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Maeve Brennan Quotes

All we have to face in the future is what has happened in the past. It is unbearable.

All we have to face in the future is what has happened in the past. It is unbearable.

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

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, Home, Mirrors
Maeve Brennan (2015). “The Visitor”, p.8, Counterpoint

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

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, Silly, Home

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