The Likely Resolutions Of Oliver Clock Quotes
"They say old habits die hard, which is true, but I also think that new habits are born easily when you live on your own."
"Thou shalt not grow too large to fit comfortably into a standard-size coffin: I must start exercising."
"Thou shalt be messy: I must refrain from excessive tidiness."
"Thou shalt broaden your social life: I must make friends with people other than those who have passed on."
"If you poked a stick under her and popped her in a tub of water she wouldn’t look out of place. She was like a rose, a single, fully bloomed rose."
"Work should never be too serious, don’t you think?"
"Imagine if you’d been eating a chocolate bar. It would have gone everywhere. That’s why I never liked you eating chocolate anywhere other than the kitchen."
"I should have gone the back way. Nevertheless, I pushed on, swinging my arms towards greenery and open space."
"It was a selfish thought, I know, but that’s what happens with envy."
"By the time I arrived at the park, I was so out of breath I sauntered in at a slower pace and found a bench to sit on."
"No one could ever accuse you of being thoughtless, Oliver. It’s admirable, you know."
"I like that you think of me, Oliver, but sometimes you care too much. Don’t take this the wrong way, but I feel suffocated by your niceness."
"I met Claire a few months later and, even though I threw myself into that relationship with as much enthusiasm as I could muster, those feelings for Marie never entirely went away."
"It was more of a green space tucked between terraces like the hyphen between two words."
"A fresh wind made the loose bark on the trunk of a gum tree flap, as if applauding me for a day well done."
"If you’re dreadfully unhappy, then you mustn’t stay. It’s not like you have children to think about, only yourself, and you must be true to yourself."
"I’ll tell her I’ll be there for her every step of the way."
"I was eating a ricotta, tomato and lettuce sandwich on multigrain bread when Marie phoned."
"I’m sick, Oliver. Really sick. Like, they can’t do anything about it sick."
"Nothing I did could make her better; nothing I said could change the future."
"I do not wish to dwell on that day, suffice to say that I managed to keep it together for her funeral."
"For unrequited love and grief make awkward bedfellows."
"In normal circumstances I would have sewn it back on, if not immediately, as soon as I could."
"What was the point of any of my recent resolutions when I didn’t have her to unwittingly spur me on?"
"Feeling sorry for myself, I lost all sense of caring."
"‘It’s what Mum loved,’ Brian said dreamily, as if remembering a particularly poignant birthday moment."
"Don’t be. She hung in there for longer than was necessary, didn’t she, Brian?"
"‘It would be helping the broader community,’ I said. ‘No one wants to die in vain.’"
"‘Just because I deal with fireworks does not mean I want a whatever-it’s-called,’ he said."
"I had a little sister, Lily, who died aged two when I was four years old. She was struck by lightning on our back lawn."
"The business is fine. We’ve lost some customers, that’s all."
"A new funeral home has opened! A new funeral home on our turf!"
"I’ll explain. I’m a trained perfumer. When I say trained, I mean I have a diploma in aromatherapy and did an artisan perfume workshop up the coast. I’ve done a lot of fragrance mixing, too. I’m an expert mixer."
"I thought, what if you could recreate the smell of a loved one who had died so it felt as if they were still with you, as if they were really there in the room with you?"
"I mean, what else have we got left in the end but memories?"
"One of the problems with being a funeral director is that you see the dead at their best and the living at their most wretched."
"It's like I've been flipped and landed on my head."
"Nothing could beat the endorphin-induced euphoria of discovering you were loved by the woman you had been secretly in love with."
"Grief takes many forms. It's like the sky: one minute rolling with angry thunderclouds and rain, the next lightly sprinkled with cumulonimbus."
"Sometimes change requires getting out of your comfort zone."
"If you don’t care enough about yourself, who will? You need to believe in yourself. Believe that you have the power to turn things around, fix your business and your love life."
"How wonderful to think there was a way to keep Marie alive. It was an outlandish notion but one I couldn’t get out of my head."
"Good. We need to get you back into the real world."
"This called for action, not procrastination."
"Sometimes life has a strange way of showing us it cares."
"Smell is more powerful than people realise. Its memory never fades."
