Famous Quotes & Sayings

Ann-Marie MacDonald Quotes & Sayings

Enjoy the top 80 famous quotes, sayings and quotations by Ann-Marie MacDonald.

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Famous Quotes By Ann-Marie MacDonald

Ann-Marie MacDonald Quotes 2100875

A small grazing gesture ignites the need for closer, and breaks the surface of the water, never in you enough, gulping air, never contain you enough, on dry land now, never hold you enough, the desert heat, drink you, oasis lover shimmering under a palm, I will burn to ashes here then blow away until that merciful peak is discovered, and once that is discovered, the slow tumble back down the hill, buckets of water spilling in slow motion, streaking the sand along their way until again the gentle sway, the ocean floor, the grazing touch that reignites the sea. — Ann-Marie MacDonald

Ann-Marie MacDonald Quotes 850278

Freedom consists of being insulated from the envy and ignorance of the unimportant people who temporarily surround her. — Ann-Marie MacDonald

Ann-Marie MacDonald Quotes 1248094

What is the good of believing fervently in God if you wind up hating Him? — Ann-Marie MacDonald

Ann-Marie MacDonald Quotes 1987177

It's his last thrill and his last sting of love, as fresh and painful as youth transplanted over time and an ocean. There is nothing left for him now except to die, but that will take a while because he is a creature of habit, and he has got into the habit of being alive. — Ann-Marie MacDonald

Ann-Marie MacDonald Quotes 814977

In terms of the secrets that imbue and underlie 'Fall on Your Knees', they were as much of a mystery to me as I was creating the story as they are to the readers. — Ann-Marie MacDonald

Ann-Marie MacDonald Quotes 153964

You think you're safe. Until you see a picture like that. And then you know you'll always be a slave to the present because the present is more powerful than the past, no matter how long ago the present happened. — Ann-Marie MacDonald

Ann-Marie MacDonald Quotes 649664

Lily has never gotton used to being alone. They turn in the water and turn again, then Ambrose lifts her above the surface once more and the creek rains down from her. He lays her gently on her back and her heart breaks. Her tears begin to flow because he is leaving - don't go! He sinks into the water on his back - take me with you! His body turns white again and shimmers into segments until all the pieces disappear. Lily lies face down at right angles to the creek, her head hanging over the edge, arms outstretched towards the spot where she last saw her brother. — Ann-Marie MacDonald

Ann-Marie MacDonald Quotes 1377457

Some people talk about children wanting to be born as though somewhere out there in the collective unconscious there's a spirit, or a thought or an idea that wants to be born. And I sometimes feel that way about stories ... that they're there and they want to be told. — Ann-Marie MacDonald

Ann-Marie MacDonald Quotes 1596257

Memory plays tricks. Memory is another word for story, and nothing is more unreliable. — Ann-Marie MacDonald

Ann-Marie MacDonald Quotes 1644694

Ignore them. Don't give them the opportunity to snub you. Carry yourself like you own the place. — Ann-Marie MacDonald

Ann-Marie MacDonald Quotes 1347245

I grew up in a family where the love of stories is very strong. And there's also a love of performance. I think one reason stories were so important in my family was that we moved around a lot. — Ann-Marie MacDonald

Ann-Marie MacDonald Quotes 2163711

James could do all this because he had made a bargain with himself: he wouldn't try to get killed, nor would he try to survive. He could do all this because he felt terribly sorry for the men he rescued. They harbored the saddest and most foolish desire of all. The desire to go on living. — Ann-Marie MacDonald

Ann-Marie MacDonald Quotes 1863314

Kathleen is truly and utterly and completely Kathleen in New York. That's what the city does for you if it's meant for you. — Ann-Marie MacDonald

Ann-Marie MacDonald Quotes 1237223

Kathleen would not know a friend if one sank
its teeth into her wrist
which is more or less what she expects from the mass of
other girls. She skirts them cautiously, as if they were dangerous wild animals
loitering about a common watering hole ready to pounce, you'd never know why or
what hit you. She fears them, sharp glinting creatures, and hasn't a clue what they
talk about or how they do it. How they merge into gregarious packs. Kathleen is in
fact horribly shy, but no one would ever suspect it
after all, she gets up and sings in
front of halls full of people. — Ann-Marie MacDonald

