Quotes from Sonya Hartnett

The quest for power is strange in that, once the quest has begun, the destination always seems to shift ever further away. What power one has is never enough; whatever happiness one had turns to bitterness.

I could not let power win. . . Other remarkable things had to happen now, a whole string of remarkable things, one after another until the war was won. I was small, and I'd only done one small thing, really: but still it was a mighty thing. Mightier than what power was doing, with its bombs and guns. It was something great. It was enough.

I'm a bit like a stone - content to stay wherever it is put.

My heart lurched and cleanly broke.

How stupid it is that all of us are born destined to desire somebody else.

You're just a coward, like all those who stand behind the suffering of others.

A life, at its end, is a pile of cloth and paper, and goods that can be bagged and labelled. None of the best things - the voice and the laugh, the tilt of the head, the things seen and felt and spoken -are allowed to stay behind.

it] would seem like a daydream, like touching a tiger's face in the dark.

The warmth of outside was shaved from my skin and fell in curls to the floor.

I imagine my parents would very much relish having an angel for a son. Who, after all, would not?

She was the one who wanted to be with him, the one who watched and waited for him, who felt his absence badly.

I've never really been able to tolerate zoos.

I spent three years at RMIT doing a bachelor of arts and media studies. It was a hugely formative experience. As someone who had a private Catholic school upbringing, the world suddenly became a much bigger and better place for me.