Top 120 M.L. Stedman Quotes (2024 Update)
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51. “You could kill a bloke with rules, Tom knew that. And yet sometimes they were what stood between man and savagery, between man and monsters.”

— M.L. Stedman

52. “Everything’s ruined. Nothing can ever be put right.” Tom rested a hand on hers. “We’ve put things right as well as we can. That’s all we can do. We have to live with things the way they are now.”

— M.L. Stedman

53. “Lives gone, traces left. And he wondered about the despair of the man, destroyed by grief. It didn’t take a war to push you over that edge.”

— M.L. Stedman

54. “Your family’s never in your past. You carry it around with you everywhere.”

— M.L. Stedman

55. “He watches the ocean surrender to night, knowing that the light will reappear.”

— M.L. Stedman

56. “The town draws a veil over certain events. This is a small community, where everyone knows that sometimes the contract to forget is as important as any promise to remember.”

— M.L. Stedman

57. “I’m in exactly the same place, the birds are the same, the water’s the same, the sun rises and sets just like it always did, but I never knew what for, Tom.”

— M.L. Stedman

58. “The northern side of the island is a sheer granite cliff which sets its jaw stiffly against the ocean below.”

— M.L. Stedman

59. “Well, you just had to count your blessings and be thankful things weren’t worse.”

— M.L. Stedman

60. “We always have a choice. All of us.”

— M.L. Stedman

61. “It’s a hard job, and a busy one. The lightkeepers have no union, not like the men on the store boats – no one strikes for better pay or conditions. The days can leave him exhausted or sore, worried by the look of a storm front coming in at a gallop, or frustrated by the way hailstones crush the vegetable patch. But if he doesn’t think about it too hard, he knows who he is and what he’s for. He just has to keep the light burning. Nothing more.”

— M.L. Stedman

62. “He sat down to write, before realizing he had no idea what to say. He didn’t want to say anything; just send her a smile.”

— M.L. Stedman

63. “He bit the narrow end of the flower and sucked the droplet of nectar from its base. ‘You only taste it for a second. But it’s worth it.”

— M.L. Stedman

64. “You always imagine you’ll get the chance to say what needs to be said, to put things right. But that’s not always how it goes.”

— M.L. Stedman

65. “He is embraced by nature, which is waiting, ultimately, to receive him, to re-organize his atoms into another shape.”

— M.L. Stedman

66. “Es como si hubiera toda una galaxia esperando a que la descubras. Y yo quiero descubrir la tuya.”

— M.L. Stedman

67. “But it’s not always plain sailing, even when you’ve found the right girl. You’ve got to be in it for the long haul. You never know what’s going to happen: you sign up for whatever comes along. There’s no backing out.”

— M.L. Stedman

68. “To make sense of it – that’s the challenge. To bear witness to the death, without being broken by the weight of it.”

— M.L. Stedman

69. “Perhaps the same labeling obsession caused cartographers to split this body of water into two oceans, even though it is impossible to touch an exact point at which their currents begin to differ. Splitting. Labeling. Seeking out otherness. Some things don’t change.”

— M.L. Stedman

70. “All night, far above him the light stood guard, slicing the darkness like a sword.”

— M.L. Stedman

71. “When it comes to the ocean, anything’s possible, I suppose. Anything at all.”

— M.L. Stedman

72. “Victorious and dead is a poor sort of victory.”

— M.L. Stedman

73. “He looked at the picture of his mother in the locket. Perhaps each of his parents loved him, however brokenly. He felt a sudden urge of anger at his father’s almost casual assumption of the right to separate him from his mother: so sincere, yet so destructive.”

— M.L. Stedman

74. “Stick to now. Put right the things you can put right today, and let the ones from back then go. Leave the rest to the angels, or the devil or whoever’s in charge of it.”

— M.L. Stedman

75. “History is that which is agreed upon by mutual consent. That’s how life goes on – protected by the silence that anesthetizes shame.”

— M.L. Stedman

76. “Later still, the war memorials would sprout from the earth, dwelling not on the loss, but on what the loss had won, and what a fine thing it was to be victorious. “Victorious and dead,” some muttered, “is a poor sort of victory.”

— M.L. Stedman

77. “He was a practical man: give him a sensitive technical instrument, and he could maintain it; something broken, and he could mend it, meditatively, efficiently. But confronted by his grieving wife, he felt useless.”

— M.L. Stedman

78. “But if he doesn’t think about it too hard, he knows who he is and what he’s for. He just has to keep the light burning. Nothing more.”

— M.L. Stedman

79. “Other blokes might take advantage, but to Tom, the idea of honor was a kind of antidote to some of the things he’d lived through.”

— M.L. Stedman

80. “You could kill a bloke with rules, Tom knew that. And yet sometimes they were what stood between man and savagery, between man and monsters. The rules that said you took a prisoner rather than killed a man. The rules that said you let the stretchers cart the enemy off from no man’s land as well as your own men.”

— M.L. Stedman

81. “Two opposing physical forces, they create an inexplicable reaction overpowered by a third, stronger force – the knowledge of having deprived his wife of a child.”

— M.L. Stedman

82. “That night, Tom took a bottle of whisky, and went to watch the stars from near the cliff. The breeze played on his face as he traced the constellations, and tasted the burn of the liquid. He turned his attention to the rotation of the beam, and gave a bitter laugh at the thought that the dip of the light meant that the island itself was always left in darkness. A lighthouse is for others; powerless to illuminate the space closest to it.”

— M.L. Stedman

83. “No one was quite sure how to treat this mourning that wasn’t for a death.”

— M.L. Stedman

84. “Stick to now. Put right the things you can put right today, and let the ones from back then go.”

— M.L. Stedman

85. “Even Reverend Norkells urged her to spend less time in the stony darkness of the church and to “look for Christ in the life around her.”

— M.L. Stedman

86. “Lives gone, traces left.”

— M.L. Stedman

87. “He was still taking stock of this girl and her uncanny ability to tip him a fraction off balance.”

— M.L. Stedman

88. “If Tom is to take his leave of the world, he wants to remember the beauty of it, not just the suffering.”

— M.L. Stedman

89. “There’s nothing you can do,” her father had said. “Once a horse bolts, you can only say your prayers and hang on for all you’re worth. Can’t stop an animal that’s caught in a blind terror.”

— M.L. Stedman

90. “I’m all right on my own. And I’m all right with a bit of company. It’s the switching from one to the other that gets me.”

— M.L. Stedman

91. “This focusing outward... painful as it was, saved her from a more intolerable examination.”

— M.L. Stedman

92. “He had a sense of being waltzed backwards.”

— M.L. Stedman

93. “The only thing we can do is love that little girl as much as she deserves. And never, never hurt her!”

— M.L. Stedman

94. “You could still tell at a glance who’d been over there and who’d sat the war out at home. You could smell it on a man.”

— M.L. Stedman

95. “He carries that other shadow, which is cast inward.”

— M.L. Stedman

96. “There was something mysterious about him – as though, behind his smile, he was still far away. She wanted to get to the heart of him.”

— M.L. Stedman

97. “But I want to!” An idea came to Isabel.”

— M.L. Stedman

98. “Never be sorry for smiling!”

— M.L. Stedman

99. “From when she was a baby, Tom has taught the girl to respect, but not fear, the forces of nature- the lightning that might strike the light tower on Janus, the oceans that batter the island.”

— M.L. Stedman

100. “Oh well, God comes good in the end, doesn’t he?”

— M.L. Stedman