Quotes from Josephine Hart

We are here to add to the sum of human goodness. To prove the thing exists.

Damaged people are dangerous. They know they can survive.

All damaged people are dangerous. Survival makes them so.' 'Why?' 'Because they have no pity. They know what others can survive, as they did.

Memory is never pure. And recollection is always coloured by the life lived since

They say that childhood forms us, that those early influences are the key to everything. Is the peace of the soul so easily won? Simply the inevitable result of a happy childhood. What makes childhood happy? Parental harmony? Good health? Security? Might not a happy childhood be the worst possible preparation for life? Like leading a lamb to the slaughter.

Those who do not have imaginary conversations do not love.

We learn from tragedy. Slowly.

There was a full moon in the starless sky. I thought how rarely I had noticed such things. Some deep failure of the soul perhaps. An inherited emptiness. A nothingness passed from generation to generation. A flaw in the psyche, discovered only by those who suffer by it.

That is my story, simply told. Please do not ask again. I have told you in order to issue a warning. I have been damaged. Damaged people are dangerous. They know they can survive.

When we mourn those who die young – those who have been robbed of time – we weep for lost joys. We weep for opportunities and pleasure we ourselves have never known. We feel sure that somehow that young body would have known the yearning delight for which we searched in vain all our lives. We believe that the untried soul, trapped in its young prison, might have flown free and known the joy that we still seek.

Lucky people should hide. Pray the days of wrath do not visit their home.

Our sanity depends essentially on a narrowness of vision--the ability to select the elements vital to survival, while ignoring the great truths.

What really makes us is beyond grasping. It's way beyond knowing. We give in to love... because it gives us some sense of what is unknowable. Nothing else matters, not at the end.

Was my sin basically one of untruthfulness? Or, more likely, one of cowardice? But the liar knows the truth. The coward knows his fear and runs away.

The miraculous intimacy we shared did not have the time to generate into resentful emotional bondage

She was the split-second experience that changes everything.; the car smash; the letter we shouldn't have opened; the lump in the breast or groin; the blinding flash. On my well-ordered stage-set the lights were up, and maybe at last I was waiting in the wings.

Children are the great gamble. From the moment they are born, our helplessness increases. Instead of being ours to mould and shape after our best knowledge and endeavour, they are themselves. From their birth they are the centre of our lives, and the dangerous edge of existence.

Men and women find all sorts of ways to be together, all sorts of ways. Yours was high and dangerous. Most of us stay on the lower paths.

The passion that transforms life, and art, did not seem to be mine. But in all essentials, my life was a good performance.

For why trap what is already trapped? It is only in flight that we know the freedom of the bird

The day then trapped me in its iron bars of phone calls and meetings, letters to read, letters to write, decisions to make, promises to break.

Very odd, old age. Always knew it would happen, if I was lucky. I just didn't expect it so soon.

I want to know what's wrong with loving someone for life? Even when they're dead? What exactly is wrong with that? Why should I put him away, out of my mind? Like he's out of fashion. Does no one love for ever any more? Is no one built for the long road?

The majority do not desire the world—knowing on some primitive level that it disappoints. They are quite content to let the blind few pursue their path to wisdom. And to watch those trapped by genius forced to sacrifice themselves, and those trapped by talent to emulate them. Much better to be in the audience, watching the actors find the surprise ending.