Quotes from Maria McCann

I studied the shape of my friend's hands, and how he clasped them. I could smell his skin and hair in the cold air of the church, and stood aching, my face a devout mask stretched over a rotten soul. On

some men warm themselves at others' sins.

but I would not lie ready to his hand. A tool can be used, a man must be asked.

I had vowed it before, but vows are but a paper study for a monument in stone, to be carved out with much sweat, perhaps not without injury, before the thing stands to be admired.

There are few things so lonely as watching while others sleep;

Aren't you afraid of dying, Ferris?' 'I'm afraid of not living.

Men are wont to think of our England as a soft green land, nourished at the breast of many rivers;

Happiness makes the heartless man, someone told me when I was a child. We arrived home happy and heartless.

We were reconciled, of course we were; things were now too far gone between us to be broken for a Roger Rowly.

a man's character should be weighed along with his counsel.

Knowing a man for a fool, why should I trouble myself with his maggots?

God is not moved from His great designs by the prayers of the righteous, how much less does He care for the whinings of the damned!

Quiet. My body melted heavily into the chair; I heard a cart go up the street. The room grew suddenly big with meaning. Something was about to happen, was happening: each object in the room seemed perfect of its kind, its kind being just its one self.