Maeve Brennan quotes

“All we have to face in the future is what has happened in the past. It is unbearable.”
-- Maeve Brennan

Source : Maeve Brennan (1998). “The Springs of Affection: Stories of Dublin”, p.12, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

#Past Quotes #Faces Quotes #Unbearable Quotes

“Home is a place in the mind. When it is empty, it frets. It is fretful with memory, faces and places and times gone by. Beloved images rise up in disobedience and make a mirror for emptiness. Then what resentful wonder, and what half-aimless seeking. It is a silly state of affairs. It is a silly creature that tries to get a smile from even the most familiar and loving shadow. Comical and hopeless, the long gaze back is always turned inward.”
-- Maeve Brennan

#Memories Quotes #Silly Quotes #Home Quotes

“New York does nothing for those of us who are inclined to love her except implant in our hearts a homesickness that baffles us until we go away from her, and then we realize why we are restless. At home or away, we are homesick for New York not because New York used to be better and not because she used to be worse but because the city holds us and we don't know why.”
-- Maeve Brennan

Source : Maeve Brennan (2015). “The Long-Winded Lady: Notes from The New Yorker”, p.79, Counterpoint

#New York Quotes #Home Quotes #Heart Quotes

“Home is a place in the mind. When it is empty, it frets. It is fretful with memory, faces and places and times gone by. Beloved images rise up in disobedience and make a mirror for emptiness.”
-- Maeve Brennan

#Memories Quotes #Home Quotes #Mirrors Quotes

“So with truth - there is a certain moment when one can say, this is the truth and here I put a dot, a stop, and I go to another thing. A judge has to put an end to a deliberation. But for a historian, theres never an end to the past. It can go on and on and on.”

Source : "Sh'ma, Volume 34, Issue 607 - Volume 36, Issue 626". Book edited by J. Jakobovits, 2004.

“I didn't think about anything past tomorrow because anything past tomorrow was just like cloud busting - it depended soley on the person looking at the clouds and it could rain any minute”

“How aware were photographers in the past of other visual arts? "No photographer of any distinction at all could approach his work without some awareness of what was going on in other visual media, and for that matter neither the painter nor the draughtsman could ignore photography."”

“Then the fear all humans felt when met with Death’s gaze came over his face. That’s right buddy, I’m Death, now move away from my girl.”

“the search for the ultimate skyscraper goes on. ... At worst, overbuilding will make urban life unbearable. At best, we will go out in a blaze of style.”

“I don't think so, I don't agree. The most unbearable thing I think by far, she said, is hope.”

Source : Aimee Bender (2011). “The Girl in the Flammable Skirt: Stories”, p.28, Anchor

“To not have your suffering recognized is an almost unbearable form of violence.”

“Songs are usually unfit for whistling - indeed, whistling (except to the person doing it) is unbearable ...”

“Just remember... life without me would be even more unbearable.”

“I have long considered it one of God's greatest mercies that the future is hidden from us. If it were not, life would surely be unbearable.”