Top 100 Charlotte McConaghy Quotes (2026 Update)
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51. “Men get taught to expect control but a modern society no longer supports that, so some men feel it slipping and it humiliates them. The humiliation makes them angry, and then violent.”

— Charlotte McConaghy

52. “Don’t apologize too much, kid. It’ll bleed you dry.” “What if you’ve a lot to apologize for?” “Once is enough for anything.” I suppose that’s true. It’s impossible to control someone else’s capacity for forgiveness.”

— Charlotte McConaghy

53. “We all have that choice, and most of us make it. There is cruelty to survive, to fight against, but there is gentleness more than anything, our roots deep and entangled.”

— Charlotte McConaghy

54. “I’m not minimizing. It’s just that if you paint a picture of him as a monster then you make him mythical, but men who hurt women are just men.”

— Charlotte McConaghy

55. “I tried for Niall, like I did for my mother. I really did. But the rhythms of the sea’s tides are the only things we humans have not yet destroyed.”

— Charlotte McConaghy

56. “But in the night I slept and I dreamed of feathers in my lungs. So many I choked on them. I woke coughing and frightened and knew I had made a mistake.”

— Charlotte McConaghy

57. “I stop being a woman, a human, an animal, whatever I was. I am fury dressed in flesh.”

— Charlotte McConaghy

58. “Then take from me. I have more than enough.”

— Charlotte McConaghy

59. “But the immensity of a will is still nothing, not compared with the body. The body is master of us, and it can only be asked for so much. I try to stand but nothing happens. I try to yell but only a rasp comes loose. The cold is too deep, I’ve lost too much blood.”

— Charlotte McConaghy

60. “The forest has a beating heart we can’t see.”

— Charlotte McConaghy

61. “It is easy to tell myself that what passes between them is only biology, nature, but then who said love does not exist in the nature of all things?”

— Charlotte McConaghy

62. “Darlin’, you’re going to figure this out one day, but we’re most fallible when trying to raise our children.”

— Charlotte McConaghy

63. “If the animals have died it will not have been quietly. It will not have been without a desperate fight. If they’ve died, all of them, it’s because we made the world impossible for them.”

— Charlotte McConaghy

64. “Isn’t that the way of animals, to break your heart with their courage, with their love.”

— Charlotte McConaghy

65. “I don’t have anything to give you.” “Then take from me. I have more than enough.”

— Charlotte McConaghy

66. “I think, deep in the darkest hours, that even if she survives this night that ocean will have her back one day.”

— Charlotte McConaghy

67. “Dominance often has nothing to do with size or aggression.”

— Charlotte McConaghy

68. “He also taught us that compassion was the most important thing we could learn.”

— Charlotte McConaghy

69. “But here is the nature of life. That we must love things with our whole selves, knowing they will die.”

— Charlotte McConaghy

70. “There are very few people, in my understanding of the world, who offer tenderness so freely.”

— Charlotte McConaghy

71. “Yours is a terrible will,” he told me once. And that is true, but I have been a casualty of it far longer than he has.”

— Charlotte McConaghy

72. “I am astounded at the unlikelihood of bringing my children to a place so remote and still have something so terrible happen to her. Maybe it is not unlikely at all. Where men go there is harm.”

— Charlotte McConaghy

73. “Many animals are capable of this, we see it time and again. I believe they are more inherently loyal than we are and that connections are built deep within, where instinct lives.”

— Charlotte McConaghy

74. “I understand it so simply now, it is a love that lives in the body but unlike the body it never dissolves. It lasts forever.”

— Charlotte McConaghy

75. “Death gets under your skin, you carry it with you. People can sense that.”

— Charlotte McConaghy

76. “Oh, how I had coasted upon the back of this woman, deep in the trenches with her and also very happy to let her learn all the things and know all the things.”

— Charlotte McConaghy

77. “Wolves get lonely, same as us. Difference is that for wolves being alone makes them vulnerable, while for humans it keeps us safe.”

