Quotes from Isobelle Carmody

Short stories do not say this happened and this happened and this happened. They are a microcosm and a magnification rather than a linear progression.

I heard you laughing,' Jack said. He wanted to say something about the quality of that terrible laughter, but he did not know how to begin. So he said, ' I've never heard anyone laugh like you do.

Oh yes. It's open all right, but not many people come in here to look at me now so there's no point in selling tickets. No one is interested in a man who professes to be a monster. They'll give me notice very soon. I started out being a great attraction, but people soon understood that what fascinated them about me was no more than the reflection of their own deformities. All I do is how them what is inside themselves,' He added mournfully.

We were passing the city cemetery. Adjoining it was a field occupied only by a couple of amiable and moth-eaten horses, and a grey tower. I asked what the tower was for. My grandfather answered that it held a giant's arm.

Do not say only to what a child can feel, for do you not recall how powerfully you experienced emotion as a child?"..."We do not cast childhood off like the skin of a snake. It remains within us, even as we grow. It is the heart and core of us

There are so many sad and ugly things in the world that I feel I must try to counterbalance them with whatever beauty I can produce. Setting a pretty table in a world of pain might seem callous, given that people are starving and living in dreadful disease and poverty. But in trying to create islands of beauty and peace, I feel I am honoring the dreams of the world.

Fools blow air out of their mouths as often as their bums, and either way it causes a stink and comes to nothing.

If we know one thing from experience it is that oppression does not crush rebellion, no matter how it tries,' I told him. 'It breeds it anew with every tyrannical act.

My favourite mentor brother told me that there were three kinds of people: followers, leaders and scouts. Scouts are capeable of leadership, but they could not tolerate the responsibility of it. Disinclined to take orders either, they invariably flouted authority and fomented strife. This is why scouts, he said wryly, were the first to be sent into danger, It was half hoped they would be killed. 'I fear you are destined to trouble us as a scout, little sister' he said

Speak less and say more

I shivered at the notion of a Misfit with empathy or coercion, driven by defective will. Thank Lud, Ariel had never realised his abiities or used them consciously. How much more harm might he have done? Chapter 9, page 97

I have learned that happiness is like the sun. It must be enjoyed when it comes and while it shines.

If I have learned one thing in the time I have spent here, is that sooner or later everything is linked to everything else. -Domick. Chapter 19, p210

I would never exhange safety for freedom, regardless or the danger. I had the right to risk my life as I chose. -Chapter 21, page 247

Sometimes it is hard to know what the truth is. And sometimes truth is pain. Easier to hide the truth and make a secret of it, than to face it. -Chapter 22, page 254

No," Merret said, casting me a serious considering look. "no, it is never you alone, yet think how often you have been the pebble that begins the avalanche.

Have you not wondered at the coincidences and chances in your life? Have you not felt that there were great forces at work about you – forces for good and for great ill? Have you not felt the purpose in your life burning?

I was suddenly stricken with a feeling of black despair, hopelessly muddled by what was right and wrong. Nothing seemed clear cut; we did evil in the name of good, and good was done in the name of evil. [Chapter 27, page 306]

Pretend that you are clever, wise, brave, calm, courageous. Pretend, and some of the time you can forget it is pretence.

If I have learned one thing in the time I have spent here, is that sooner or later everything is linked to everything else. [ Chapter 19, p210]

whole time. Partway through the night he began to keep so ostentatiously

It would be a little late in deciding now that we would not live our lives by the whimsical wisdoms of futuretellers, don't you think? [Chapter 33, page 386]

You cannot defeat the sea - it is too great and too uncaring. You can only surrender to its power...All things that exist live, though maybe they do not measure life as we do. [Chapter 35, page 305]

Had not the jutting bones of the world survived a thousand aeons of human life? Could anything I or any human do really matter in the face of that? [Chapter 35, page 510]