We are all, Esme decides, just vessels through which identities pass: we are lent features, gestures, habits, then we hand them on. Nothing is our own. We begin in the world as anagrams of our antecedents. — Maggie O'Farrell Copy Share Image
She wanted to say, no. She wanted to say, I have a son, there is a child, this cannot happen. Because you know that no one will ever love them like you do. You know that no one will look after them like you do. You know that it's an impossibility, it's unthinkable that you could be taken away, that… — Maggie O'Farrell Copy Share
Two and a half thousand left-handed people are killed every year using things made for right-handed people. — Maggie O'Farrell Copy Share Image
I don't believe in fate. I don't believe in cushioning your insecurities with a system of belief that tells you 'Don't worry. This may… — Maggie O'Farrell Copy Share Image
I met a retired police detective. And he said to me that the interesting thing about heatwaves, from a police perspective, is that the number of people who just walk out of their lives when the weather gets unbearable is astronomic. He said the police prepare themselves for it - for a huge rise in the instances of missing persons.… — Maggie O'Farrell Copy Share
While I was writing the book, one of my children was diagnosed with dyslexia. Dyslexia is a very tiny word for a wide-ranging neurological condition that affects different people in different ways. But I was reading an awful lot about it, to try and find ways of helping my child. I think a lot of fiction comes from this desire… — Maggie O'Farrell Copy Share
“Why is it that twenty-four hours in the company of your family is capable of reducing you to a teenager?” — Maggie O'Farrell Copy Share Image
I think it's dangerous to have lots of time on your hands as a writer. Time to pursue every little alleyway, to follow every… — Maggie O'Farrell Copy Share Image
I think all families have these secrets, and it's sometimes the strangest things that bring them out. That was part of my interest in the heatwave, in heat as a catalyst for uncovering truths. I was reading Alice in Wonderland to one of my kids recently, and I remembered that it starts on a really hot day. Alice falls asleep… — Maggie O'Farrell Copy Share
My husband, William Sutcliffe, the writer, is my first reader and in many ways my most important. That initial reading of the manuscript is crucial and irreplaceable and you want them to approach it as someone in a bookshop might, not knowing much about it. So I've got into this pattern of not telling Will anything about the book I'm… — Maggie O'Farrell Copy Share
She liked the way his smile took a long time to arrive and just as long to leave. — Maggie O'Farrell Copy Share Image
“That's because they're of the past. All photos of the past look melancholy and wistful precisely because they capture something that's gone.” — Maggie O'Farrell Copy Share Image
We always planned to move back to the Republic but it never happened, I'm not sure why. My dad is one of those immigrants… — Maggie O'Farrell Copy Share Image