Ann-Marie MacDonald Quotes 849432

Frances is a diamond, passed from filthy paw to paw but never diminished. The men who handle her can leave no mark because her worth is far above them. (page 361) — Ann-Marie MacDonald

Ann-Marie MacDonald Quotes 440385

Be strong enough to carry the burden of sin that goes with doing the right thing. — Ann-Marie MacDonald

Ann-Marie MacDonald Quotes 480255

The world should not be organized to require heroines, and when one is required but fails to appear, we should not judge. — Ann-Marie MacDonald

Ann-Marie MacDonald Quotes 807602

Well, what was wrong with it?"
"We don't know," says James.
"That's a stupid rotten answer."
"Life is sometimes rotten and stupid. — Ann-Marie MacDonald

Ann-Marie MacDonald Quotes 1114019

Under a smoky streetlamp I stood face to face with my beloved and pricked my fingers against the diamond studs of her immaculate shirt front. Being tall, she slipped her hands naturally about my hips and pulled me close. And being bold, I put my mouth on hers and this time went inside and told her all the things I'd been longing to. Dark and sweet, the elixir of love is in her mouth. The more I drink, the more I remember all the things we've never done. I was a ghost until I touched you. Never swallowed mortal food until I tasted you, never understood the spoken word until I found your tongue. I've been a sleep-walker, sad somnambula, hands outstretched to strike the solid thing that could awaken me to life at last. I have only ever stood here under this lamp, against your body, I've missed you all my life. — Ann-Marie MacDonald

Ann-Marie MacDonald Quotes 790303

Everything in New York is a photograph. All the things that are supposed to be dirty or rough or unrefined are the most beautiful things. Garbage cans at the ends of alleyways look like they've been up all night talking with each other. Doorways with peeling paint look like the wise lines around an old feller's eyes. I stop and stare but can't stay because men always think I'm selling something. Or worse, giving something away. I wish I could be invisible. Or at least I wish I didn't look like someone they want to look at. They stop being part of the picture, they get up from their chess game and come out of the frame at me, blocking my view. — Ann-Marie MacDonald

Ann-Marie MacDonald Quotes 429990

It's more like... It keeps the world out so I can be in my own thoughts. — Ann-Marie MacDonald

Ann-Marie MacDonald Quotes 1119021

A war changes people in a number of ways. It either shortcuts you to your very self; or it triggers such variations that you might as well have been a larva, pupating in dampness, darkness and tightly wrapped puttees. Then, providing you don't take flight from a burst shell, you emerge from your khaki cocoon so changed from what you were that you fear you've gone mad, because people at home treat you as though you were someone else. Someone who, through a bizarre coincidence, had the same name, address and blood ties as you, but who must have died in the war. And you have no choice but to live as an impostor because you can't remember who you were before the war. There's a simple but horrible explanation for this: you were born in the war. You slid, slick, bloody and fully formed, out of a trench.
The Great War was the greatest changer of them all. — Ann-Marie MacDonald

Ann-Marie MacDonald Quotes 456161

Here is the place called Awake. On the other side of this line is the country of Asleep. And you see this shaded area in between? Don't linger there. It is No Man's Land. — Ann-Marie MacDonald

Ann-Marie MacDonald Quotes 2127623

Having experienced her own disappearance, she is conscious of how important it is for people to be seen, so when she looks at them
even the blind one
she also looks for them, just in case they too have got lost and need finding. — Ann-Marie MacDonald

Ann-Marie MacDonald Quotes 2247524

Lies like that are not a sin, they are a sacrifice. — Ann-Marie MacDonald

Ann-Marie MacDonald Quotes 1369745

It's important to attend funerals. It is important to view the body, they say, and to see it committed to earth or fire because unless you do that, the loved one dies for you again and again. — Ann-Marie MacDonald

Ann-Marie MacDonald Quotes 2240084

He loved her way: acting casual, working like a Trojan, singing like an angel. Not
"angelically." The voice of an angel. Winged, lethal, close to the sun. — Ann-Marie MacDonald

Ann-Marie MacDonald Quotes 1421738

It's not the cold that makes you sleep yourself to death in the Arctic, it's the smooth pallor of the landscape, and the desert has that same smooth pallor, though Arabic. It's the whiteness, the sameness of everything, that makes you fall asleep out of life, parched or frozen and so so comfortable when you finally let it roll over your mind, like a rolling-pin over dough. — Ann-Marie MacDonald

