Isobelle Carmody Quotes & Sayings

Cracks especially. You have to be careful of the cracks.. Sometimes they are disguised as something else. A doorway, or a smile or even a winking eye. And if you fall through them, you never know were you will end up. — Isobelle Carmody

If fantasy is done well, it has both serious content in a literary fashion and is a really good read as well - and children and young adults won't suffer anything else. — Isobelle Carmody

Some foolish people must have a tragedy, for they cannot believe in happy endings — Isobelle Carmody

The thing is, fairytales were once a very gritty way for people to dialogue about aspects of life. — Isobelle Carmody

I wrote my first full book when I was fourteen, and that was 'Obernewtyn.' It was also the first book I had published. It was accepted by the first publisher I sent it to, and it was short listed for Children's Book of the Year in the older readers category in Australia. — Isobelle Carmody

The mirror had broken into millions of pieces and the wind blew them all over the world. If a person got a speck in their eye, the person would only see the ugly side of things from then on, but if a piece got in their blood and it reached their heart, it would freeze into a solid block of ice and they couldn't feel anything anymore — Isobelle Carmody

The best fantasy does not offer an answer to our lives, it is an offering that acknowledges enough of the truth to resonate and add to the understanding about the human condition. — Isobelle Carmody

Did you bite someone?' Jack enquired.
'I laughed at people, which is much worse. My laughter has sharper teeth than any dog. It tears people apart who wish to be taken seriously, but I could not help myself. There were many complaints and finally a man in a brown suit came and looked at me. He was very important and not used to being laughed at, but I could see he had dandruff on his collar, and there was a spot of his breakfast egg on his lapel. You should have seen him - so puffed up and proud of himself. I couldn't help but laugh and that made people see him as I did, and so they laughed too. All of a sudden everyone realised that for all his status in official matters, he was a man who lived alone and was loveless. — Isobelle Carmody

It is interesting that the worst retellings of traditional fairy tales are those that heavy-handedly take the step of making a moral point. — Isobelle Carmody

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. — Isobelle Carmody

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 — Isobelle Carmody

Once upon a time, if you wanted to talk about the notion of child abandonment, of a mother not being a good mother, that's built into the mother who sends the babes into the woods, and they use the bits of bread or stones to come home again. — Isobelle Carmody

The best books arise from some ultimate question in the author. — Isobelle Carmody

Isn't that what writing is about? The constant attempt to understand the world? — Isobelle Carmody

Life has always been a matter of putting one's feet down carefully — Isobelle Carmody

Sometimes I am afraid for people like you who have to know things. Your kind will dig and hunt and worry at it until one day you will find what is hidden, waiting for you. — Isobelle Carmody

Impatience is not the least of your faults, Malik, it is a kind of greed and someday it may see you undone. — Isobelle Carmody

Alice's eyes fell to the bundle she carried. But she only said, 'People from the other side of the mirror want to know who and where and why and what is the name. They have to know everything. They are always gnawing at things and at one another.'
'It's good to want to know things,' Jack said defensively.
'It is? What happens when there is no answer?' she sneered. 'Wanting-to-know is always biting at you. Biting and itching. You want to much. Go back to your own world. You don't belong here — Isobelle Carmody

Sometimes success demands a certain refined insanity. — Isobelle Carmody

I believe excellent fantasy reflects us all, and yes, it can use those myths that underpin societies, our subconscious yearnings and longings, and perhaps our barren spirituality. — Isobelle Carmody

Speak less and say more — Isobelle Carmody

First and foremost, I'm an oral storyteller - I'll make a poetic choice over a grammatical choice every single time. — Isobelle Carmody

Never trust a mirror,' his mother had told him. 'They never tell the truth unless you make them. — Isobelle Carmody

Don't you understand that wanting does not belong here, because that is what wounds, and there is never an end to it. — Isobelle Carmody

Mama, don't take him. We need him,' Jack whispered. 'Please. He will not forget you if you let him stay with us. He will love you for ever and every time he laughs, he will remember how you once laughed ... — Isobelle Carmody

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 — Isobelle Carmody

I thought of the transcendent beauty of the first panel, and tried to understand how the ability to create such wondrous beauty could have become so perverted, so destructive. With power, my mind whispered. — Isobelle Carmody

The short story form allows evocation, suggestion, implication. Its potency often lies in what it does not say. — Isobelle Carmody

It would be a simple matter if lives were lived by hindsight,' Rushton said. 'There is much we would not begin, if we could see how it would end. — Isobelle Carmody

If human lives be,
for their very brevity, sweet,
then beast lives are sweeter still ... — Isobelle Carmody

At last, I came to the Lost Dog's Home which my map told me marked teh turnoff to Shelly Beach.
You could hear some of the dogs barking, calling out for their owners to come and get them away from there ...
I hated going to those places because I always wanted to take all the dogs home or let them go free, even though I knew most of them would go straight out and be hit by a car or starve to death. I sometimes wished I could have a place where I could take those dogs and let them live. The Phantom had this sanctuary called Eden and all the animals there lived together, even tigers and baby deer, because they'd never learned it's kill or be killed. The maneaters ate fish out of the lagoon and the island was protected by the Bandar poison pygmies and by the piranha fish in the lagoon. I would have liked there to be such a place for pets who had been dumped of abandoned. They could feed the owners to the piranha. — Isobelle Carmody

Laughter is a powerful weapon for it carries the light. To laugh is to defy the darkness. — Isobelle Carmody

The first audience that you have when writing a book is you. — Isobelle Carmody

You are born with the yearning arrow, my Glynna, though you are not yet fully aware of it. It is not a happy thing to possess, for nothing on earth - no goal, no person how ever beloved - will answer it. It points to the sky and to the heavens and the stars and when it cannot reach them, it must fall back to pierce your heart. — Isobelle Carmody

