The Trouble With Goats And Sheep Quotes

I still hadn’t learned the power of words. How, once they have left your mouth, they have a breath and a life of their own. I had yet to realize that you no longer own them. I hadn’t learned that, once you have let them go, the words can then, in fact, become the owner of you.

My mother said I was at an awkward age. I didn't feel especially awkward, so I presumed she meant that it was awkward for them.

After my bedroom, this was my favourite place in the world. It was carpeted, and had heavy bookcases and ticking clocks and velvet chairs, just like someone’s living room. It smelled of unturned pages and unseen adventures, and on every shelf were people I had yet to meet, and places I had yet to visit. Each time, I lost myself in the corridors of books and the polished, wooden rooms, deciding which journey to go on next. Mrs

I waited. I had discovered that, sometimes, if you held on to the silence, people couldn’t stop themselves from filling it up.

And I decided it really was true after all. You only really need two people to believe in the same thing, to feel as though you just might belong.

I thought I would like a job where inquiring about everyone else's private business was considered perfectly routine.

People tend to believe things just because everyone else does.' Walter looked at his hands and began biting into the skin next to his fingernails. 'They don't search for proof, they just search for approval from everyone else.

The most important thing a garden needs is the shadow of a gardener.

Cultures of honor tend to take root in highlands and other marginally fertile areas, such as Sicily or the mountainous Basque regions of Spain. If you live on some rocky mountainside, the explanation goes, you can't farm. You probably raise goats or sheep, and the kind of culture that grows up around being a herdsman is very different from the culture that grows up around growing crops. The survival of a farmer depends on the cooperation of others in the community. But a herdsman is off by himself. Farmers also don't have to worry that their livelihood will be stolen in the night, because crops can't easily be stolen unless, of course, a thief wants to go to the trouble of harvesting an entire field on his own. But a herdsman does have to worry. He's under constant threat of ruin through the loss of his animals. So he has to be aggressive: he has to make it clear, through his words and deeds, that he is not weak.

You'll understand as you get older. You can spot them a mile off, You'll learn to cross the street.' [...] 'Perhaps that's why they don't mix,' said Tilly, 'because everyone else is on the other side of the street?

It appeared that Jesus pulled a much bigger crowd if He provided garibaldis.

It’s the small decisions, the ones that slip themselves into your day unnoticed, the ones that wrap their weight in insignificance. These are the decisions that bury you

You only really need two people to believe in the same thing, to feel as though you just might belong.

Mrs Morton’s knitting needles tutting against each other in disapproval.

The only problem with losing your mind was that you never lost the memories you wanted to lose.

Shams of Tabriz Befuddled believer! If every Ramadan one fasts in the name of God and every Eid one sacrifices a sheep or a goat as an atonement for his sins, if all his life one strives to make pilgrimage to Mecca and five times a day kneels on a prayer rug but at the same time has no room for love in his heart, what is the use of all this trouble? Faith is only a word if there is no love at its center, so flaccid and lifeless, vague and hollow -- not anything you could truly feel. Pity the fool who thinks the boundaries of his mortal mind are the boundaries of God the Almighty. Pity the ignorant who assume they can negotiate and settle debts with God. Do such people think God is a grocer who attempts to weigh our virtues and wrongdoings on two separate scales? Is He a clerk meticulously writing down our sins in His accounting book so as to make us pay Him back someday? Is this their notion of Oneness?

He missed her reassurance. The way she stole his disquiet and diluted it, and how her unconcern would pull him through their day. She never dismissed his worries, she just disentangled them, smoothing down the edges and spreading them out until they became thin and insignificant

I stared at the thick gold cross on the altar. It reflected every one of us: the pious and the ungodly; the opportunist and the devout. Each of us had our reasons for being there, quiet and expectant, and secreted between the pages of a hymnbook. How would God manage to answer us all? “Lamb

We’ve decided she probably isn’t dead after all,” I said. “Well, that’s something.” “And now we need God to find her. You have to remember that God is everywhere, Mrs. Morton.

The only problem was, when your whole existence is something you have to cope with, you look back one day and find that your strategy has become a way of life.

