Eleanor Catton Quotes & Sayings

No one can protect a soul against themselves - against their own hand, you know! — Eleanor Catton

But Lauderback was not the kind of man for whom a sartorial imperfection could lessen the impact of his bearing - in fact, the very opposite was true: the damp suit only made the man look finer. — Eleanor Catton

'The Luminaries' is such a different book to 'The Rehearsal.' There are only a couple of things that link the two books: there's a certain preoccupation with looking at relationships from the outside, being shut out of human intimacy; and then there's patterning. — Eleanor Catton

You want Mr. Staines to love you very much, don't you, Miss Wetherell?'
Anna seemed offended by his implication. 'He does love me.'
'That wasn't my question.'
She squinted at him. 'Everyone wants to be loved.'
'That's very true,' Devlin said, sadly. 'We all want to be loved - and need to be loved, I think. Without love, we cannot be ourselves. — Eleanor Catton

A woman fallen has no future; a man risen has no past. — Eleanor Catton

It is always a starkly private moment when a governor first apprehends his subject as a man - perhaps not as an equal, but at least as a being, irreducible, possessed of frailties, enthusiasms, a real past, and an uncertain future. — Eleanor Catton

But shame, for Mannering, was an emotion that attended only failure; he could not be made to feel compunction if he had not, in his own estimation, failed. — Eleanor Catton

I think that, in principle, a workshop is such a beautiful idea - an environment in which writers who are collectively apprenticed to the craft of writing can come together in order to collectively improve. — Eleanor Catton

His own mortality held only an intellectual fascination for him, a dry luster; and, having no religion, he did not believe in ghosts. — Eleanor Catton

I would make up silver lies studded with shards of perfect detail like mosaic splinters, sharp and everlasting, the kind of tiny faultless detail that would make them all sure that what I said was true. I would have alibis. I would bring in other people and teach them a story, and rehearse it so carefully and for so long that soon they'd all start to believe that what they said was actually true. — Eleanor Catton

You're of a mind with Mr. Staines.'
'Am I?'
'Yes,' Anna said. 'That is precisely the sort of thing that he would say.'
'Your Mr. Staines is quite the philosopher, Miss Wetherell.'
'Why, Reverend,' Anna said, smiling suddenly, 'I believe you've just paid yourself a compliment. — Eleanor Catton

The saxophone does not speak that language. The saxophone speaks the language of the underground, the jaded melancholy of the half-light - grimy and sexy and sweaty and hard. It is the language of orphans and bastards and whores. — Eleanor Catton

Reason is no match for desire: when desire is purely and powerfully felt, it becomes a kind of reason of its own. — Eleanor Catton

Let's just enjoy it for ourselves. Dawn is such a private hour, don't you think? Such a solitary hour. One always hears that said of midnight, but I think of midnight as remarkably companionable - everyone together, sleeping in the dark.'
'I am afraid I am interrupting your solitude,' Anna said.
'No, no,' the boy said. 'Oh, no. Solitude is best enjoyed in company.' He grinned at her, quickly, and Anna smiled back. 'Especially the company of one other soul,' he added, turning back to the sea. 'It's dreadful to feel alone and really be alone. But I love to enjoy the feeling when I'm not. — Eleanor Catton

How would I overlook the name Moody? Why, that's like overlooking Hanover, or - or Plantagenet.'
The woman laughed. 'I would hardly compare Adrian Moody to a royal line! — Eleanor Catton

Virginity is a myth, by the way. There is no on-off switch, no point of return. It's just a first experience, like any other. Everything surrounding it, all the lights and curtains and special effects- that's just part of the myth. — Eleanor Catton

Man ought never to trust another man's evaluation of a third man's disposition. For human temperament was a volatile compound of perception and circumstance; — Eleanor Catton

What I feel is that true creation happens when you're making something out of nothing - like it's divine, you know. Creation is a completely divine concept. — Eleanor Catton

But time and distance is nothing in the face of true affinity ... — Eleanor Catton

It was a strange thing to behold a whore in mourning - rather like seeing a dandified cleric, or a child with a moustache; it gave one a sense of confusion. — Eleanor Catton

My second novel, 'The Luminaries,' is set in the New Zealand gold rushes of the 1860s, though it's not really a historical novel in the conventional sense. So far, I've been describing it as 'an astrological murder mystery.' — Eleanor Catton

