S. McIlroy

“When you grow as old as I am you can’t any longer say this was someone’s fault, and that was someone else’s. It isn’t so clear when you take a long view. Blame seems to lie everywhere. Or nowhere. Who can say where unhappiness begins?”
― Joan G. Robinson, When Marnie Was There

“There was a picture over the bed, a framed sampler in red and blue cross-stitch, with the words Hold fast that which is Good embroidered over a blue anchor. Anna looked at this with mistrust. It was the word “good”. Not that she herself was particularly naughty, in fact her school reports quite often gave her a “Good” for Conduct, but in some odd way the word seemed to leave her outside. She didn’t feel good…”
― Joan G. Robinson, When Marnie Was There

“Sometimes the gulls came nearer, screaming noisily as they quarreled over small fish in the pools, and sometimes they cried mournfully far away along the beach. Then Anna felt like crying too - not actually, but quietly - inside. They made a sad, and beautiful, and long-ago sound that seemed to remind her of something lovely she had once known - and lost, and never found again. But she did not know what it was.”
― Joan G. Robinson, When Marnie Was There