I realized Quote by Maggie O'Farrell

“It is a terrible thing to want something you cannot have. It takes you over. I couldn't think straight because of it. There was no one else, I realized, whom I could possibly tell.” quote by Maggie O'Farrell — Download Open image

“It is a terrible thing to want something you cannot have. It takes you over. I couldn't think straight because of it. There was no one else, I realized, whom I could possibly tell.”

Maggie O'Farrell

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More by Maggie O'Farrell

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

Two and a half thousand left-handed people are killed every year using things made for right-handed people.

Maggie O'Farrell

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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

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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

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

“Why is it that twenty-four hours in the company of your family is capable of reducing you to a teenager?”

Maggie O'Farrell

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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

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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

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

She liked the way his smile took a long time to arrive and just as long to leave.

Maggie O'Farrell

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“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

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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

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I stopped reading music reviews because it's somebody having a knee-jerk reaction to a song. I realized that that's not the definitive interpretation. It won't last long. It's a fleeting thing. What matters are people's relationships with these things over time and sometimes songs just take a really long time to reveal their true identity.

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I realized early on that the academy and the literary world alike - and I don't think there really is a distinction between the…

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On 9-11, we discovered that we cannot escape from the world. To me personally, this was a life-changing experience, and I realized, as did all Americans, in a way that is impossible to describe, that we were not protected by the two oceans. It was necessary to eliminate threats before they showed up on our doorstep. I agree that we…

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You see, years ago I was just an ordinary bee minding my own business, smelling flowers all day, and occasionally picking up part-time work…

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Memoirs are going to be problematic sells for a while, though, because even if memoir means "based in memory," right now, in the collective mind, memoir means "recovery." When my agent and I started looking at small presses the possibility for my book, I realized most small presses were not publishing memoir, because they don't want to be associated with…

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