But could he endure it, that other men knew her in a way that he, Staines, did not? He did not know. — Eleanor Catton

As the conjugal act cannot be spoken of aloud for reasons both sacred and profane, the ritual of the pipe was, for the pair of them, a holy ritual that was unspeakable and mortified, just as it was ecstatic and divine: its sacredness lay in its very profanity, and its profanity, in its sacred form. — Eleanor Catton

He wondered what assumptions she was forming, what picture was emerging from this scant constellation of his life. — Eleanor Catton

The nice thing about the zodiac as a system is it is quite comprehensive as a range of impulses and psychological states it can speak about. — Eleanor Catton

I require of all my students ... that they are downy and pubescent, pimpled with sullen mistrust, and boiling away with private fury and ardor and uncertainty and gloom. I require that they wait in the corridor for ten minutes at least before each lesson, tenderly nursing their injustices, picking miserably at their own unworthiness as one might finger a scab or caress a scar. If I am to teach your daughter, you darling hopeless and inadequate mother, she must be moody and bewildered and awkward and dissatisfied and wrong. When she realizes that he body is a secret, a dark and yawning secret of which she becomes more and more ashamed, come back to me. You must understand me on this point. I cannot teach children. — Eleanor Catton

I vote far-left. I am frequently angered by corporate greed and think education ought to be free and teachers paid well. — Eleanor Catton

I can feel the public side of my life and the private side of my life sort of drifting away from one another. — Eleanor Catton

If a man wants any shot at making his fortune then he'll never sign his name to any piece of paper that he didn't write himself. P 553 — Eleanor Catton

I don't see that my age has anything to do with what is between the covers of my book, any more than the fact that I am right-handed. It's a fact of my biography, but it's uninteresting. — Eleanor Catton

For Gascoigne and Clinch were not so dissimilar in temperament, and even in their differences, showed a harmony of sorts - with Gascoigne as the upper octave, the clearer, brighter sound, and Clinch as the bass-note, thrumming. — Eleanor Catton

The zodiac is a system a person can play with and see meaning in. — Eleanor Catton

Luck only happens once and it's always an accident when it does. — Eleanor Catton

He presented himself in the manner of a discreet and quick-minded butler, and as a consequence was often drawn into the confidence of the least voluble of men, or invited to broker relations between people he had only lately met. He had, in short, an appearance that betrayed very little about his own character, and an appearance that others were immediately inclined to trust. — Eleanor Catton

What an unrequited love it is, this thirst! But is it love, when it is unrequited? — Eleanor Catton

Putting one in mind, perpetually, of an untended icebox in which an uncured joint has spoiled. — Eleanor Catton

At high school they expect answers, but at university all you're supposed to do is dispute the wording of the question. — Eleanor Catton

Well,' said Staines, frowning slightly, 'that's very difficult to say - which to value higher. Honesty or loyalty. From a certain point of view one might say that honesty is a kind of loyalty - loyalty to the truth ... though one would hardly call loyalty a kind of honesty! I suppose that when it came down to it - if I had to choose between being dishonest but loyal, or being disloyal but honest - I'd rather stand by my men, or by my country, or by my family, than by truth. So I suppose I'd say loyalty ... I myself. But in others ... in the case of others, I feel quite differently. I'd much prefer an honest friend to a friend who was merely loyal to me; and I'd much rather be loyal to an honest friend than to a sycophant. Let's say that my answer is conditional; in myself, I value loyalty; on others, honesty — Eleanor Catton

I see disappointment as something small and aggregate rather than something unified or great. With a little effort, every failure can be turned into something good. — Eleanor Catton

The books that really made an impact on me were not set in New Zealand. Some were New Zealand novels, but the New Zealandness of them was not what carried me or excited me. — Eleanor Catton

Many of us fear women. WE are afraid of woman as woman, longing for her as virgin or as madonna or as whore. It is not by becoming a woman that we will address this fear. It is by becoming the things she touches, the spaces she moves through, the fractured gestures that are not signs in themselves but are nonetheless hers and thus a part of her. If we discover the weight of these small things, then she will appear not as an idea but as a life and a totality. — Eleanor Catton

His nature was not a suspicious one, and he did not take pleasure, as some men did, in believing himself to have been betrayed. — Eleanor Catton

They sat in silence for a moment. Then Mannering said, gruffly, 'What you're telling me is that this isn't the whole picture.
'Luck is never the whole picture' said Staines. — Eleanor Catton

