Susan Fletcher

“But maybe the best thing I learnt was this: that we cannot know a person's soul and nature until we've sat beside them, and talked.”

“Sometimes we have so much to say, we cannot say it. Sometimes it's best we do not say goodbyes.”

“So I was for stories. I was for stries just as gannets were for balls of silver-flashing fish - I'd crash towards them, gaping. I'd try for as many as I could. And I'd keep them safe like feathers in a vase... They have been my comfort. My family. My strange nourishment.”

“Love is too small a word - too small.”

“And in my head I laid out the stories the islanders told me... the flakes of silver, the seals who are wiser than humans, the girl who floated like a patchwork star.”

“I hoarded all the stories that reflected the light and dazzled me.”

“Those moments that we remember. The tiniest moments or parts of a moment - a tap of a nail against a mug or the sound of a man swallowing, or how the sweeping beam finds the kitchen walls and then leaves them. We count the seconds, he and I.”

“Feathers... drift on the water like dreams.”

“Is that why we give flowers? To express admiration? Sometimes. But there are other reasons. A symbol of love or of commiseration. A way of saying thank you. A mark of respect. Proof we like someone and want them to smile. And we put flowers on graves to say “Look, we still think of you. You've left a space behind.”

“Stories are thick with meanings. You can fall in love with a story for what you think it says, but you can't know for certain where it will lead your listeners. If you're telling a tale to teach children to be generous, they may fix instead on the part where your hero hides in an olive jar, then spend the whole next day fighting about who gets to try it first.People take what they need from the stories they hear. The tale is often wiser than the teller.”

“Fear is the price we pay for love.”

“I want him to see me as I saw him then. I want him to find me alone at the end of the day with the sun in my hair. I want his heart to buckle, too.”

“A man can be beautiful, I see that now. It's not just a woman's term, not a word reserved for romantic, virtuous, elegant things. I don't think beauty is neat any more. It's unordered. It's unbrushed hair and a torn back pocket. It's bright and strange and lovely, and if I were to paint him, I'd use all the warm colours - ochre, gold, plum, terracotta, scarlet, burnt orange.”

“Your heart's voice is your true voice. It is easy to ignore it, for sometimes it says what we'd rather it did not - and it is so hard to risk the things we have. But what life are we living, if we don't live by our hearts? Not a true one. And the person living it is not the true you.”

“I've heard fate talked of. It's not a word I use. I think we make our own choices. I think how we live our lives is our own doing, and we cannot fully hope on dreams and stars. But dreams and stars can guide us, perhaps. And the heart's voice is a strong one. Always is.”

“God works as he chooses - we have our tests and He has His revelations”

“We have our stories, and we speak of them, and weave them into other people's stories - that's how it goes, does it not?”

“Which people take the time to care for their souls, these days? I reckon not many. But...hear this: I think that maybe in our lives -- in our scrabbling for food, in the washing of our bodies and warming of them, in our small daily battles -- we can forget our souls. We do not tend to them, as if they matter less. But I don't think they matter less.”

“Perfection is a moving target”

“Of course I remember. I remember my aching back and the drizzle, and the throb of my piercing in the top of my ear. I'd left university because of him. I'd learnt that I didn't want to be anywhere he wasn't, that I physically couldn't stand it. I was eighteen; he was in his early thirties. I came up the lane and found him standing there, under the limes, wearing blue.”

“I believe the world is as we choose to view it. Simple as that. Our happiness is, in the end, up to us, and to no one else.”

“There are moments. You will know them.”

“There is not one wide happiness that reaches us all at the same time.”

“Tell me about Stackpole then...Like I am now, but smaller.”

“Imagine it. Use all your strength and imagine it exactly. And it will happen that way.”

“We carry on. We have ourselves and we carry on- in spite of our losses and mistakes and women, I think, have more than most. We are good secret-keepers. We can tie weights to out guilt and passions, and hatred and deceitfulness, and let them sink down, so that you'd never know they existed at all. But we know. I can count all mine.”

“Love is as varied and unpredictable as the rain is: it comes in constant summer drizzles, or sudden, unforseen storms that make rivers burst their banks and Cornish fishing boats rock and spill and lose their crew in the Atlantic.”

“Kisses open doors, I've noticed. That one gesture can unlock secrets, ease open feelings. It can't be prevented--these kisses just are. It's how they work. They break into basements you never knew you had.”

“What if...? A question we ask to hurt ourselves.”

“Love is blind, they say--but isn't it more that love makes us see too much? Isn't it more that love floods our brain with sights and sounds, so that everything looks bigger, brighter, more lovely than ever before?”

“Mr Phipps seemed to think criminality was passed down through the generations like a stutter, or a squint, or in my case red hair.”

“No trains. No traffic noise. At night, my mother's old bedroom was so dark I couldn't tell if I'd shut my eyes or not.”