Quotes from Sarah Hall

We should not forget that when we limp away afflicted through the spirit, it is not to the factory gates or to the corporate steps we pilgrimage. Instead we go to the sea for its salt. We find shade under the sycamores on the great avenues. Or we go to the rivers where water tells us modestly of its own sickness.

To be comfortable inside one's sadness is not valueless. This too will pass. All things tend towards transience, mutability. It is in such mindful moments, when everything is both held and released, that revelation comes.

There are stories told to him only at this time of year. Fantastic, magical stories, the old Hollier in the woods finding only three red berries, which peel back in the night to reveal gifts of frankincense, gold and myrrh, Christmas in hot deserts, dust-blown countries, the necklace of tears, and the story of the robin.

Those partial to drink were hiding faults and dishonesty. They were sloppy souls, even the ones with pleasant manners and fine noses.

Elliot Rawley was a drinker, Cy's mother had been right. And he was a poor drinker. One that let the demons of the bottle into his head when he tipped it back, demons that went about unloosing all the trouble they could find stashed in the catacombs of his mind. Every tragic thing that had ever happened, every self-doubt, every delusion, freed itself from bondage and revisited him when he drank.

We should not forget that when we limp away afflicted through the spirit, it is not to the factory gates or to the corporate steps we pilgrimage. Instead we go to the sea for its salt. We find shade under the sycamores on the great avenues. Or we go to the rivers where water tells us modestly of its own sickness. I cannot say that I have found peace now. But I have never loved with greater strength than in this place, with its earth the color of verdaccio and its generous fruit.

I have this feeling - of being unplugged and too far from the socket and what remains is a red warning bar.

In truth, she disliked books. She felt a peculiar disquiet when opening the pages. She had felt it since childhood. She did not know why. Something in the act itself, the immersion, the seclusion, was disturbing. Reading was an affirmation of being alone, of being separate, trapped. Books were like oubliettes. Her preference was for company, the tactile world, atoms.

So, tell me. Was it fear that stopped you? Fear of reprisal? Fear of what else they might do to you? Sister, how bad does a situation have to be before a woman will strike out, not in defence, but because something is, as you say, worth fighting for?

The two of you are different now, calmer. There is still sex, occasionally, but is no longer a priority to seduce or be seduced by him.

Personal effects: how irrelevant they are, how sad, how lost, how vagrant, without the force that gives them purpose.

I'm the wood in the fire. I've experienced, altered in nature. I am burnt, damaged, more resilient. A life is a bead of water on the black surface, so frail, so strong, its world incredibly held.

People went through life like well handled jugs, collecting chips and scrapes and stains from wear and tear, from holding and pouring life.

Blue that was unstable and misbehaved when left in skin. Blue like the sea that had taken his father. Blue, for his mother's sake, and for the true colour of every bereaved and bloodless heart when it is collapsing.

Why is a useless question, an unknowable object. But to suspend thought is impossible. The mind is made perfectly of possibilities.

First law of an argument: those who remain reasonable will make others seem unreasonable.

All innocent mechanisms are muddied up with experience. Children become less and less translucent. Layers of guile and suspicion grow. It's the law of paternal disenchantments.

I said, it's strange, each time I see you again. You look different. Altered. You're not like I remember. I have to get used to you.

At night, in the garden, it occurs to you that it might have been your heart that left you as you reached the capital. Your heart might not have travelled well, closed up in its cavity, quivering and gnawing at the bars of your ribcage during the commute. It might be tracking north now, along edgelands, past spoil-heaps and stands of pylons, under motorway passes, back to the higher ground. Back to him.

Let him join the men of the past. Her old lovers were ghosts. None of them had survived; none were missed.

There's blindness to new lovers. They exist in the rare atmosphere of their own colony, trusting by sense and feel, creatures consuming each other, building shelters with their hopes. Other worlds cease. I know I felt something as it began, an understanding, foreboding, ordinance, even. Love is never the oldest story. It grows in the rich darkness.

Life is not straightforward: relationships bifurcate; there is nothing more complicated, more confounding, than love.

The truth of death is a peculiar thing. For when they leave us the beloved are as if they never were. They vanish from this earth and vanish from the air. What remains are moors and mountains, the solid world upon which we find ourselves, and in which we reign. We are the wolves. We are the lions.

The man had added to his body in a way that was brave and timeless and beyond adornment.