"Yes, Clock & Son would not just be the place you went to leave this Earth, it would be where you went to be remembered. It would be the start of your new beginning."
"The dead are more predictable than the living."
"The general consensus is that people look for professionalism, experience, and trustworthiness in a funeral home."
"What better way to remember that special person who has passed than with Les Lumières by Edie Jones?"
"You just don’t know what goes on under all that water. Things lurked."
"It was draining trying to love things that didn’t love me back."
"Did it matter that we enjoyed different things? Didn’t opposites attract?"
"She was unlike any other woman I had been with – assertive and adventurous – and it was at once alluring and disconcerting."
"It was as if, in Caroline’s kitchen, I suddenly, unexpectedly, had an existential crisis and I had no one to talk about it with – least of all the two women at its heart."
"I couldn’t tell her my dead paramour was giving me grief, that I felt the tug of a tide pushing and pulling me between my past desires and the future, never fully out of one and into the other."
"Perhaps I should be banned from swimming out of my depth ever again."
"That happened to me once with Claire, until I told her that under no circumstances could I have her Jack Russell staring at me from its bed by her bed."
"I tried to focus on the salad but felt discombobulated and distracted."
"I wished I had a freshly ironed handkerchief to give her."
"Ideally, not in my bedroom, with the diary, of course."
"It wasn’t worth the risk. We finished drying in silence."
"The nursing home call-out was unfortunate timing – we’d only just finished getting ready!"
"It just wasn’t appropriate in either a nursing home or a morgue, where it might lead to all sorts of inappropriate awakenings."
"Life seemed to be galloping ahead in the most unexpected and emotional of ways, over which I felt I had no control."
"If the diary could cost me my relationship with Caroline, would I somehow have to try and live without it?"
"Without bothering to get my notebook and write it down (it was an experiment, after all)."
"My heart swelled like the liver of a fattened goose destined for foie gras."
"It was like a cadaver had come to life and I needed a moment to process the shock of this new reality."
"I suppose you could say I’m with you in spirit."
"I’ve never been inside a funeral parlour before."
"‘I wanted to be a journalist once, when I was at school,’ I said, ‘but I didn’t really have a choice. Clock & Son has been going for three generations. When you’re born into the funeral industry, you die in the funeral industry.’"
"I did not want to be officially or unofficially going out with Caroline."
"I had single-handedly rescued myself from a woman who was not for me."
"To hell with how many days it’s been in the fridge!"
"My time with her could be called a lively experience – a bit of fun mixed with undesirable moments of anxiety."
"Beautiful, bubbly Edie didn’t need to know any of that."
"Every fusty book and dusty shelf with a hint of incense and notes of nutmeg, clove and sandalwood."
"There’s nothing like a good cry to make you feel better."
"Being single and lonely was better than being taken and unhappy."
"The comforting effects of cheesy pizza and Marie’s words."
"I was about to lean over once again to give him another poke when he roared back to life."
"My dream cut in half as abruptly as an apple with one of our sharpened embalming scalpels."
"What a lot of resolutions, and not a lot of time."
"The smell of slow-cooked curry from the neighbour’s two doors down permeated the air."
"I was turning my life around and acting on my resolutions."
"Clock & Son was me, my family, my history, my community."
"Thou shalt stand up for yourself in the face of your mother."
"I can’t do my job properly if I also have to embalm."
"I want Clock & Son to sing again. I want it to shine like it used to, as it still should."
"There’s something about making the right decisions that is very good for your posture."
"Sometimes I find giving someone something for no reason is the best gift of all."
"It’s a crazy idea, but we love crazy around here."
"Word of mouth is going to be our best bet. We need to get people talking."
"Thou shalt embark on a new and unexpected venture that will help boost business."
"You’re in the business of helping people grieve and so you know how important it is to encourage them to find the joy in remembering their loved ones."
"We corked our emotions as if they were model ships in a glass bottle."
"I didn’t even realise myself until recently what silence in the face of tragedy does to people."
"I’m so sorry, but I’m very glad I could help in some way and, you know, I’m always here to listen."
"It will hit you when you’re least expecting it to."