Magpie Quotes
"The house was perfect. Well, not perfect exactly, because houses never are, but at least the imperfections were liveable with."
"The quietness of the garden was rare for London, especially this close to a main road."
"There's something about the sound of a house that becomes familiar in a comforting way."
"Sometimes the things we remember are more about the feelings they evoke than the actual events."
"Happiness, she thought, always had an edge of sadness to it."
"The past has a way of seeping into the present, coloring our thoughts and actions."
"We all have our secrets, the ones we keep locked away deep inside."
"There's a certain strength that comes from knowing you've survived your worst days."
"Love has a way of making the ordinary seem extraordinary."
"In the end, it's not the big moments that define us, but the small, everyday decisions."
"Sometimes, the hardest battles are the ones we fight within ourselves."
"Hope is like a thread, connecting our past, present, and future."
"It's the small acts of kindness that often have the biggest impact."
"We are all just trying to find our way, stumbling in the dark, reaching for light."
"In every ending, there's a new beginning waiting to be discovered."
"It’s not about the physical fact of a child’s appearance, it’s about the dimple in a chin or the way someone frowns or laughs, revealing tiny, jewel-like teeth."
"What must it feel like to be so calmly confident about one’s place in the world? To not have to try to make people love you?"
"She is aware of the absurdity of it, and yet this doesn’t stop her from putting on a beanie hat, pulling it low over her eyes, and wearing a pair of plain glass spectacles."
"Her father had never mentioned anything but she noticed that he, too, refused to take it out."
"‘I’m a hugger,’ Jackie said, emitting a throaty smoker’s laugh. ‘Come here, darling.’"
"It was as though she were contained by a force field of loneliness, and everyone knew that she was not worth getting to know."
"‘Baby could be sprouting hair’ and ‘Baby can use her facial muscles to grimace or smile’ and ‘Baby is about the size of a lemon or your clenched fist’."
"‘For fuck’s sake!’ she says, trying to shake herself free. When she lifts her head, she sees Kate, inches away from her face."
"Her father was wearing a shirt and tie and a knitted cardigan waistcoat and it was this – the effort he had made to appear normal – that alerted her to the other presence in the kitchen."
"Marisa takes a deep breath and regulates her exhalation to the count of four. But for the rest of the afternoon, there is a shadowy disquiet crouching like a cat in the corner of the room."
"She imagines looking at her from above, watching Kate whimper on the floorboards and then she imagines her vanishing – her entire body disappearing, as if the elastic of time had snapped and broken and she had fallen through the gap."
"Baby’s intestines are producing meconium, which is the waste that will make up her first bowel movement after birth."
"She visualizes a miniature penis and vulva arriving at some glitzy black-tie ball, walking effortfully down a red and gold staircase to the elegant strains of a string quartet."
"It was so cliched, that was the worst part. She had thought more of Jake."
"The grass is wet from morning rainfall and the shimmer of a spider’s web spans the corner of the glass door."
"I love you,’ Kate wrote on 2 June. That would have been a few weeks after she moved in, Marisa calculates."
"What was the point of it? To show that it can be done?"
"She had never felt such a conspicuous physical urge."
"Her breath caught in the top of her throat as she waited for a second one to join it, but it never came."
"For those twelve days, she stopped crossing the street to avoid prams or buggies, choosing instead to smile broadly at the parents."
"‘Count to ten,’ she imagines her mother saying, leaning over Marisa in bed so that a strand of her long blonde hair – hair just like Marisa’s is now – falls forwards and tickles her collarbone."
"‘You fucking cunt!’ she screams, drawing out the vowels of the final bleak syllable so that it becomes a caterwauling echo of the original sound."
"It’s palatial. You two don’t need this much room, surely?"
"But surely you can’t be thinking… you’re not even married, darling!"
"We’ll have a baby, even if it takes us longer than we expected."
"I love you, Kate. We’ll have a baby, even if it takes us longer than we expected."
"We don’t want to get your hopes up only for them to be dashed."
"I just want to make sure you’re OK with it all. Sorry for all the questions."
"We’re pregnant!" Marisa exclaimed, holding a pregnancy test aloft.
"After so long, after so much yearning and loss, here the fact was."
"It was too painful to imagine a baby with a name because it gave them expectation."
"For a while it was perfect. It was important for Kate to remember that, later, after everything that happened."
"Expectation was the cruellest trick when you weren’t expecting."
"Marisa, pressing herself against the wall to steady the sudden shakiness of the world, sensed her knees give way as she slid to the floor."
"She clasped her head in her hands and wondered who was sobbing until she realised the sound was coming from her."
"I can't believe it," Jake kept saying. "I can't believe it."
"The thought of her baby being this far away from her, in the belly of a woman with a history of psychosis and bipolar disorder is almost too much to bear."
"Don't be too long, the lasagne will go cold."
"It’s all going to be fine. The best thing you can do is relax."
"You must only show your work when it’s ready."
"Your baby is your baby as soon as you hold it in your arms."
"The main thing, as we’ve agreed, is to keep Marisa calm and happy."
"I’m sorry, what? Have you been talking to your mother about me?"
"I can’t say anything without you flying off the handle."