Why does He hate the goats so much?' [...] 'I'm not sure,' I said. 'He only seems to like sheep.

aquariums of people look out into the night.

I looked at the garden, and watched white butterflies dance across dahlias and freesias and geraniums. There was a choir of color, singing for my attention, and it felt as though I were hearing it for the first time.

They assumed I didn't understand the conversation, and it was much easier to let them think that. My mother said I was at an awkward age. I didn't feel especially awkward, so I presumed she meant it was awkward for them.

He walked as the rest of the estate slept, along the avenues and the crescents, through corridors of people drifting out of awareness, and the stillness was an opiate to him, cushioning his mind and unthreading his thoughts.

What do you mean, Jesus?' May Roper pulled the crocheted sea a little further up her legs. 'On the drainpipe. I've seen Him with my own eyes.' 'Have you been in the sun again, Brian?' 'Sheila Dakin thinks it's a sign.' 'A sign she's been at the sherry.

I still hadn’t learned the power of words. How, once they have left your mouth, they have a breath and a life of their own. I had yet to realize that you no longer own them. I hadn’t learned that, once you have let them go, the words can then, in fact, become the owners of you. I

We sat in silence. I knew straight away that Walter Bishop was the kind of person you could sit in silence with. There were very few people like that, I had found. Most grown-ups liked to fill a silence with conversation. Not important, necessary conversation, but a spray of words that served no purpose other than to cover up the quiet.

That goat has been nothing but trouble. And the dratted creature isn't even picturesque. Goats resemble nothing so much as badly dressed sheep." "That's quite unfair," Beatrix said. "Goats have far more character and intelligence than sheep, who are nothing but followers. I've met far too many in London." "Sheep?" Christopher asked blankly. "My sister is speaking figuratively, Captain Phelan," Amelia said. "Well, I have met some actual sheep in London," Beatrix said. "But yes, I was mainly referring to people. They all tell you the same gossip, which is tedious. They adhere to the current fashions and the popular opinions, no matter how silly. And one never improves in their company. One starts falling in line and baaing.

She got to her feet and said we should go and see Eric Lamb instead, and I said okay then, and folded the map up and put it in my pocket. But as we walked across the avenue towards number ten, I looked over at Walter Bishop’s house and I wondered about things. Because I had already decided it was a secret that needed to be unwrapped.

I still hadn’t learned the power of words. How, once they have left your mouth, they have a breath and a life of their own. I had yet to realize that you no longer own them. I hadn’t learned that, once you have let them go, the words can then, in fact, become the owners of you.

Your dad lives in Bournemouth,” I said. “I don’t think they have our local paper in Bournemouth.” She stopped bouncing and looked at me. “You just never know, though, do you?” she said. And I realized she was giving me the words. So I took them and held on for a moment, and then I handed them back. “No,” I said, “you just never know.” And she smiled and went back to her bouncing.

Do you see?” I said. He moved his glasses a bit more, and then all of a sudden he fell back into his shorts. “Jesus Christ!” he said. “Exactly!” said Tilly. Sheila Dakin saw Him at the same time, and said bloody hell and blew Lambert & Butler all over the Son of God. Mr.

I always imagined that when I met Jesus, he’d be quite cheerful,” said Tilly. “I thought he’d wear a long smock and look people in the eye.” “Me too,” I said. We both stared at the drainpipe. I tilted my head to one side. “Perhaps he’s having an off day.

When I returned from having my tea, I brought my mother and father back with me. My mother was easy to persuade, because it was a choice between Jesus and the washing-up, but my father had to be talked into it.

He was ashamed that he thought of Margaret Creasy now and how much he missed her, but it wasn’t so much the plate of food she would carry round, it was the conversation she brought with it. She never said that Elsie had a good innings, or it’s been five years and he should pull himself together, and she never commented on Elsie’s toothbrush, which still sat on the sink in the bathroom, or her coat, which hung at the bottom of the stairs. She just listened.

He told Margaret Creasy everything. He’d even shown her the handful of tablets which were left in the hospital carrier bag. Margaret had told him to drop them off at the pharmacist’s, but how could he, when they would want to know what happened to the rest?

When he’d finished, she had put her hand over his, and said, You did what you thought was right, and he had experienced an absolution so strong, it felt like a chemical reaction.

