Rachel Joyce
I went to see Dad in hospital after he had gone through one particularly grueling operation. I walked into the room where he was recovering, and he was sitting up in a chair, wearing his shirt and tie. That was after eight hours of surgery. I found that so moving.Collection: Dad
I went through a stage of writing my cramped hand in tiny books. My two sisters and I did have our Bronte period. My mum is from Yorkshire, and we would go up to the Moors. It tapped into our romantic visions of ourselves.Collection: Romantic
My dad was always busy. You would pop round for a cup of tea, and within minutes you would see him walking past with a step-ladder. He was always fixing things.Collection: Dad
The world was made up of people putting one foot in front of the other; and a life might appear ordinary simply because the person living it had been doing so for a long time.Collection: Feet
I miss her all the time. I know in my head that she has gone. the only difference is that I am getting used to the pain. It's like discovering a great hole in the ground. To begin with, you forget it's there and keep falling in. After a while, it's still there, but you learn to walk round it.Collection: Pain
People were buying milk, or filling their cars with petrol, or even posting letters. And what no one else knew was the appalling weight of the thing they were carrying inside. The superhuman effort it took sometimes to be normal, and a part of things that appeared both easy and everyday. The loneliness of that.Collection: Loneliness
You got up, and you did something. And if trying to find a way when you don't even know you can get there isn't a small miracle; then I don't know what is.Collection: Miracle
If we can't accept what we don't know, there really is no hope.Collection: Accepting
Beginnings could happen more than once or in different ways. You could think you were starting something afresh, when actually what you were doing was carrying on as before. He had faced his shortcomings and overcome them and so the real business of walking was happening only now.Collection: Real
Harold could no longer pass a stranger without acknowledging the truth that everyone was the same, and also unique; and that this was the dilemma of being human.Collection: Unique
But maybe it's what the world needs. A little less sense, and a little more faith.Collection: Needs
He must have driven this way countless times, and yet he had no memory of the scenery. He must have been so caught up in the day's agenda, and arriving punctually at their destination, that the land beyond the car had been no more than a wash of one green, and a backdrop of one hill. Life was very different when you walked through it.Collection: Memories
Beginnings could happen more than once, or in different ways.Collection: Different
The past was the past; there was no escaping your beginnings.Collection: Past
you could be ordinary and attempt something extraordinary, without being able to explain it in a logical way.Collection: Ordinary
...People would make the decisions they wished to make and some of them would hurt both themselves and those who loved them, and some would pass unnoticed, while others would bring joy.Collection: Hurt
... He went under the stars, and the tender light of the moon, when it hung like an eyelash and the tree trunks shone like bones. He walked through wind and weather, and beneath sun-bleached skies. It seemed to Harold that he had been waiting all his life to walk. He no longer knew how far he had come, but only that he was going forward. The pale Cotswold stone became the red brick of Warwickshire, and the land flattened into middle England. Harold reached his hand to his mouth to brush away a fly, and felt a beard growing in thick tufts. Queenie would live. He knew it.Collection: Stars
I've begun to think that we sit far more than we're supposed to...Why else would we have feet?Collection: Thinking
The least planned part of the journey, however, was the journey itself.Collection: Journey
And it can take a lifetime, a life of many years, to accept the incongruity of things: that a small moment can sit side by side with a big one, and become part of the same.Collection: Years
There was no escaping what he had realized as he fought for warmth in the night. With or without him,the moon and the wind would go on, rising and falling. The land would keep stretching ahead until it hit the sea. People would keep dying. It made no difference if Harold walked, or trembled, or stayed at home.Collection: Fall
There is so much to the human mind we don't understand. But, you see, if you have faith, you can do anything.Collection: Mind
If we don't go mad once in a while, there's no hope.Collection: Mad
He understood that in walking to atone for the mistakes he had made, it was his journey to accept the strangeness of others. As a passerby, he was in a place where everything, not only the land, was open. People would feel free to talk, and he was free to listen. To carry a little of them as he went.Collection: Mistake
If I just keep putting one foot in front of the other, it stands to reason that I'm going to get there. I've begun to think we sit far more than we're supposed to." He smiled. "Why else would we have feet?Collection: Thinking
It was not a life, if lived without love.Collection: Without Love
But it never ceases to amaze me how difficult the things that are supposed to be instinctive really are.Collection: Difficult
After the two drinks, she felt warm inside, and slightly indistinct at the edges.Collection: Two
He understood that in walking to atone for the mistakes he had made, it was also his journey to accept the strangeness of others.Collection: Mistake