Colleen McCullough: The Thorn Birds

Colleen McCullough: The Thorn Birds   (Tövismadarak)     692 oldal               
  

értékelés, szerintem:   ★★★★★
  

Biztosan sokan emlékeztek a Tövismadarak sorozatra, Ralph atyára és Meggie-re. Nos, a kezembe akadt az eredeti történet, most ezt olvastam.

Powered by the dreams and struggles of three generations, The Thorn Birds is the epic saga of a family rooted in the Australian sheep country. At the story's heart is the love of Meggie Cleary, who can never possess the man she desperately adores, and Ralph de Bricassart, who rises from parish priest to the inner circles of the Vatican...but whose passion for Meggie will follow him all the days of his life.

"But when we press the thorn to our breast, we know, we understand. And still we do it."

"That  the best… is bought only at the cost of great pain."

"There are no ambitions noble enough to justify breaking someone’s heart."

"Ralph, we are priests, but we are something else before that; something we were before we became priests, and which we cannot escape in spite of our exclusiveness. We are men, with the weaknesses and failings of men."

"They, too, are men, my Ralph, those who hear confessions of the great. Never forget it as long as you live. Only in their priesthood do they act as vessels containing God. In all else they are men. And the forgiveness they mete out comes from God, but the ears which listen and judge belong to men."

"We are what we are, that’s all. Like the old Celtic legend of the bird with the thorn in its breast, singing its heart out and dying. Because it has to, it’s driven to. We can know what we do wrong even before we do it, but self-knowledge can’t affect or change the outcome, can it? Everyone singing his own little song, convinced it’s the most wonderful song the world has ever heard. Don’t you see? We create our own thorns, and never stop to count the cost. All we can do is suffer the pain, and tell ourselves it was well worth it."

"-’Proust dull? Not unless one doesn’t care for gossip, surely. That’s what he is, you know. A terrible old gossip. ’ "

"Lesson number one. There’s no aspect of love which won’t bear the light."

"I suppose daughters are never as patient with their mothers as sons are."

"Belief doesn’t rest on proof or existence… it rests on faith… without faith there is nothing."

"And gradually his memory slipped a little, as memories do, even those with so much love attached to them; as if there is an unconscious healing process within the mind which mends up in spite of our desperate determination never to forget."

"Truly God was good, to make man so blind."

"How frightening, that one person could mean so much, so many things."