M.L Stedman Quotes

This focusing outward...painful as it was, saved her from a more intolerable examination.
M.L Stedman
The oceans never stop. They know no beginning or end. The wind never finishes. Sometimes it disappears, but only to gather momentum from somewhere else, returning to fling itself at the island, to make a point which is lost on Tom.
M.L Stedman
Then he remembered Ralph's words--"no point in fighting your war over and over until you get it right.
M.L Stedman
It is a luxury to do something that serves no practical purpose: the luxury of civilization.
M.L Stedman
That's how life goes on - protected by the silence that anesthetizes shame.
M.L Stedman
Being over there changes a man. Right and wrong don't look so different anymore to some.
M.L Stedman
Other blokes might take advantage, but to Tom, the idea of honor was a kind of antidote to some of the things he'd lived through.
M.L Stedman
I shouldn't have spoken like that.''People do, sometimes. People who've had less to contend with than you. We're not always in full control of our actions.
M.L Stedman
Christ--the quickest way to send a bloke mad is to let him go on re-fighting his war till he gets it right.
M.L Stedman
Sometimes, you're the one who strikes it lucky. Sometimes, it's the other poor bastard who's left with the short straw, and you just have to shut up and get on with it.
M.L Stedman
Such a mysterious business, motherhood. How brave a woman must be to embark on it.
M.L Stedman
Then this is how you do it,’ and kissed her slowly, letting time fade away. And he couldn’t remember any other kiss that felt quite the same.
M.L Stedman
Life could snatch away the things you treasured, and there was no getting them back. She began to feel an urgency, a need to seize an opportunity. Before anyone else did.
M.L Stedman
Stick to now. Put right the things you can put right today, and let the ones from back then go. Leave the rest to the angels, or the devil or whoever's in charge of it.
M.L Stedman
What are you suggesting I do Ralph?’‘I’m suggesting you tell the bloody truth whatever it is. The only place lying leads is trouble.’“Sometimes that’s the only place telling the truth get you, too.
M.L Stedman
The only thing we can do is love that little girl as much as she deserves. And never, never hurt her!
M.L Stedman
He was a practical man: give him a sensitive technical instrument, and he could maintain it; something broken, and he could mend it, meditatively, efficiently. But confronted by his grieving wife, he felt useless.
M.L Stedman
And the stars: the sky gets crowded at night, and it is a bit like watching a clock, seeing the constellations slide across the sky. It’s comforting to know that they’ll show up, however bad the day has been, however crook things get. That used to help in France. It put things into perspective—the stars had been around since before there were people. They just kept shining, no matter what was going on. I think of the light here like that, like a splinter of a star that’s fallen to earth: it just shines, no matter what is happening. Summer, winter, storm, fine weather. People can rely on it.
M.L Stedman
Coming back last time to the house she grew up in, Isabel had been reminded of the darkness that had descended with her brothers' deaths, how loss had leaked all over her mother's life like a stain. As a fourteen-year-old, Isabel had searched the dictionary. She knew that if a wife lost a husband, there was a whole new word to describe who she was: she was now a widow. A husband became a widower. But if a parent loss a child, there was no special label for their grief. They were still just a mother or a father, even if they no longer had a son or daughter. That seemed odd. As to her own status, she wondered whether she was still technically a sister, now that her adored brothers had died.
M.L Stedman
As Tom wandered back to Mrs Mewett’s, he thought about the little relics at the lighthouse – Docherty’s knitting, his wife’s jar of humbugs that sat untouched in the pantry. Lives gone, traces left. And he wondered about the despair of the man, destroyed by grief. It didn’t take a war to push you over that edge.
M.L Stedman
Tom thought back to the imposing, empty house: to the silence that deadened every room with a subtly different pitch; to the kitchen smelling of carbolic, kept spotless by a long line of housekeepers. He remembered that dreaded smell of Lux flakes, and his distress as he saw the handkerchief, washed and starched by Mrs Someone-or-other, who had discovered it in the pocket of his shorts and laundered it as a matter of course, obliterating his mother’s smell. He had searched the house for some corner, some cupboard which could bring back that blurry sweetness of her. But even in what had been her bedroom, there was only polish, and mothballs, as though her ghost had finally been exorcised.
M.L Stedman
I can leave myself to rot in the past, spend my time hating people for what happened, like my father did, or I can forgive and forget.""But it's not that easy."He smiled that Frank smile. "Oh, but my treasure, it is so much less exhausting. You only have to forgive once. To resent, you have to do it all day, every day. You have to keep remembering all the bad things...
M.L Stedman
It is so much less exhausting. You only have to forgive once. To resent, you have to do it all day, every day. You have to keep remembering all the bad things ... I would have to make a list, a very, very long list and make sure I hated the people on it the right amount ... No ... we always have a choice. All of us.
M.L Stedman
You've had so much strife but you're always happy. How do you do it? " "I choose to," he said. "I can leave myself to rot in the past, spend my time hating people for what happened...or I can forgive and forget... You only have to forgive once. To resent, you have to do it all day, every day. You have to keep remembering all the bad things.
M.L Stedman
You have only to forgive once. To resent, you have to doit all day, every day. You have to keep remembering all the bad things" Frank to Hannah Roennfeldt
M.L Stedman
Oh, but my treasure, it is so much less exhausting. You only have to forgive once. To resent, you have to do it all day, every day.
M.L Stedman
Life,’ thought Septimus, ... ‘you could never trust the bastard. What it gives with one hand, it takes away with the other.
M.L Stedman
If the war had taught her anything, it was to take nothing for granted: that it wasn’t safe to put off what mattered. Life could snatch away the things you treasured, and there was no getting them back.
M.L Stedman
We can't rightly ever talk about the future, if you think about it. We can only talk about what we imagine or wish for. It's not the same thing.
M.L Stedman
Your family's never in your past. You carry it around with you everywhere.
M.L Stedman
From when she was a baby, Tom has taught the girl to respect, but not fear, the forces of nature- the lightning that might strike the light tower on Janus, the oceans that batter the island.
M.L Stedman
Scars are just another kind of memory.
M.L Stedman