Melanie McGrath quotes

“Twisting and wiring and stringing starching and curling, delicately painting spots and shadings on scraps of silk until what had been nothing more than a pile of brightly colored fragments had been transformed into the silk irises, forget-me-not, violets and roses that would adorn the hats of women and girls more fortunate than themselves.”
-- Melanie McGrath

#Girl Quotes #Flower Quotes #Rose Quotes

“To survive, you had to steer your course midstream, where the water was deepest and ran fastest, that you had to paddle fast, as fast as you could to stay there to stay still in the rushing current because the price of failure was to be washed up on the beach or dashed to pieces on the wharves.”
-- Melanie McGrath

Source : Melanie McGrath (2009). “Hopping”, p.23, HarperCollins UK

#Beach Quotes #Failure Quotes #Rushing Quotes

“Anecdote: The East End seemed to be in the grip of yet another economic crisis. ... By the winter of 1933, an army of the unemployed gathered daily outside the dock gates, desperate for a day or 2 paid work. .... There was no cushion, no disaster fund, no stashed savings, no government handouts no syrup that could sweeten the bitter pill of poverty.”
-- Melanie McGrath

#Army Quotes #Winter Quotes #Government Quotes

“I was singing in a mall, and I picked a girl to come up onstage with me. As I was grabbing her hand, I fell off the stage. It felt like I was in the air forever, flying like Superman.”

“You work here [on the farm] simply without philosophizing; sometimes the work is hard and crowded with pettiness. But at times you feel a surge of cosmic exaltation, like the clear light of the heavens... . And you, too, seem to be taking root in the soil which you are digging, to be nourished by the rays of the sun, to share life with the tiniest blade of grass, with each flower; living in nature's depths, you seem then to rise and grow into the vast expanse of the universe.”

“Because I liked you better Than suits a man to say, It irked you, and I promised I'd throw the thought away. To put the world between us We parted stiff and dry: 'Farewell,' said you, 'forget me.' 'Fare well, I will,' said I. If e'er, where clover whitens The dead man's knoll, you pass, And no tall flower to meet you Starts in the trefoiled grass, Halt by the headstone shading The heart you have not stirred, And say the lad that loved you Was one that kept his word.”

“A world without poetry and art would be too much like one without birds or flowers: bearable but a lot less enjoyable.”

“If you think squash is a competitive activity, try flower arranging.”

Source : Alan Bennett (2010). “The Complete Talking Heads”, p.56, Macmillan

“Who that has reason, and his smell, Would not among roses and jasmin dwell?”

“Courage is not defined by those who fought and did not fall, but by those who fought, fell and rose again.”

“If you find yourself born in Barnsley and then set your sights on being Virginia Woolf it is not going to be roses all the way.”

“It would be a miracle, for example, if I dropped a stone and it rose upwards. But is it no miracle that it falls to the ground?”

“If love were what the rose is, And I were like the leaf, Our lives would grow together In sad or singing weather.”

Source : "A Match" l. 1 (1866)