'The Secret Scripture' by Sebastian Barry - Quotes

'The Secret Scripture' by Sebastian Barry

Here is many of the quotes I found interesting or may prove useful in my project story outcome - SPOILER ALERT

'My hand is good and I have a beautiful biro full of blue ink...and I have a bundle of paper that  I found in a store cupboard...and I have a floorboard loosened where I hide these treasures.' p4

'I write out my life on unwanted paper...I start with a clean sheet - with many clean sheets. For dearly I would love now to leave an account, some kind of brittle and honest-minded history of myself, and if God gives me the strength, I will tell this story, and imprison it under the floor-board, and then with joy enough I will go to my own rest under the Roscommon sod.' p5

'The piano had possibly never been worth a great sum, but it had a most beautiful tone for all that, and had never been played before it reached us, in as much as one could surmise that history from the state of the keys, which were pristine.' p12

'There were scenes painted on the side panels, of places which were not Sligo as much, most likely being scenes of an imaginary Italy or the like, but might have been all the same, being of mountains and rivers, with shepherds and shepherdesses standing about with patient sheep.' p12

'My father...was able to play this lovely instrument...there was room for me beside him on the stool...' p13

'Is she a hundred now? She used to play the piano down in the recreation room, really very expert songs, jazz tunes of the twenties and thirties.' p18

Roseannes father shows her the laws of gravity - p19-23

Three young men ask Roseanne's father to bury their dead friend. Fr Gaunt absolves the dead boy. p38-44

The fire at the orphanage - p76-79

''Yes, And you came here I believe from Sligo Mental Hospital.'
'Lunatic Asylum.'
'Yes, yes. An interesting old phrase.'' p81

''I wonder how long you were in Sligo? Do you remember the year you entered there?
'No. Sometime during the war,' I said. That I knew.
'The Second World War, you mean?'
'Yes.'
'I was only a baby then,' he said.' p82

''I have not heard good accounts of the old hospital in SLigo, in that time. I am sure it was a horrendous place. I am quite sure it was.' p83

'My father leapt up, because my mother had inadvertently struck herself on the leg with the shovel...She had opened a little inch of herself and there were a few jewels of dark blood glistering there.' p87

Roseanne's mother purchases an expensive clock, which she then smashes. p88 -90

Roseanne's father dies. p90

Roseanne's fathers wake. p91-92

'I do remember terrible dark things, and loss, and noise, but it is like one of those terrible dark pictures that hang in churches, God knows why, because you cannot see a thing in them.' p106

Finding the guns in the grave - p159

Fr Gaunt's account of Rosanne's father at the top of the tower, regarding hammers and feathers. P187-188

'It was a book called Religio Medici in that very old battered copy I have often as I passed. She said it was her father's favourite book, had she ever told me that, and I said, yes, I thought so. I said I thought she might even have showed me her father's name in it once, yes.' p255

Roseanne pleads to reader - p257

Dr. Grene begins to understand everything - p289-291

Letter to John Kane from Dr. Grene - p292

Letter to Roseanne McNulty from Jack McNulty - p294

Everything becomes clear - p299-301

Letter to Dr. Grene from Seanin Keane Lavelle (John Kane)