Sonya Hartnett Quotes

“I felt a touch sorry for him because it might be his last day of being the baby of the family and his coddling days could be done. He was too small and knowledgeless to know it, though, so I guessed the loss couldn’t hurt him.”

“When I was seven the days had more hours than I had use for and the distance between sun up and down again was a vast and lazy sprawl.”

“The first lasted only a moment and the other not even that, so I reckoned babies coming shouldn’t cause all that much trouble. They either came and stayed, or came and didn’t.”

“God loves old dogs and children and kept things, at our house, the way He wanted them.”

“A man in the mud was a condemned man, Da said, and arguing with his fate would only break your heart for you.”

“Time passes slowly when you’re young, and quickens as you get old. Summer lasted forever when I was seven, but now it only visits.”

“Mrs. Murphy was summoned and gazed with delight upon him: sick infants were her reason for being, she thought there was nothing nicer and more pleasingly dreadful.”

“I was almost seven and accepted life as it came.”

“Everyone knows Tin was born to burrow, he was born to the task like a hare or one of those white blind hairless moles that comes into the world itching to get its claws into the safety of the ground.”

“Tin. You’re only small, you’re only a boy and not much use for anything, but I know something about you. You like the dark and you can dig. You can do it good and well.”

“I’m a bit like stone, content to stay where it is put. Whatever was in Tin and made him such a gypsy, that thing has never been in me.”

“It’s true, I tell you. Your Mam will have to pray about this new one same as she prayed about you. ‘Please Lord,’ she’ll say, ‘have mercy, don’t make us live with this gruesome sight forever...‘”