Hamnet Quotes

The best quotes by the author we have brought to you

“And as these words come, one after another, it is possible for him to slip away from himself and find a peace so absorbing, so soothing, so private, so joyous that nothing else will do.” (Hamnet Quotes)
Maggie O’Farrell
Hamnet

“And there, by the fire, held in the arms of his mother, in the room in which he learnt to crawl, to eat, to walk, to speak, Hamnet takes his last breath. He draws it in, he lets it out. Then there is silence, stillness. Nothing more.”
Maggie O’Farrell
Hamnet

“Anyone, Eliza is thinking, who describes dying as ‘slipping away’ or ‘peaceful’ has never witnessed it happen. Death is violent, death is a struggle. The body clings to life, as ivy to a wall, and will not easily let go, will not surrender its grip without a fight.”
Maggie O’Farrell
Hamnet

“Anyone, who describes dying as ‘slipping away’ or ‘peaceful’ has never witnessed it happen. Death is violent, death is a struggle. The body clings to life, as ivy to a wall, and will not easily let go, will not surrender its grip without a fight.”
Maggie O’Farrell
Hamnet

“Every life has its kernel, its hub, its epicenter, from which everything flows out, to which everything returns. This moment is the absent mother’s.”
Maggie O’Farrell
Hamnet

“Gardens don’t stand still: they are always in flux.”
Maggie O’Farrell
Hamnet

“He has, Anges sees, done what any father would wish to do, to exchange his child’s suffering for his own, to take his place, to offer himself up in his child’s stead so that the boy might live.”
Maggie O’Farrell
Hamnet

“He’s instructed the boys to conjugate the verb ‘incarcerate’: the repeated hard c sound seems to scrape at the walls of the room, as if the very words themselves are seeking escape.”
Maggie O’Farrell
Hamnet

“How could Fate be so cruel in setting her such a trap? To make her concentrate on the wrong child so that it could reach out, while she was distracted, and snatch the other?”
Maggie O’Farrell
Hamnet

“How is anyone ever to shut the eyes of their dead child? How is it possible to find two pennies and rest them there, in the eye sockets, to hold down the lids? How can anyone do this? It is not right. It cannot be.” (Hamnet Quotes)
Maggie O’Farrell
Hamnet

“How is it these children, these young women came from her? What relation do they bear to the small beings she once nursed and dandled and washed?”
Maggie O’Farrell
Hamnet

“Mary is of the opinion that grief is all very well in moderation, but there comes a time when it is necessary to make an effort. She is of the opinion that some people make too much of things. That life goes on.”
Maggie O’Farrell
Hamnet

“She grows up feeling wrong, out of place, too dark, too tall, too unruly, too opinionated, too silent, too strange. She grows up with the awareness that she is merely tolerated, an irritant, useless, that she does not deserve love, that she will need to change herself substantially, crush herself down if she is to be married.”
Maggie O’Farrell
Hamnet

“She grows up with a hidden, private flame inside her: it licks at her, warms her, warns her. You need to get away, the flame tells her. You must.”
Maggie O’Farrell
Hamnet

“She has always cried such enormous tears, like heavy pearls, quite at odds with the slightness of her frame.”
Maggie O’Farrell
Hamnet

“She hates the way the people part to let them past and then, behind them, regroup, erasing their passage, as if it were nothing, as if it never were.”
Maggie O’Farrell
Hamnet

“She is not yet where she needs to be, in the forest, alone, with the trees over her head. She is not alone.”
Maggie O’Farrell
Hamnet

“So it follows, of course, that she will be here now, in whatever form she can manage. Agnes does not need to turn her head, does not want to frighten her away. It is enough to know that she is there, manifest, hovering, insubstantial. I see you, she thinks. I know you are here.”
Maggie O’Farrell
Hamnet

“That you had more hidden away inside you than anyone else she’d ever met.”
Maggie O’Farrell
Hamnet

“The leaves crisping at their edges. Here is a season Hamnet has not known or touched. Here is a world moving on without him.”
Maggie O’Farrell
Hamnet

“There is nothing after you die. There is the soil and there is the body and it all comes to nothing.”
Maggie O’Farrell
Hamnet

“There is so much to do in a family of this size, so much to see to, so many people needing so many different things. How easy is it, to miss the pain and anguish of one person, if that person keeps quiet, if he keeps it all in, like a bottle stoppered too tightly, the pressure inside building and building, until – what?” (Hamnet Quotes)
Maggie O’Farrell
Hamnet

“There is so much to do in an family this size, so much to see, so many people needing so many different things. How easy is it, Agnes thinks, as she lifts the plates, to miss the pain and anguish of one person, if that person keeps quiet, if he keeps it all in, like a bottle stoppered too tightly, the pressure inside building and building, until – what? Agnes doesn’t know.”
Maggie O’Farrell
Hamnet

“This person is now lost to her forever. She is someone adrift in her life, who doesn’t recognise it. She is unmoored, at a loss. She is someone who weeps if she cannot find a shoe or overboils the soup or trips over a pot. Small things undo her. Nothing is certain anymore.”
Maggie O’Farrell
Hamnet

“What is given may be taken away, at any time. Cruelty and devastation wait for you around corners, inside coffers, behind doors: they can leap out at you at any time, like a thief or brigand. The trick is never to let down your guard. Never think you are safe. Never take for granted that your children’s hearts beat, that they sup milk, that they draw breath, that they walk and speak and smile and argue and play. Never for a moment forget they may be gone, snatched from you, in the blink of an eye, borne away from you like thistledown.”
Maggie O’Farrell
Hamnet

“What is given may be taken away, at any time. Cruelty and devastation wait for you around corners, inside coffers, behind doors: they can leap out at you at any moment, like a thief or brigand. The trick is never to let down your guard. Never think you are safe.”
Maggie O’Farrell
Hamnet

“You might find it a restless, verdant, inconstant sight: the wind caresses, ruffles, disturbs the mass of leaves; each tree answers to the weather’s ministrations at a slightly different tempo from its neighbour, bending and shuddering and tossing its branches, as if trying to get away from the air, from the very soil that nourishes”
Maggie O’Farrell
Hamnet