Bev

“Why is it that twenty-four hours in the company of your family is capable of reducing you to a teenager?”
― Maggie O'Farrell, Instructions for a Heatwave

“It was always the meaningless tasks that endure: the washing, the cooing, the clearing, the cleaning. Never anything majestic or significant, just the tiny rituals that hold together the seams of human life.”
― Maggie O'Farrell, The Vanishing Act of Esme Lennox

“We begin in the world as anagrams of our antecedents.”
― Maggie O'Farrell, The Vanishing Act of Esme Lennox

“Now you are walking in Paris all alone in the crowd

As herds of bellowing buses drive by

Love's anguish tightens your throat

As if you were never to be loved again

If you lived in the old days you would enter a monastery

You are ashamed when you discover yourself reciting a prayer

You make fun of yourself and like the fire of Hell your laughter crackles

The sparks of your laugh gild the depths of your life

It's a painting hanging in a dark museum

And sometimes you go and look at it close up”
― Guillaume Apollinaire, Zone