Quotes from Sonya Hartnett

She is not a musical girl nor, intrinsically, a joyful girl; but the music of the four Swedes shook something awake inside her, and when she heard it she felt airborne and strong.

Evangeline's obliviousness was a reason to like her rather than not: I liked least those schoolfellows whose awareness of me invariably caused misery.

I am Gabriel, the messenger, the teller of astonishing truths.

Goodbye, fin,' I say. And I wish I was going with him, to some warm sheltered hideaway in the hills, wish that I, too, could lie down beside the dog, feel his unbroken heartbeat, smell the dust in his fur. There's only hours. I steel my courage. Surrender.

A small town is nothing but eyes and gaping maw; it pecks at its own like a flock of vicious birds.

God loves old dogs.

I sensed that he was dead, but wasn't sure if death was forever. It seemed best to stay nearby, in case the chance came to make everything changed.

He is dirt under fingernails and the stick of sap on skin... I am saintly, poetic; I am demise, otherworld.

In the quest for power, truth is always the first thing left behind.

Just a few more minutes here, I suggest: life hates to leave, worried what it might miss. But Vernon, closer, is shaking his head. This is all.

I love you," she told him, and he knew that this was true, and she knew that he believed her; but when she said it she saw the chain around his ankle, a length of links that let him wander, but not far. She did not see the chain around her own ankle, because love is blind.

I fail to see how turning the subject over like compost can do anything except raise its stink.

A small town has as many eyes as a fly

He's used to the freedom of neglect; he likes it.

I want my life to be mystifying' she declared, although she didn't know what she meant

Tutto cospirava contro di lui, tutto puntava alla sua sconfitta. Premette il corpo contro le sbarre, stanco fino al midollo. Stanco di nascondersi e vivere di sotterfugi, stanco di essere preso in giro dalla fortuna. Stanco di preoccuparsi, di prendere decisioni, di essere responsabile, di essere costretto a resistere. Stanco di vedersi sottrarre le cose. Stanco della tristezza che aveva nel cuore.

It is not asking much one person out of all the world.

But what she feels is sometimes hard to express...Much of what is best in her is warped on the voyage from within to without.

Bad people aren't happy. . . Wickedness often wears fancy clothes, dines on rich food, has money, controls armies, rules nations. . . but it never seems to know joy. Peace, laughter, trust, ease: these things flee from wickedness like sparrows from the shadow of a hawk.

A tethered thing is a dead thing...

I felt dry as if someone had skinned me. I was not the bones and meat, but the cast-aside skin. The heat had hollowed me.

That is what dying is: a pull to the ground. I am thin as a shadow, yet clotted as dough, my blood as thickset as mud.

She was his ever-present shadow. Hers was the face he saw on waking: she was the one who wanted to be with him, the one who watched and waited for him, who felt his absence badly.

What I know is that billions of people have walked this earth, and billions more will. The vast majority are born without talent and with an ordinariness that is astonishing. Then there's a select few who are given a mighty gift, whose talent is breathtaking. And in between there's people like us, who can do something to a slightly impressive degree. We're not the largest group, but we are the most wretched, because we can recognize greatness, but we will never touch it.