Now Margaret had disappeared, his secret had disappeared too.

P.C. Green. He doesn’t know any more than the rest of us about where Margaret’s gone. Although I didn’t see him knocking at number eleven, did you, Brian?

How do you know which people they are,” said Tilly, “the people who don’t fit in?

You’ll learn as you get older. You can spot them a mile off. You’ll learn to cross the street.” She pointed to the footstool. “Pass us that ashtray, Brian, my legs are killing me, I can barely move.” “Perhaps that’s why they don’t mix,” said Tilly, “because everyone else is on the other side of the street?

Mrs. Morton pushed the library door, and Tilly and I ducked underneath her arm.

Crazy, sang Patsy Cline.

Would you calm down! Margaret knew nothing, she wasn’t even here.” “But she talked to everyone on the avenue, Sheila. She was the kind of person you couldn’t help opening up to.

She was supposed to have poured it away. She’d told Margaret she’d poured it away. She reached into the tin and felt it reach back to her. One more and then she would.

Patsy knew what it was to suffer. She was a casualty of life, was Patsy. You could hear it in the vibrato.

He had been like this before. Everyone had faltered then. What had happened had reduced them all to a silence, quieting their lives for months afterwards, but it was John who seemed to migrate even further than anyone else. Taking himself to the very edges of his life, and staying there out of harm’s way. “Let’s go and sit in the kitchen,” she said. “Let’s make a drink and talk about it.

Sheila caught Dot’s eye, and then turned back. “And she didn’t say anything about anyone else on the avenue. Nothing anyone had said to her?” “Nothing.” “Nothing about Walter Bishop?

She must have been to see him. His glasses—they’re in her handbag. She was taking them to be mended.

Margaret’s worked it out,” Dorothy said. “She’ll have gone to the police.

We’d know if she’d told the police.” She tried to make her voice steady. “They would have questioned us by now.

We’d know if she’d told the police.” She tried to make her voice steady. “They would have questioned us by now.” “So if she hasn’t gone to the police,” said Dorothy, “then where has she gone? She spoke to everyone, Sheila. She knows all our secrets.” Dorothy was an endless wave of panic now. Her eyes a terrified white. “Oh, for God’s sake,” said Sheila. “We did nothing wrong!” “How can you say that?” John gripped the edges of the table. “How can you say we did nothing wrong. Someone died.

Do something, Margaret used to say. Don’t just count things, do something purposeful instead. Thirteen half bricks. Thirteen. It made him uneasy. Don’t stand there, John, counting your days away.

For God’s sake, Dorothy, will you quit with the bloody theatricals.” Sheila heaved herself from the wall. “It isn’t helping anybody. If the police want to come after us, they’ll come after us. They still can’t prove a thing.

I think that if we’d done something when we had the chance, then we wouldn’t be in the mess we’re in now.” Brian was still staring at him. “I think if you’d listened to me, if you’d spoken up, then everything would be different.

Those boys wouldn’t even have been there if Walter hadn’t stolen the child, so he’d brought everything on himself. It was a chain reaction. They were just being kids at the end of the day, and they meant no harm.

Walter has appeared at one of the upstairs windows. He is shouting about trespassing and calling for the police. The kids are just laughing at him, mimicking his voice and finding words only their parents should know.

who are you angry at?” “The strange man with the long hair. The man in the big house at the top of the road.” “The one who took the baby.” “Yes,” Sheila says, “the one who took the baby. He’s a bad man, Lisa. You’re not to go near him. Ever. Do you hear me?

The man hammers again. His fists sound like bullets. He steps back and yells up at the house, shouting for Walter Bishop to show himself. “You take photographs of my kids, you come out here and you fucking answer to me.

The police arrive.

There’s only one problem with a witch hunt,” he says. “And what might that be?” He starts to walk back towards his house as he answers her. “It doesn’t always catch the witch.

I was right all along.” I stared at the cross. “We were just searching in the wrong houses.” “I don’t think that definitely means God is here, though,” said Tilly. “My mum has loads of recipe books, but she never actually does any cooking.