What's gratifying is that it's my books that are being read and reread until they're battered over the years. I love that. — Isobelle Carmody

I do see, in some younger writers, elements and things that I have used - and I am very touched and flattered because I am part of a tapestry that is being absorbed by authors. — Isobelle Carmody

The deepest wounds aren't the ones we get from other people hurting us. They are the wounds we give ourselves when we hurt other people. — Isobelle Carmody

Long fiction is wonderful and you can lose yourself in it as a reader and as a writer, but short stories don't allow the same kind of immersion. Often the best stories hold you back and make you witness them. This may be one of the reasons some people reject the form. That and the fact that they are harder work to read. A story will not let you get comfortable and settle in. It is like a stool that is so small that you must always be aware of sitting. — Isobelle Carmody

My heart belongs to you,' He promised.
'Would you have loved me when I was a girl?'
'I have always loved you. Even before I met you I loved the idea of you. — Isobelle Carmody

What's your name?'
'Names!' she sniffed, rolling her eyes. 'People always want names, don't they? They're mad about naming. I will let the moment name me.' she eyed Jack expectantly.
'You want me to name you?' he asked.
'People from the other side are very dull,' she sighed.
'Give yourself a name for me. I don't need naming for myself, do I? — Isobelle Carmody

Many truths which are not believed are called lies,' the Laughing Beast said. 'Mirrors do not themselves lie unless they have been enchanted. Ordinary mirrors merely reflect what is revealed to them. People lie and mirrors reflect people. If your mother feared mirrors in your land, she feared herself. — Isobelle Carmody

That was what happened to laughter when you caged it. It became unbearably sad. It was worse than crying. — Isobelle Carmody

It is better to pursue a hopeless hope than to give in to black despair. — Isobelle Carmody

Only humans think death is evil. But it is nature. Evil exist's only in life. There is much good and evil alloted to each life. — Isobelle Carmody

I can just hear Aaron saying that it's slight compared with the big topics they usually tackle."
"Slight!" I almost shouted. "Why is it that people always think bad, dark things are more real and important than things that lift you up and make you feel life is worth living? You ought to tell them that in a song. — Isobelle Carmody

If she is afraid of mirrors she is afraid of herself. — Isobelle Carmody

I am very fortunate in that I have spent pretty much my whole life being a writer, and before I was a writer, I was a storyteller. — Isobelle Carmody

True sorrows do not pass like clouds or inclement weather ... Sorrows are absorbed over time, and you reshape yourself around them. How you absorb them makes you what you are for good or ill. I think the only true and right way is to take our sorrows into us bravely and wholly, knowing they will hurt, and accepting that sometimes pain is unavoidable. It is when grief is suppressed or hidden that it does harm — 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. — Isobelle Carmody

She's forgetting,' Ellen said to Jack, plumping herself down on a chair. 'All of her life is leaking out of her. Soon there will be nothing left. — Isobelle Carmody

I have never forgotten the almost mystical power over an audience a storyteller has, when the story is deep and links you. — Isobelle Carmody

It came to me then, like a chilly draught from an unseen gap, that I had always known in my deepest heart that it would be like this, a slipping away from a life full of people I had come to love, in a place I had helped to shape, in a land I had helped to free. — Isobelle Carmody

The worst predijudice is unknowing. We think we treat others as equals, but, in our deepest heart, we regard ourselves as superior. In part, this is because we are, in ways, powerful. But that does not make the race of humans (funanga) better than that of the dog or equine. — Isobelle Carmody

Maruman does not loll. — Isobelle Carmody

The very shape of our dreams defines us. We learn about the world and try out our thoughts and visions in them. Our dreams goad us and drive us and summon and sustain us and when we are old they comfort us. Magic is a kind of dream, and love is a dream, and hope is a dream. Without our dreams, there is no sweetness, no purpose to life. — Isobelle Carmody

Here's the thing. I hate kids. Always have.
I mean, I know the job of the race, biologically speaking, is to achieve immortality through reproduction, but the idea of getting impregnated and blowing up like a balloon as I serve as a carrier and service unit for this other person who will eventually burst out of me in the most terrifying way imaginable, then carry on using me one way or another for the rest of my life, is right up there with throwing myself off the top of a twenty-story building. If I have a biological clock, it is digital and does not tick. — Isobelle Carmody

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. — Isobelle Carmody

It is not foolish to ask a question of the world. We of Vlar-rei make songs or our questions. It is only foolish to want answers. — Isobelle Carmody

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

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. — Isobelle Carmody

They feared one another because they knew what they were capable of doing, and maybe in some cases, had done. The more weapons they created, the more frightened they would have been of the weapons they imagined their enemies had created, and so they strove to make worse weapons, to discourage any attack. I don't think any of them imagined anyone would dare to use them and yet what other end could there be to it all?' 'They — Isobelle Carmody

All through university years, I used to come up to Melbourne, go to Pizza Napoli with my friends and then to a movie. — Isobelle Carmody

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. — Isobelle Carmody

If you look at the body of any writers' work, you can figure out the questions that animate them. I think that is what real writers do. They don't tell people how to live or what to think. They write in order to try to answer their own deepest questions. — Isobelle Carmody

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. — Isobelle Carmody

Strength without compassion is soulless and cruel. Weakness, too, has its place, for it brings understanding. — Isobelle Carmody

I don't believe in fairies floating around, and I don't believe in telepathy, but there are things I want to say that just simple real-life stories don't let me say. — Isobelle Carmody

Whole time. Partway through the night he began to keep so ostentatiously — Isobelle Carmody