Quotes from Margaret Millar

Perfect young men don't get murdered, they don't even get born.

Any good marriage involves a certain amount of play-acting.

Most conversations are simply monologues delivered in the presence of a witness.

Violence is the instinctive response to fear.

Most conversations are simply monologues delivered in the presence of a witness.

Most conversations are simply monologues delivered in the presence of witnesses.

Some people become so expert at reading between the lines they don't read the lines.

Animosity hung between them like a two-edged sword; neither of them could use it without first getting hurt herself.

The rest of us have monsters too, but we must call them by other names, or pretend they don't exist...

The world of maps is nice and flat and simple. It has areas for people and areas for monsters. What a shock it is to discover the world is round and the areas merge and nothing separates the monsters and ourselves; that we are all whirling around in space together and there isn't even a graceful way of falling off.

You have a low opinion of yourself, Helen." "I wasn't born with it." "Where did you get it?" 'The story" she said, "is too long to tell, and too dull to listen to.

The two women looked at each other as if through the periscopes of enemy submarines across a fathomless and crawling sea.

The sidewalks swarmed with people, the night was full of the noises of the living. They struck Miss Clarvoe's ears strangely, like sounds from another planet.

It didn't even seem ironic to him that he should be planning remarks about truth and justice when, in fact, his whole life had been a marathon race, with truth a few jumps ahead of him and justice a few jumps behind. He had never caught up with the one, and the other had never caught up with him.

It was a street of conformity; where identical houses were painted at the same time every spring, a place of rules where gardens, parenthood and the future were planned with equal care, and even if everything went wrong the master plan remained in effect–keep up appearances, clip the hedges, mow the lawn, so that no one will suspect that there's a third mortgage and that Mother's headaches are caused by martinis not migraine.

Non sentì dolore, fu solo sorpresa nel vedere come era bello il sangue. Bello come una collana di rubini che nessun filo avrebbe potuto trattenere.

The smell of moist earth and lilacs hung in the air like wisps of the past and hints of the future.