All That I Leave Behind Quotes

“At one stage in my life, I'd have given my left arm to hear from Mammy. Just one word, that's all. Something to let us know that she still loved us. That she still cared.”
― Alison Walsh, All That I Leave Behind: A powerful, heart-breaking story of family secrets

“What good will raking over the past do? We have to move forward. We have no choice.”
― Alison Walsh, All That I Leave Behind: A powerful, heart-breaking story of family secrets

“I know it won't bring her back or help me to understand why she left us like that, but it helps me to make sense of how I feel about it.”
― Alison Walsh, All That I Leave Behind: A powerful, heart-breaking story of family secrets

“She wouldn't see it as a fresh start, or a new life: she'd probably be remembering every bit of her own sad little story, and no amount of that praying she did could disguise it.”
― Alison Walsh, All That I Leave Behind: A powerful, heart-breaking story of family secrets

“And anyway, some things could never be fixed, not properly anyway.”
― Alison Walsh, All That I Leave Behind: A powerful, heart-breaking story of family secrets

“I missed Mammy so much, I can't tell you what it was like just to be able to talk to her again.”
― Alison Walsh, All That I Leave Behind: A powerful, heart-breaking story of family secrets

“It seemed that after years and years of being stuck, things had all come lying loose at the same time.”
― Alison Walsh, All That I Leave Behind: A powerful, heart-breaking story of family secrets

“Mary-Pat tried to think of Mammy, she just couldn’t call a picture of her up to her mid. She seemed to have gone all blurry, and the more Maey-Pat tried, the more indistinct she became. She’s fading on me, Mary-Pat thought. After all this time, she’s fading away.”
― Alison Walsh, All That I Leave Behind: A powerful, heart-breaking story of family secrets

“That she had only been on one trip with her and it hadn't exactly been a day trip. But she was so pleased to hear Mammy's name spoken like that, normally, the way you would about anyone's mother.”
― Alison Walsh, All That I Leave Behind: A powerful, heart-breaking story of family secrets

“Mammy's leaving wasn't the kind of thing that you could just wrap up and leave behind you, neatly fitting it under 'the past' and moving on. It had changed their lives, had changed them in all kinds of ways.”
― Alison Walsh, All That I Leave Behind: A powerful, heart-breaking story of family secrets

“It was lovely, magnificent really, and realising Mammy's vision had given Pi a new lease of life, a new confidence and a new drive.”
― Alison Walsh, All That I Leave Behind: A powerful, heart-breaking story of family secrets

“The change had been hard and painful, but if he had never spoken, if he hadn’t turned her whole life upside down, hers and everyone else's, they'd probably have spent the rest of their lives living in the past. And that was no life at all.”
― Alison Walsh, All That I Leave Behind: A powerful, heart-breaking story of family secrets