Ann-Marie MacDonald Quotes 2220161

There is love, there is music, there is no limit, there is work, there is the precious sense that this is the hour of grace when all things gather and distill to create the rest of my life. I don't believe in God, I believe in everything. — Ann-Marie MacDonald

Ann-Marie MacDonald Quotes 2218687

There are some stories you can't hear enough. They are the same every time you hear them. But you are not. That's one reliable way of understanding time. — Ann-Marie MacDonald

Ann-Marie MacDonald Quotes 1474897

They are so young, they forget that the world is not as in love with them as they are. — Ann-Marie MacDonald

Ann-Marie MacDonald Quotes 1519557

Between a mother's eyes and her son's face, there is not air. There is something invisible and invincible. Even though - or because - he will go out into the world, she will never lose her passion to protect him. — Ann-Marie MacDonald

Ann-Marie MacDonald Quotes 2167920

She learns a valuable lesson: if you think you are good, just try doing good. You'll soon find out how inadequate your little drop of goodness is. — Ann-Marie MacDonald

Ann-Marie MacDonald Quotes 1602434

Books were not an expense; they were an investment. — Ann-Marie MacDonald

Ann-Marie MacDonald Quotes 2166765

She is so beautiful. My Rose. Finer than sculpture, softer than sand. Rose, I'm kissing you now. Oh God, I have to kiss her. I will die if I don't kiss her, I know that now. It is a fact. I will die. It will kill me. — Ann-Marie MacDonald

Ann-Marie MacDonald Quotes 1643697

Afterwards, in bed with a book, the spell of television feels remote compared to the journey into the page. To be in a book. To slip into the crease where two pages meet, to live in the place where your eyes alight upon the words to ignite a world of smoke and peril, colour and serene delight. That is a journey no one can end with the change of a channel. Enduring magic. — Ann-Marie MacDonald

Ann-Marie MacDonald Quotes 1896867

Writing is a hellish task, best snuck up on, whacked on the head, robbed and left for dead. — Ann-Marie MacDonald

Ann-Marie MacDonald Quotes 1652859

Hope is a gift. You can't choose to have it. To believe and yet to have no hope is to thirst beside a fountain. — Ann-Marie MacDonald

Ann-Marie MacDonald Quotes 1672131

Frances is a sealed letter. It doesn't matter where she's been or who's pawed her, no one gets to handle the contents no matter how grimy the envelope. And it's for sure no one's going to be able to steam her open. — Ann-Marie MacDonald

Ann-Marie MacDonald Quotes 1700967

From the book:
Fall On Your Knees pg. 124
One day, I'll sit down with all my books around me, and just start reading. — Ann-Marie MacDonald

Ann-Marie MacDonald Quotes 1749900

Rats may scamper across it and remain rats. Birds may fly above it and remain
birds; they may alight and tear and eat and prick up their heads to stare motionless
and beady for a moment before pecking and eating again, and remain birds. But no
man may venture into this space between the lines and remain a man. That is the
difference. No man may enter, either stealthily on his belly alone, or noisily on two
feet racing through glue with a thousand versions of himself firing, falling, on either
side as far as the eye can see, and remain a man. It is possible to become a man
once more if you make it back behind your line again, but you suspend your
humanity for your sojourn in between. That is why the place is called No Man's Land. — Ann-Marie MacDonald

Ann-Marie MacDonald Quotes 2111063

Perhaps God dropped them on their heads before they were born. — Ann-Marie MacDonald

Ann-Marie MacDonald Quotes 1765256

She never knows when it might strike. The rage. And when it does, she loses her grip on herself - literally. At times, she could swear she sees another self - shiny black phantom, faceless, as though clad in a bodysuit - leaping out of her, pulling the rest of her in its wake. Over the edge. — Ann-Marie MacDonald

Ann-Marie MacDonald Quotes 1960213

How unhappy are they who have a gift that's left to germinate in darkness. The pale
plant will sink invisible roots and live whitely off their blood. — Ann-Marie MacDonald

Ann-Marie MacDonald Quotes 1223578

Do you think there's such a thing as a ghost who masquerades as a person? Do you believe that there are people whose bodies are still alive here on earth but whose souls are already in hell? — Ann-Marie MacDonald

Ann-Marie MacDonald Quotes 1948383

Frances is feeling a familiar yet unnameably old feeling. One she hadn't known was ever hers to forget. Happiness. — Ann-Marie MacDonald

