s impossible not to fill your pockets with them. But when you get home, they are dry and colorless. I’d like to pin down a few while they are still wet.”
― John Steinbeck

“Do not follow where the path may lead.
Go instead where there is no path and leave a trail.”
― Harold McAlindon

“He really just wanted to blurt out, ‘My Grandma’s dead’, but he knew that when it came to it, the words would stick like pebbles in his throat.”
― Helen Laycock, Glass Dreams

“That winter everything changed. Stella had lost not only her twin but her best friend. Bayonie was never mentioned again, so that, in time, Stella wondered if she really had ever existed.”
― Helen Laycock, The Secret of Pooks Wood