Always it was the same, Furlong thought; always they carried mechanically on without pause, to the next job at hand. What would life be like, he wondered, if they were given time to think and reflect over things? Might their lives be different or much the same - or would they just lose the run of themselves?
Even while he‘d been creaming the butter and sugar,
his mind was not so much upon the here and now and on this Sunday nearing Christmas with his wife and daughters so much as on tomorrow
and who owed what,
and how and when he‘d deliver what was ordered
and what man he‘d leave to which task,
and how and where he‘d collect what was owed
- and before tomorrow was coming to an end, he knew his mind would already be working in much the same way, yet again, over the day that was to follow. - P19
They could be like young witches sometimes,
his daughters, with their black hair and sharp eyes.
It was easy to understand why women feared men with their physical strength and lust and social powers, but women, with their canny intuitions, were so much deeper: they could predict what was to come long before it came, dream it overnight, and read your mind. He‘d had moments, in his marriage, when he‘d almost feared Eileen and had envied her mettle, her red-hot instincts. - P22
The next year, when he‘d won first prize for spelling and was given a wooden pencil-case whose sliding top doubled as a ruler, Mrs Wilson had rubbed the top of his head and praised him, as though he was one of her own. You‘re a credit to yourself,‘ she‘d told him. And for a whole day or more, Furlong had gone around feeling a foot taller, believing, in his heart, that he mattered as much as any other child. - P27
‘Isn‘t that the way.‘
"The years don‘t slow down any as they pass.‘ - P30
‘A Walter Macken, maybe. Or David Copperfield. I never did get round to reading that one.‘
‘Right you are.‘
‘Or a big dictionary, for the house, for the girls.‘
He liked the thought of having a dictionary in the house. - P31
‘Money-wise, do you mean? Didn‘t we have a good year? I‘m still putting something away into the Credit Union every week. We should get the loan and have the new windows in the front before this time next year. I‘m sick of the draught.‘ - P32
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