Orphan Train Quotes

Niamh's isolation and depression

"... no one to guide me onto a boat or pay for my passage. I am a burden to society, and nobody's responsibility."

Molly's armour

"... she wears her goth persona like armour" "rituals once freighted with meaning... now make her impatient"

Molly's depression - relating her experiences to Vivian's

"... to display an empathy you don't really feel. And so it is that you learn to pass, if you're lucky, to look like everyone else, even though you're broken inside."

Vivian's depression - being moved to a new foster home

"... to display empathy I do not feel. I am learning to pass, to look like everyone else, even though I feel broken inside."

Vivian's memory

"Aspects of Vivian's memory are triggered with each box they open."

Molly's fate

"For the first time since she can remember, her life is beginning to make sense. What up until this moment has felt like a random, disconnected series of unhappy events she now views as necessary steps in a journey toward... self acceptance and perspective."

Niamh's isolation and strangeness

"How strange, I think - that I am in a place my parents have never been and will never see. How strange that I am here and they are gone."

Ghosts

"I believe in ghosts, they're the ones who haunt us, the ones who have left us behind."

Vivian giving up her baby

"I can't go through this again. I can't give myself to someone so completely only to lose them. I don't want, ever again, to experience the loss of someone I love beyond reason."

Dorothy's childhood

"I leave any last shred of my childhood on the rough planks of the living room floor."

Molly's view on orphans

"I think if you don't have parents who look after you, then you can call yourself whatever you want."

Purpose of going through boxes

"I think what she really wanted was to see what was in those boxes one last time. And remember those parts of her life."

Claddagh ties

"It was my Gram's... she gave it to me in Ireland, before we came over. It's the only thing I have left." "It's the only thing you've got to remind you of your people now, isn't it?"

Molly's realisation

"It's as if she's been walking on a wire, trying to keep her balance, and now, for the first time, she is on solid ground."

Jane Eyre

"It's her favourite novel, Jane Eyre, and she wanted to own it, to have it in her possession." "Jane's kind of an outlaw. She's passionate and determined and always says exactly what she thinks"

Dutchy and Niamh's promise

"Let's make a promise to find each other."

Vivian's fate

"My entire life has felt like chance. Random moments of loss and connection. This is the first one that feels, instead, like fate."

Vivian's coping

"Ninety-one years is a long time to live - there's a lot of history in those boxes."

Finding Dutchy

"Oh my God - Dutchy it's you."

Molly coping

"She learned that she can control her emotions by thinking of her chest cavity as an enormous box with a chain lock. She opens that box and stuffs in any stray, unmanageable feelings, any wayward sadness and regret and clamps it shut."

Finding peace

"She wants to help Vivian find some kind of peace, elusive and fleeting as it may be."

Molly and Vivian stories

"She would never have heard Vivian's story, with all its resonance to her own."

Dutchy's view on the orphan train

"Stripped of a family and identity."

Claddagh symbolism

"The hands clasped together symbolise friendship. The heart is love and the crown stands for loyalty" "... trace a never ending path leading away from home and circling back."

Molly's charms

"The raven protects against black magic. The bear inspires courage. The fish signifies a refusal to recognise other people's magic"

Turtle symbolism

"Turtles mean something very specific in my culture. They're exposed and hidden at the same time. They're a symbol of strength and perseverance."

Molly + Vivian Relationship

"Vivian's like a mother figure to you"

Vivian and Molly unbiological family

"Vivian's like a mother figure to you"

Niamh's unbiological family

"We become an odd little family, the boy, and Carmine and I in our three seat abode."

Vivian portaging

"almost everything I possess in the world behind me"

Molly description

"neat freak" "liked the distance her persona created" "tough and weird was preferable to pathetic and vulnerable" "most of the kids seemed to go out of their way to avoid her" "She didn't fit into any of [their cliques]"

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