Quotes from Lily King

Surely it is more civilized to kill one man every few months, hold up his head for all to behold, say his name, and return home for a feast than to slaughter nameless millions.

That night at Gertie's when she asked me if I preferred to be the one who loved slightly more or loved slightly less.

missionaries are now rushing in droves to the Solomons to convert their wicked souls.

moment about two months in, when you think you've finally got a handle on the place. Suddenly it feels within your grasp. It's a delusion—you've only been there eight weeks—and it's followed by the complete despair of ever understanding anything. But at that moment the place feels entirely yours. It's the briefest, purest euphoria.

28 4/? I have done it. Full fathom five it lies. Hiding out here in the 3rd class library for the time being. Strange how a ship was our doing and now our undoing. Let him rage. Let him rage across the oceans. But he will rage alone. I am getting off tomorrow at Aden. Doubling back to Sydney. He is wine and bread and deep in my stomach.

loved that Amy Lowell poem when I first read it, how her lover was like red wine at the beginning and then became bread.

I just find it extraordinary that you think you have something to say.

I felt something that was almost a cool wind against my arms and face, but not a wind, not even a breeze, just an air current that felt different, as if someone ten feet away had opened the lid of an ice box briefly. I reached out to feel it and, as if I had beckoned it, a great gust struck against my hand. All at once the trees shuddered and the grass skirt about the house swished.

We went from French to a sort of hybrid of the Catalan and Castilian that he taught me, and I wonder if that's part of the reason I don't miss him, that everything we ever said to each other was in languages I'm starting to forget.

I can't swim, so you better join me.

I wasn't sure how I would kiss her without lifting her up to my lips. She laughed as if I had said this out loud.

All problems with writing and performing come from fear. Fear of exposure, fear of weakness, fear of lack of talent, fear of looking like

Brain ablaze. Feel like we are unearthing something and finding ourselves, knowing ourselves, stripping odd layers of our upbringing like old paint. Can't write about it fully yet. Don't understand it. I only know that when F leaves and B and I talk I feel like I am saying - and hearing - the first wholly honest words of my life.

For me and my true love will never meet again By the bonnie bonnie banks of Loch Lomond.

If I smiled at her she smiled back, and there were times I half pretended, half believed, she was my wife.

I hate Boston. Nothing but pain in Boston.

Looking at our faces you might have said we were all feverish and half mad, and perhaps you would have been right, but Helen's book made us feel we could rip the stars from the sky and write the world anew.

The waiter brought our food: beef, mash, and thick yellow English wax beans— the type I'd hoped never in my life to see again.

If Jesus was so celebrated when he was born, why are there only stories of him as a baby and a man about to die? Why don't you ever see him as an eight year old? "Or a teenager. With acne, rolling his eyes at everything Mary and Joseph say.

Jag skriver inte för att jag tror att jag har något att säga. Jag skriver för att om jag inte gör det känns allt bara värre [karaktärens ord]

All problems with writing and performing come from fear. Fear of exposure, fear of weakness, fear of lack of talent, fear of looking like a fool for trying, for even thinking you could write in the first place. It's all fear. If we didn't have fear, imagine the creativity in the world. Fear holds us back every step of the way. A lot

Some people are like that. They think anyone's amusement must be at their expense.

I am wasting my life. I am wasting my life. I am wasting my life. It pounds like a heartbeat.

We always sound confident when we're talking about the other person's book.