The Ninth Hour Quotes
"FEBRUARY 3 WAS A DARK AND DANK DAY altogether: cold spitting rain in the morning and a low, steel-gray sky the rest of the afternoon."
"Heavy brows and deep-set, dark-lashed eyes that had been making women catch their breath since he was sixteen."
"In the kitchen, he pressed his cheek to the cold enamel of the stove and slid his hand into the tight space between it and the yellow wall."
"Once, Annie, sitting on the windowsill with a clothespin in her mouth and a basket of wet linen at her feet, saw a man drag a small child through the muck and tie him to the rough pole that held the line."
"His trouble was with time. Bad luck for a trainman, even on the BRT."
"Two weeks ago they had discharged him for unreliability and insubordination."
"Annie wept when he told her, and then said angrily, through her tears, that there was a baby coming."
"The kitchen window looked into the gray courtyard where, on better days, there would be lines of clothes baking in the sun."
"What we must do," she said at last, "is to put one foot in front of the other."
"Sister herself had had the very same thought earlier today, during her long hours of begging in the drafty vestibule."
"In her thirty-seven years of living in this city, Sister had collected any number of acquaintances who could surmount the many rules and regulations."
"God Himself was helpless against it—Sister St. Saviour believed this."
"Of course, it didn’t always require refusing the whole day. Sometimes just the pleasure of being an hour or two late was enough to remind him that he, at least, was his own man."
"Outside, most of the facing windows were still dark, only a small light here and there: an early worker, a mother with an infant, a bedside vigil."
"Sister Jeanne felt the blood drumming in her wrists and in her temples. She felt her heart in her chest beating against the gathered bed linens as if she were running away with them."
"Sister St. Saviour was, nevertheless, even now, jealous of life."
"He looked ahead, aware only peripherally of the other strollers, the passing trees and shade, the shadows of the perambulators and of the two women pushing them. He remained vigilant."
"But it was at this hour, when the sun was a humming gold at the horizon, or a pale peach, or even just, as now, a gray pearl, that she felt the breath of God warm on her neck."
"She envied little Jeanne, true enough—a new sin for her side of the ledger—envied her faith and her determination and her easy tears."
"There was, each day, the clear and certain restoration of order: fresh linens folded, stains gone, tears mended."
"In every season, the changing daylight found its way into all corners of the cellar."
"O grant us endless length of days, in our true native land with thee."
"Because God put the knowledge in you before you were born, see? So you’d know He intends to be fair."
"No one called for her, but still she appeared. That was the miracle, see? God saw the need."
"It was just a glimpse of where her soul had gone. A whiff of it. As if a door had opened for a moment, just to let her in."
"Because a glimpse is all the living can bear. All we can bear of heaven’s beauty."
"Her mother could soothe a torrent of tears with the brush of her rough thumb."
"Her mother's laughter, as if to catch a warm sun."
"A clean cloth to apply to the suffering world."
"Suffering does not disguise a true nature. It only lays it bare."
"It is a loss like no other, Sister Lucy said."
"Life itself is a bleak prospect to a motherless child."
"Never waste your sympathy," Sister Lucy said. "Never think for a minute that you will erase all suffering from the world with your charms."
"The poor we will always have with us," Sister Lucy said more than once in the week that Sally followed her.
"If we could live without suffering," Sister Lucy said, "we’d find no peace in heaven."
"Poverty and men made a bad situation—to be born female—worse still."
"I will never encourage the vocation of a young woman who comes to us just after seeing a sister or mother die in childbirth."
"No woman should enter the convent out of fear."
"I love her like a daughter," Sister Lucy said with no change in the harshness of her tone, as if love, too, was an unpleasant duty.
"God’s will. So I stayed where He’d brought me."
"What I’m saying is, it’s so you can be forgiven, see? It’s your sin I mean. Your soul."
"Life goes by in the blink of an eye. It would not take any imagination to convince herself that it already had."
"I loved the man," his father said, moaning it. "I loved him."
"But love's a tonic, Michael, not a cure. He was a bastard still."
"When she got up again, she said, 'Yes, but my ladies are still hungry.'"
"You have taken my work from me. But I gladly give it to you."
"Children who know, without instruction or study, what is fair."
"It’s all silliness, she said. Don’t you see?"
"Truth finds the light. Lies, big or small, never stay hidden."
"God wants us to know the truth in all things, she said, big or small, because that’s how we’ll know Him."
"Isn’t it funny how we all die at the same time? Always at the end of our lives. Why worry?"
"God’s not going to hold it against you if you’re something less than a blessed saint. Aren’t we all human? Aren’t we all doing the best we can?"
"Take a dust rag to those lampshades," she went on, "and to the baseboards. There's bread and butter in the kitchen. Some boiled eggs, applesauce. Get Jeanne to eat something, too. And put the kettle on. Bring them both a nice cup of tea. Fortify it with plenty of milk and sugar."
"The radiator against the far wall was hissing and ticking, but the draft left by Sister Lucy’s exit swept the room, hollowing out the warmth."
"In the cupboard over the sink, Mr. Costello kept a bottle of whiskey. Sally had seen it before. Quickly she reached up for the bottle and poured a splash into the tea, briefly recalling the Bronx girl on the train."
"Sally’s hand was trembling as she held the cup, and the cup was rattling against the saucer."
"Her plan was to exchange her own immortal soul for her mother’s mortal happiness."
"A ridiculous plan, she knew, even as she got up in the cold room and dressed."
"Sally felt a fever flush, that unnatural heat, rise up into her collar, over her face."
"Without turning her head, Sister Jeanne moved her arm, held it across Sally’s waist, the spoon still in her hand, showing the girl that she should keep her distance."
"On the dresser was the teacup with the concoction she had stirred together, it seemed hours and hours ago now."
"She could not think of the future. She could not think of the next hour. And all of the recent past seemed faded and unreal."
"Sister Lucy lifted the teakettle and then filled it at the sink and put a flame under it on the stove."
"Slowly, with nothing to hold on to, Sally sank to her knees behind the two nuns."
"It wasn’t until they both knelt, side by side in the lamp-lit room, that Sally understood Mrs. Costello was dead."
"She had wanted to save her mother’s soul even if it meant the death of her own."
"Patrick said, 'Water seeks its own level,' and before he could continue, Tom was on his feet. 'That’s it,' he said. 'I’m through.'"
"Sally pushed the child in the perambulator when Annie went back to the convent laundry to help out."
"The courtship that began on the long night that Patrick Tierney had talked and talked in his mother’s kitchen didn’t end until Grace headed off to school, and he finally found the courage to propose."
"That’s how you’ll feel when you get to heaven, see? A long time from now for you, please God. Very soon for your old aunty."
"I lost heaven a long time ago. Back when your mother was still a girl. All of eighteen, I think."
"But you’ll pray for me, won’t you? You’ll pray for this lost soul?"