— Charlotte McConaghy

78. “But what is the use of safety if it deprives you of everything else?”

— Charlotte McConaghy

79. “But the dandelion – this single flower that has given nourishment to countless other living creatures – is considered a weed.”

— Charlotte McConaghy

80. “Saving specific animals purely on the basis of what they offer humanity may be practical, but wasn’t this attitude the problem to begin with? Our overwhelming, annihilating selfishness? What of the animals that exist purely to exist, because millions of years of evolution have carved them into miraculous being?”

— Charlotte McConaghy

81. “Why do you do it,” I said. “Do what?” “Spend your life at sea.” He considers. “I guess it just feels like really living.” He smiles shyly. Plus, what else am I going to do?”

— Charlotte McConaghy

82. “We stomped through the world and crumpled things where we walked, too human, not creature enough.”

— Charlotte McConaghy

83. “What I miss is having someone to look at in moments like these, someone who understands not just the talent or cleverness of our children but the wisdom, the immensity of feeling they hold within. Instead I marvel at them alone.”

— Charlotte McConaghy

84. “How, I wondered, was one meant to live without killing, when killing sought one out at every turn? The world made its monsters indeed.”

— Charlotte McConaghy

85. “To live for your children seems a normal thing, a respectable one; to live because of your children is something else.”

— Charlotte McConaghy

86. “She’s not a person, who understands right and wrong. You can’t be angry with an animal, can’t hate it, get revenge upon it.”

— Charlotte McConaghy

87. “Maybe it is not unlikely at all. Where men go there is harm.”

— Charlotte McConaghy

88. “It’s not a forest. It’s one tree. One huge organism. It’s called the trembling giant and it’s the oldest living thing on this planet, and the largest. Some think it could be a million years old. And it’s dying. We’re killing it.”

— Charlotte McConaghy

89. “She didn’t kill because she was cruel. She killed because there are instincts in her body telling her to do so, to protect against threats, to survive, sustain herself, live on.”

— Charlotte McConaghy

90. “In the years we have been together it has become very clear to me that he does not see me at all. I am actually not so bothered by this; what an ordeal it would be, to be known.”

— Charlotte McConaghy

91. “There is such peril in loving things at all, and he feels sort of proud, in fact, that he just keeps on doing it.”

— Charlotte McConaghy

92. “You can rely on the land and you can work it, and you can feed it and care for it at the same time.”

— Charlotte McConaghy

93. “Things don’t always take the shape you want them to, kid, and we gotta learn to endure that with a bit of grace.”

— Charlotte McConaghy

94. “My father used to say the world turned wrong when we started separating ourselves from the wild, when we stopped being one with the rest of nature, and sat apart. He said we might survive this mistake if we found a way to rewild ourselves. But I don’t know how to do that when our existence frightens the creatures we must reconnect with.”

— Charlotte McConaghy

95. “The world is dangerous and we will not survive it. But there is this. Impermanent as it may be.”

— Charlotte McConaghy

96. “And if others won’t do their part in turning the tide then we must do more than our share.”

— Charlotte McConaghy

97. “I think I finally understand your words. It’s just a body. They hold on or they don’t. You’re right, it’s nothing to be frightened of. Mine will become the salt of this water. And every time you swim it will be me upon your skin.”

— Charlotte McConaghy

98. “This is how the trees speak with and care for each other. Their roots tangle together, dozens of trees with dozens more in a web that reaches on forever, and they whisper to each other through their roots.”

— Charlotte McConaghy

99. “She catches me and holds me so tenderly, and I know her. She is his mother, and she died so he could live. I understand it so simply now, it is a love that lives in the body but unlike the body it never dissolves. It lasts forever.”

— Charlotte McConaghy

100. “And with that they left, and I hated them for their politeness, hated that they seemed perfectly nice and yet they were out here doing this heinous thing, hunting for the sake of it, not to survive, not to eat, only to feel power over another creature.”

— Charlotte McConaghy