In improvising, you've got your scale; you've got the notes that are going to sound good with other notes, the intervals that are going to sound good. But you've also got all the chromatic possibilities, the possibilities of sounding dissident, of being unexpected. — Eleanor Catton

You give a dog a bad name, and that dog is bad for life. — Eleanor Catton

You miss the old country. Of course you do. But you don't go back. — Eleanor Catton

Her carriage bespoke an exquisite misery, a wretchedness so perfect and so absolute that it manifested as dignity, as calm. More than a dark horse, she was darkness itself, the cloak of it. — Eleanor Catton

I believe really strongly in imitation, actually: I think it's the first place you need to go to if you're going to be able to understand how something works. True mimicry is actually quite difficult. — Eleanor Catton

He had always been irreproachable in his conduct, and as a consequence, his capacity for empathy was small. — Eleanor Catton

How very lovely she was, with the muted light of the afternoon falling over her shoulder like a veil! How gorgeously the shadow filled that notch beneath her lip! — Eleanor Catton

I am a New Zealander, but I don't want to swallow New Zealand identity in one gulp. — Eleanor Catton

Months of silence had made him very bitter, and his bitterness had ripened, in an instant, into spite. — Eleanor Catton

I think that success is dangerous because it can make people feel too comfortable; it can lull them into thinking that they have achieved mastery and don't need to be curious anymore. But failure can also do that: it can function as a kind of inverse achievement, where you feel you've achieved the opposite of mastery, and you give up. Right — Eleanor Catton

He formed convictions as other men formed dependencies - a belief for him was as a thirst - and he fed his own convictions with all the erotic fervor of the willingly confirmed. This rapture extended to his self-regard. Whenever the subterranean waters of his mind were disturbed, he plunged inward, and struggled downward - kicking strongly, purposefully, as if he wished to touch the mineral depths of his own dark fantasies; as if he wished to drown. — Eleanor Catton

But what you need to understand, my darling," she whispers, "is that this little taste your daughter has had is a taste of what could be. She's swallowed it. It's inside her now. — Eleanor Catton

Miss Wetherell lived by the will of the dragon, after all, a drug that played steward to an imbecile king, and she would guard that throne with jealous eyes forever. — Eleanor Catton

He spoke as a disappointed man, for whom perfection existed only as something remembered - and then regretted, because it was lost. — Eleanor Catton

The room seemed suddenly to clarify, as when a chance scatter of stars resolves into a constellation before the eye. — Eleanor Catton

From the very beginning, I had an ambition for 'The Luminaries': a direction - but not a real idea. — Eleanor Catton

Has he made an avowal of his love?'
'No,' Anna said. 'He doesn't need to. I know it, just the same. — Eleanor Catton

As might be expected, he was given to bouts of very purposeful ignorance, and tended to pass over the harsher truths of human nature in favor of those that could be romanticized by whimsy and imagination. — Eleanor Catton

When I was writing 'The Luminaries,' I read a lot of crime novels because I wanted to figure out which ones made me go, 'Ah! I didn't know that was coming!' — Eleanor Catton

In my experience people are rarely contented to end up where they started. — Eleanor Catton

I loved 'Middlemarch,' I think that's one of my favourite books of all time, actually. — Eleanor Catton

A trip to the picture framer's, with a selection of prints, is the most joyous outing I can imagine. I've spent more money on framing than on anything else I own. — Eleanor Catton

His vanity required constant stimulation, and constant proof that the ongoing creation of his selfhood was a project that he himself controlled. — Eleanor Catton

Often I listen to songs on repeat for days and days at a time. There's something hypnotic or meditative, and it mirrors the way that I am putting the sentence together, going back over the same phrases again and again. — Eleanor Catton

Finally Victoria sighs and says, Julia, I'd be happy if you told me just enough of the facts so I could imagine it. So I could recreate it for myself. So I could imagine that I was really there. — Eleanor Catton

I like to think that you receive my words with pleasure but am content with the more probable event that you do not read them at all. In either case writing is a comfort to me and gives shape to my days. — Eleanor Catton

I think that's what fiction writing is actually all about. It's about trying to solve problems in creative ways. — Eleanor Catton

Money doesn't transform a person - the only thing that can is love. — Eleanor Catton

Pritchard was lonely, and like most lonely souls, he saw happy couples everywhere. — Eleanor Catton

