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My old mum always said, if brains was gunpowder he couldn't blow his fucking eyebrows off.
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Martina Cole |
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All happy families resemble one another, but each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way. Leo Tolstoy, 1828-1910, Anna Karenina A child is not a vase to be filled, but a fire to be lit. Francois Rabelais, 1494-1553
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Martina Cole |
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eventually you regretted the things you hadn't done as much as the things you had.
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Martina Cole |
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job!' This son of hers was caught up in the middle, as usual. It was the bane of the middle child's life. Caught between the first-born and the last-born, they were often left to their own devices.
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Martina Cole |
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Like the old adage, you never knew what you had till it was gone.
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Martina Cole |
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Imelda believed in God because she felt that there had to be something else, something after all this, and also because anyone who was still being worshipped and adored after all that time had to have something going for them.
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Martina Cole |
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Catholic guilt was the most destructive sort of guilt because the person that it concerned had no real concept of it. They didn't even realise that it existed. Catholic guilt was something that grew alongside the person, alongside their personality and, in many ways, it did them some good. They felt the need to help the less fortunate, and they felt the urge to make their children better than they were.
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Martina Cole |
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You looked after your child, no matter who had fathered it, and no matter how much you might hate them deep down inside. A child was there for the duration of your life and, if you were really lucky, they buried you, and not vice versa. A mother would give her own heart to ensure the child she had created would live on, would be happy to do so. Would be loved.
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Martina Cole |
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Look after the pennies, and the pounds always looked after themselves.
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Martina Cole |
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mother that she missed so desperately because, no matter what happened in life, there was always a bed for you at your mother's home. All the time she was alive her children had somewhere to go. Somewhere to run to, and somewhere to call home.
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Martina Cole |
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once your mother was gone, they were gone, and no one could ever replace them.
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Martina Cole |
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Charity and beating begins at home. John Fletcher, 1579-1625, Wit Without Money
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Martina Cole |
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One day, you'll wake up and thirty or forty years will have flown by.
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Martina Cole |
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Always fighting, arguing, and mouthing off to teachers and other pupils alike. But it was never her fault, it was always someone else's fault.
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Martina Cole |
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Be a sinner and sin strongly, but more strongly have faith and rejoice in Christ. Martin Luther, 1483-1546
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Martina Cole |
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Once things were said out loud, they could never be taken back. They were out there for ever.
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Martina Cole |
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She already looked dead and Eileen knew that it couldn't be long before she went. But even though she knew it would be a happy release for her mother, the thought of her never being there ever again was terrifying. She depended on her so much, needed her so desperately that even though she knew it was selfish, she prayed her mother pulled through as she had before.
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Martina Cole |
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His mother had pointed out that the attack with the axe was no more than she would have done herself for her own children. That a mother would protect her young because, with good fathers being few and far between, the only person a child could really count on was the woman who had grown them, birthed them and nurtured them. Now, here he was, confronting someone who, at any other time, he would feel honour-bound to help carry her shopping h..
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Martina Cole |
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O Lord, thou hast seen my wrong: Judge thou my cause. Lamentations 3:59
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Martina Cole |
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Tell the truth and shame the Devil, remember.
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Martina Cole |
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will always be there for you, and so will your dad. We might fight and argue, but we are family at bottom, eh?
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Martina Cole |
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She wanted to warn them; they would waste their youth because they did not realise just how fleeting it was, and because most people did.
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Martina Cole |
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Her old dad used to say God is good, and he was good, but he was also very busy. He just needed a bit of help now and again.
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Martina Cole |
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The future was eventually all about what you had really done, not what you wished you had done.
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Martina Cole |
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he was an intelligent lunatic and they were as dangerous as they were rare.
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Martina Cole |
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She had always been the voice of reason, had been the one who smoothed over quarrels and made sure that they remembered they were family. Stopped the fights before they began and reminded them that, at the end of the day, each other was all that any of them really had. As close as they were, they had all fallen out big time over the years. She had been the voice of reason.
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Martina Cole |
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She had held them together with the sheer force of her will and her overpowering love. What would happen to them all now? Who would keep them all together, make sure they didn't fall apart, didn't rake up the past and cause murders?
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Martina Cole |
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He had no intention of fighting for a country that he saw as holding men down and offering them nothing except back-breaking work. He had said as much to his commanding officer. He had also robbed the army stores blind; the black market was still thriving at the time, and he had used that for his own ends.
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Martina Cole |
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Now, as a wage earner, she had gained a certain grudging respect, but it had been a long time coming. At fifteen, she understood her life better than people three times her age; she needed to keep the peace until she had enough money to set up on her own, or marry herself out of it all.
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Martina Cole |
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And it was true. People gave out their whole life stories to anyone and everyone without a second's thought. Stand at a bus stop, sit in a strange pub, get banged up, and someone would always give you their life story.
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Martina Cole |
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Show me the company you keep and I'll tell you what you are.
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Martina Cole |
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Why did people feel like this nowadays? Why were they so scared of chastising their kids, of making them listen to reason, explaining that what they were doing was wrong? Mary had not felt for a long time that she was in a position to offer her advice and she wondered when the children, the youngest members of the family, had suddenly acquired so much power that they were more or less laws unto themselves.
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Martina Cole |
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Blessed are they that mourn: For they shall be comforted. Matthew 5:4
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Martina Cole |
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You just had to keep going, day by day.
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Martina Cole |
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It's what you do. Just keep trying, day by day, to sort everything out.
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Martina Cole |
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It was a bastard, life. It had the knack of throwing you a curve every now and then to keep you interested. To give you a reason to keep going. Then, just as you thought you had cracked it, you took delivery of a blow that was so severe you were amazed at how you could ever have survived it. But somehow you did, and somehow you carried on.
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Martina Cole |
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A truth that's told with bad intent Beats all the lies you can invent. William Blake, 1757-1827, 'Auguries of Innocence' Who can find a virtuous woman? for her price is far above rubies. Proverbs 31:10
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Martina Cole |
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They didn't mean that the sins a parent might commit would be visited on their offspring. The words actually meant that the mistakes a parent made while they were bringing up their children would be visited on the second, the third, even the fourth generation.
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Martina Cole |
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all you had at the end of the day was your name, and that made it the more important because it was something you either respected or you were ashamed of. Your name was all you had, the only thing that you couldn't ever deny.
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Martina Cole |
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Addicts' children should be removed from their influence, and placed as far away from the offender as was humanly possible.
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Martina Cole |
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Your name was the only thing you ever really owned, for good or for bad; that choice was yours.
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Martina Cole |
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Life for life, Eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot, Burning for burning, wound for wound, stripe for stripe. - Exodus, 21:23
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Martina Cole |
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There are many types of love,
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Martina Cole |
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How they had the nerve to sanction other countries about their penal laws when they treated their own as guilty before there was even a trial, he did not know. Innocent till proven guilty?
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Martina Cole |