We sat in silence. I knew straightaway that Walter Bishop was the kind of person you could sit in silence with. There were very few people like that, I had found. Most grown-ups liked to fill a silence with conversation.

Do you think God is in that pigeon?” I said. Walter looked up. “Definitely.” “And in the cedar trees,” I said. Walter smiled again. “I’m sure He is. I agree with your vicar. God is everywhere. Or at least, someone is.” I

The thing is,” I said after a while, “no one around here seems very bothered about God.” The picking had stopped. Walter brushed flecks of paint from underneath his nails. “They won’t be,” he said, “until they need something.

And in that moment I wondered if, sometimes, you only really need two people to believe in the same thing, to feel as though you just might belong.

Sheila Dakin watched Grace and Tilly all the way to the back door of number four. It was a habit, watching children. Even after the fire. Even after they’d all agreed that Walter Bishop had been punished enough and they should leave him well alone, she still watched the kids.

She’d even got as far as standing over the sink with a bottle, but she hadn’t quite got the nerve to go through with it. Funny really, she didn’t believe she had many qualities in life, but nerve was something Sheila Dakin didn’t think she’d ever be short of.

A coping strategy, Margaret Creasy had called it. The only problem was, when your whole existence is something you have to cope with, you look back one day and find that your strategy has become a way of life.

Well, that went well,” said my father. “Did it?” My mother stared at the biscuits. “I’m still not sure how they’ll fit in.” “You’ve got to learn to move with the times,” my father said. “There’s another Indian family moved into Pine Crescent. You might have to start asking yourself whether you’re the one who needs to fit in.

The house always felt more relaxed without Harold inside it. It was as if the walls breathed out, and the floors and the ceilings stretched and yawned, and everybody made themselves more comfortable.

It was after the fire. Dorothy had begun whittling about their home insurance and what would happen if number six mysteriously burned to the ground. It was keeping her awake at night. She couldn’t talk to Harold about it because he found her worrying disagreeable. It shortened his temper and made the whites of his eyes even whiter, and so she had decided to check through the policy herself. To use the initiative that Harold said she was never in possession of. And that’s how she’d found it.

Sometimes all answers do is fill you up with more questions. It’s a long time ago now. Just let it lie.” “But Margaret Creasy’s brought it all back up, hasn’t she? I swear she knew something, Eric. I swear she knew all our secrets.

They have agreed to watch Walter Bishop, each of them in turn. Since the baby went missing, there has been a soundless panic in the street. He has seen it in people’s eyes. In the way they hurry themselves indoors. No one passes the time of day anymore.

Whenever he sees anyone, they are always on their way to somewhere else, and even though they’re all watching Walter, it feels as though it’s everyone else who has become the prisoner. Sheila’s

Not that I’m racist.” Mr. Forbes’s feet rocked backwards and forwards in his sandals—“not at all.” “Not in the slightest,” said Mrs. Forbes. “Not one little bit,” said May Roper. “I’m just patriotic.” He said the word very slowly. “I want to keep Britain great. It’s like an exclusive club, isn’t it? You can’t go letting any old Tom, Dick or Harry in.” “Quite right, Harold,” said Mrs. Forbes. Mr. Kapoor crouched down and began cleaning the number plate.

We are all sheep,” I said. “And sheep need a shepherd to keep them safe. The vicar said so.” “Did he?” Mrs. Morton folded her arms. “So I want to make sure we’ve got one.” “I see.” She leaned back against the draining board. “You do know that this is just the vicar’s opinion. Some people are able to manage quite successfully without a shepherd.” “But it’s important to listen to God.” I sank my spoon into the bowl. “If you don’t take any notice of Him, He runs after you.” “With knives,” said Tilly.

I just don’t want you to be disappointed,” she said eventually. “God isn’t always easy to spot.” “We’ll find Him, and when we do, everyone will be safe and Mrs. Creasy will come home.” I slid a spoonful of Angel Delight into my mouth. “We’ll be local heroes,” said Tilly, and she smiled and licked the tip of her spoon. “I think it might take a little more than God to bring Mrs. Creasy back.

Now the policeman stood in the middle of our kitchen, and we stood around the edges, watching him. He reminded me a bit of the vicar. They both seemed to be able to make people look small and guilty.