The proper way to understand any social system was to view it from above. — Eleanor Catton

Long historical books get written by women, but not contemporary experiments, which still seems to be a very male-dominated field. — Eleanor Catton

Would you call it lucky to stay, or lucky to go?"
"I'd call it lucky to choose", said Moody. — Eleanor Catton

WHEN A RESTLESS spirit is commissioned, under influence, to solve a riddle for another man, his energies are, at first, readily and faithfully applied. — Eleanor Catton

It was the duty of every thinking man to expose himself to a great range of characters, situations, and points of view. He had read extensively, and although he favored the Romantics above all others, and never tired of discussing the properties of the sublime, he was by no means a strict disciple of that school, or indeed, of any school at all. — Eleanor Catton

I think that writers of literary fiction would do well to read more books for children. — Eleanor Catton

Moody had left all discerning faculties in the pitching belly of the barque Godspeed. He wanted only shelter, and solitude. — Eleanor Catton

Diligence deserves to be rewarded." "In what proportion? And in what currency? These are empty words. — Eleanor Catton

I often feel intellectually frustrated when I'm in a position where I'm not moving forward; when I'm not enquiring about something. — Eleanor Catton

Remember that anybody who is clever enough to set you free is clever enough to enslave you. — Eleanor Catton

There are so many ways of posturing that people associate with being a writer. They imagine you wearing a beret and drinking only red wine and being full of yourself, and so, for a long time, the way I felt about writing was too private. I felt it too important and didn't want to be teased about it. So I lied about it. — Eleanor Catton

Unconfirmed suspicion tends, over time, to become willful, fallacious, and prey to the vicissitudes of mood - it acquires all the qualities of common superstition - and — Eleanor Catton

like a disaffected swan - — Eleanor Catton

The frontier I think makes brothers of us all — Eleanor Catton

In my experience, and that of a lot of other women writers, all of the questions coming at them from interviewers tend to be about how lucky they are to be where they are - about luck and identity and how the idea struck them. — Eleanor Catton

The challenge that I set for myself was to see whether or not plot and structure could coexist, and why it was that we had to always privilege one above the other. — Eleanor Catton

Astrology's a moving system that depends on where you're looking at it from on Earth. My horoscope here in London would be completely different to down in New Zealand. — Eleanor Catton

My father is an expatriate American; he fell in love with New Zealand in his youth and never went home. — Eleanor Catton

I think that you have to keep the reader front and centre if you're going to write something that people are going to love and be entertained by. — Eleanor Catton

In his life so far he had known only the kind of doubt that is calculated and secure. He had known only suspicion, cynicism, probability - never the fearful unraveling that comes when one ceases to trust in one's own trusting power; never the dread panic that follows this unraveling; never the dull void that follows last of all. — Eleanor Catton

The storm was borne on greenish winds. It began as a coppery taste in the back of one's mouth, a metallic ache that amplified as the clouds darkened and advanced, and when it struck, it was with the flat hand of a senseless fury. — Eleanor Catton

We throw at female artists this expectation that their work has to speak to the female experience. And if it doesn't, you're letting the side down. Throwing this stumbling block in the way of female artists is counterintuitive. — Eleanor Catton

Such a dividend could only be wasted, for it was borne from waste, and to waste it would return. — Eleanor Catton

His mind was of a most phlegmatic sort, cool in its private applications, quick, and excessively rational; he possessed a fault common to those of high intelligence, however, which was that he tended to regard the gift of his intellect as a license of a kind, by whose rarefied authority he was protected, in all circumstances, from ever behaving ill. He considered his moral obligations to be of an altogether different class than those of lesser men, and so rarely felt shame or compunction, except in very general terms. — Eleanor Catton

Moody had no small genius for the art of diplomacy. As a child he had known instinctively that it was always better to tell a partial truth with a willing aspect than to tell a perfect truth in a defensive way. The appearance of cooperation was worth a great deal, if only because it forced a reciprocity, fair met with fair. — Eleanor Catton

Sometimes I'll read something on Twitter, and I'll just be in the darkest of moods for the rest of the day or the rest of the week sometimes. — Eleanor Catton

Worked like a Trojan. That's one thing I'll say for the Chinese: when it comes to pure old-fashioned work, you can't fault them. — Eleanor Catton

The illusion of depth in a character is created simply by withholding information from an audience. A character will seem complex and intriguing only if we don't know the reasons why. — Eleanor Catton