Ann-Marie MacDonald Quotes 1908751

All memories soften with age, and the good ones are also the most perishable ( ... ) conjured up till they faded to nothing. Like cave paintings by candlelight, she could only glimpse them now in the dark from the corner of her eye. — Ann-Marie MacDonald

Ann-Marie MacDonald Quotes 1880683

Corruption hangs in the air around a great talent. Such a gift is unstable by nature, apt to embarrass its handlers. About her there is the whiff of the entertainer. Like vaudeville nipping the heels of grand opera. The maestro smells all this on Kathleen and cools his blood to a temperature undetectable by wild animals. — Ann-Marie MacDonald

Ann-Marie MacDonald Quotes 647137

Adelaide believes that all children should have enough grown-ups around who love them so that one can tell them to fight, one can tell them not to, and one can tell them not to worry so much. — Ann-Marie MacDonald

Ann-Marie MacDonald Quotes 97544

The thief you must fear the most is not the one who steals mere things. — Ann-Marie MacDonald

Ann-Marie MacDonald Quotes 107535

By fall, they can read. It happened by osmosis, the way it ought to: after they have spent several months on Daddy's lap, following his spoken words with their eyes and pretending to read, their comes a day when they no longer have to pretend. — Ann-Marie MacDonald

Ann-Marie MacDonald Quotes 159730

When stories are not told, we risk losing our way. — Ann-Marie MacDonald

Ann-Marie MacDonald Quotes 225710

Reading was such a formative part of my childhood (along with 'Loony Tunes'), that it is difficult to pin point the most influential book. But, under an interrogation light I would probably have to say 'Jane Eyre' by Charlotte Bronte. — Ann-Marie MacDonald

Ann-Marie MacDonald Quotes 227746

I started my career as an actor, then morphed into a playwright who accidentally became a novelist with my first book 'Fall On Your Knees.' — Ann-Marie MacDonald

Ann-Marie MacDonald Quotes 264895

I grew up moving around because my dad was in the Air Force - I think this has carried over into my work in that I like to hop around from one medium to another. — Ann-Marie MacDonald

Ann-Marie MacDonald Quotes 369986

My first advantage: I have everything. My second advantage: this is just another island. My third advantage: I am bigger than it all. — Ann-Marie MacDonald

Ann-Marie MacDonald Quotes 389530

You're not bad ... you're just lost."
"I know exactly where I am."
"That doesn't mean you're not lost. — Ann-Marie MacDonald

Ann-Marie MacDonald Quotes 438737

Teresa blames herself for believing that she was indispensable to Mahmoud. Pride goeth before a fall. — Ann-Marie MacDonald

Ann-Marie MacDonald Quotes 441953

Dread invades the living room, finds her on the couch, presses on her, gets inside her where it swiftly grows bigger than she is until she is inside it, looking out from a rind of shadow. — Ann-Marie MacDonald

Ann-Marie MacDonald Quotes 461086

It had changed to hate. The hate that she prayed for Jesus to take away. But it was also part of what had kept her going so how could she do without it now? That kind of hate is a species of animated scrap metal. Rusting,
corroding inside, leaching into the vital organs. — Ann-Marie MacDonald

Ann-Marie MacDonald Quotes 495358

For once, Frances is stripped of irony. She is in the presence of something bigger
namely Herself. Or at least the self implied by her new body. This is how the Blessed Virgin visits us. She inhabits our own flesh and makes love out of it. Nothing is ironic in the moment of first love. And Frances is in love. With her body, and what it is bringing forth. — Ann-Marie MacDonald

Ann-Marie MacDonald Quotes 600483

An unhappily married woman is necessarily a bad cook. — Ann-Marie MacDonald

Ann-Marie MacDonald Quotes 622791

When will she discover that I am from a lesser race of immortals? But the high deities have always needed pixies to persuade them down to earth. When she no longer needs an intermediary, will she still love me? — Ann-Marie MacDonald

Ann-Marie MacDonald Quotes 639535

Materia had been just six when they docked in Sydney Harbour and her father said, 'Look. This is the New World. Anything is possible here.' She's been too young to realize that he was talking to her brother. — Ann-Marie MacDonald