He said that Mrs. Creasy is officially a Missing Person.” “Missing from what?” Thinking made my feet slower. “Her life, I suppose.” “How can you be missing from your own life?” I slowed a little more. “Missing from the life you belong in.” Tilly stopped to pull up her socks. “I wonder how you know which one that is.

Monday, Tuesday, Saturday. She could still remember, although she wasn’t taking any chances. They were all circled in the Radio Times. Harold became very irritable if she asked him something more than once. Try to keep it in your head, Dorothy, he told her. When Harold became angry, he could fill a room with his own annoyance.

ran in families, she’d read it somewhere. Her mother ended up the same way, found wandering the streets at six in the morning (postman, nightdress) and putting everything where it didn’t belong (slippers, bread bin). Mad as a box of frogs, Harold had called her. She was around Dorothy’s age when she first started to lose her mind,

No matter how many lists you wrote, and how many circles you made in the Radio Times, and no matter how much you practiced the words over and over again, and tried to fool people, the only memories that didn’t leave were the ones you wished you’d never made.

The only thing is, I saw her. A few days before she disappeared.” Dorothy cleared her throat, even though there was nothing to clear. “She was going into number eleven.

What I don’t understand,” he said, “is how he could stay on the avenue, after everything that happened. He should have moved on.” “You can’t dictate where people live, Harold.” “He doesn’t belong here.” “He’s lived at number eleven all his life.

That night, she had stood where she was standing now, and she had watched it all unfold. She had replayed that scene to herself so many times, perhaps hoping something might change, that she would be able to let it go, but it was a night that had nailed itself to her memory. And she had known even then, even as she watched, that there would be no going back.

We’d only just got to the hotel when she took ill. I said to her, Mother, I said, when you’re under the weather, what you need is your own bed. And so we turned around and came home again.

She’s up there now?” says Harold. “Your mother?” Walter nods.

There are shouts from the house, carried across the avenue, and one fireman’s voice lifts above the rest. There’s someone in there, it says. There’s someone in the house.

Stop overanalyzing things. You know too much thinking makes you confused,” Harold says, watching her. “It was a discarded cigarette, or a spark from the fire. That’s what they’ve settled on.” “But after what was said? After what we all decided?” “A discarded cigarette.” He took the biscuit and broke it in half. “A spark from the fire.” “Do you really believe that?” “Loose lips sink ships.

When you go around the avenue,” she said, “you’ll make sure that you miss out number eleven.” I frowned. “Will I?” “You will,” she said. I

She didn’t tell me where she wanted to go, she only asked if she could borrow the telephone,” I said. “She must have told you something?” Mr. Creasy’s words crawled across my skin and crept inside my nostrils. “She didn’t. She just wanted to ring for a taxi.

Go on then.” Tilly elbowed me with the edge of her sweater. I stared at the doorbell. “I’m working up to it,” I said. Mr. and Mrs. Forbes’s house was the kind of house which looked as though no one was ever at home.

I’m off to the postbox.” He marched down the hall. “I shall be back in thirty minutes. Try not to get yourself in a muddle whilst I’m gone.

Mr. Forbes.” I had to shout to make him hear. He reappeared. He didn’t look like the kind of person who was used to being shouted at. I handed him the envelope. “You’ve forgotten your letter,” I said.

Whilst we were laughing, I looked at Mrs. Forbes, and I looked over at the girl on the mantelpiece, who laughed with us through a corridor of time, and I realized that they were a perfect match after all.

Dorothy saw Margaret Creasy going into number eleven,” said Harold. “She’s just as hysterical about it as John is. She thinks someone’s said something.

What is there to say. The police said the fire was an accident.” “You know Dorothy,” said Harold. “She’ll tell anybody anything, she doesn’t know what she’s saying half of the time.

Brian leaned back in his chair. He could feel the edge of the cigarette machine biting into his shoulder. “She talked to everyone, though, didn’t she? She went round the whole avenue. You don’t know what she found out. She was smart, Mrs. Creasy. Really smart.” Sheila pushed her purse back into her handbag. “I hate to bloody say it, but Brian’s right. Perhaps she knew more than any of us.