Ann-Marie MacDonald Quotes 1368633

Writing. Opening a vein in your wrist with a spoon. — Ann-Marie MacDonald

Ann-Marie MacDonald Quotes 749545

I thought I would get calmer, surer, but each time we come close I feel almost sick at first. As though each time vibrates with the times before. I feel a terrible sorrow coming up my throat, I don't know why. And it can only be consoled against the length of her body. Lying down with her for the first time ... all the pain I didn't know I had, till at her touch it disappeared like smoke. Is this what purgatory feels like? To burn painlessly? If so, why isn't it called heaven? — Ann-Marie MacDonald

Ann-Marie MacDonald Quotes 831268

Tell the story, gather the events, repeat them. Pattern is a matter of upkeep. Otherwise the weave relaxes back to threads picked up by birds to make their nests. Repeat, or the story will fall and all the king's horses and all the king's men ... Repeat, and cradle the pieces carefully, or events will scatter like marbles on a wooden floor. — Ann-Marie MacDonald

Ann-Marie MacDonald Quotes 856628

Piece by piece living is hard to do. It may even feel like the hardest thing. But it has this going for it: you never need to know what it is you're carrying on your shoulders. — Ann-Marie MacDonald

Ann-Marie MacDonald Quotes 936248

It's where she belongs, she craves the caress of the violent shore, to come alive like that once more in a clash of stone and then to die. — Ann-Marie MacDonald

Ann-Marie MacDonald Quotes 982676

Frances learns something in this moment that will allow her to survive and function for the rest of her life. She finds out that one thing can look like another. That the facts of a situation don't necessarily indicate anything about the truth of a situation. In this moment, fact and truth become separated and commence to wander like twins in a fairy-tale, waiting to be reunited by that special someone who possesses the secret of telling them apart. — Ann-Marie MacDonald

Ann-Marie MacDonald Quotes 1091889

He thought his heart would kill him, he'd had no clue what it was capable of. — Ann-Marie MacDonald

Ann-Marie MacDonald Quotes 1096463

She's no lady. Her songs are all unbelievably unhappy or lewd. It's called Blues. She sings about sore feet, sexual relations, baked goods, killing your lover, being broke, men called Daddy, women who dress like men, working, praying for rain. Jail and trains. Whiskey and morphine. She tells stories between verses and everyone in the place shouts out how true it all is. — Ann-Marie MacDonald

Ann-Marie MacDonald Quotes 1110174

I am burning. I have to live, I have to sing, I want to transform myself into a thousand different characters and carry their life with me onto the stage where it's so bright and so dark at the same time, just knowing there are three thousand people out there longing to be swept away by the passion that's about to flood out from scarlet curtains, to this I consecrate my body and my soul, I can give no more than all of myself, I feel my heart is a throbbing engine and my voice is the valve, like a wailing train, it has to sing or blow up, there's too much fuel, too much fire, and what am I to do with this voice if I can't let it out, it's not just singing. I am here as a speck, but I don't feel scared or about to be blown away, I feel like all New York is a warm embrace just waiting to enfold me. I am in love. But not with a person. I am passionately in love with my life. — Ann-Marie MacDonald

Ann-Marie MacDonald Quotes 1169020

She is why purgatory was invented. — Ann-Marie MacDonald

Ann-Marie MacDonald Quotes 1195184

As time went by, it mattered less and less that in 1969 a rocket went from Florida to the moon and men walked there. Good men. People's dads. Those were only events, scattered in time. Draw them close, rub them between thumb and finger till they look like larvae, soften like silk, distend to knot, to weave. It takes a village to kill a child. — Ann-Marie MacDonald

Ann-Marie MacDonald Quotes 81608

Depression is anger slowed down; panic is grief speeded up. — Ann-Marie MacDonald

Ann-Marie MacDonald Quotes 1228358

But I have discovered something about modest people. They're just waiting for the call. Then they are the first over the wall and into the temple. — Ann-Marie MacDonald

Ann-Marie MacDonald Quotes 1258904

'Fall on Your Knees' is really a story about secrets and family, and the idea that there are some stories or truths that need to be expressed. — Ann-Marie MacDonald

Ann-Marie MacDonald Quotes 1295498

Then she kissed me in that way that makes me hate time. — Ann-Marie MacDonald

Ann-Marie MacDonald Quotes 1302920

He would have enough money ... for a family that would fill his house with beautiful music and the silence of good books. — Ann-Marie MacDonald