Sonya Hartnett Quotes & Sayings

Watching, she had felt unusually and keenly alive, alive the way a knife is sharp, so that the humiliation she was enduring was perfect, like the paring of skin from a hard apple. — Sonya Hartnett

Though she'd try to do otherwise, she had never been able to stop cluttering her present with her past. Now somebody she didn't know would pack her treasures into plastic bags and carry them away. A life, at its end, is a pile of cloth and paper, and goods that can be bagged and labelled. None of the best things - the voice and the laugh, the tilt of the head, the things seen and felt and spoken - are allowed to stay behind. — Sonya Hartnett

I looked along the aisle and saw her, and it was as if I saw her for the first time. Everything changed. The ancient featureless interior of me spangled orange, mint, cat-blue. I looked back to the window immediately, my face damp, my breath caught. And worried I would never have the courage to look at her again. — Sonya Hartnett

She is not a musical girl nor, intrinsically, a joyful girl; but the music of the four Swedes shook something awake inside her, and when she heard it she felt airborne and strong. — Sonya Hartnett

I suppose that's what happens when you make other people's lives miserable: life gets miserable back at you. — Sonya Hartnett

Time crawled past on leaden hands and knees. — Sonya Hartnett

I'll always struggle over saying I'm a writer, even if I won the Booker Prize. — Sonya Hartnett

There is nothing that is more beautiful than everything else in the world. — Sonya Hartnett

Strange how love coexists with hate, how they render eachother mute, how the swilling of them together makes a new and softer, sympathetic thing. — Sonya Hartnett

I would always be lonely, but no more alone. — Sonya Hartnett

I am dying: it's a beautiful word. Like the long slow sigh of the cello: dying. But the sound of it is the only beautiful thing about it. — Sonya Hartnett

She had witnessed the world's most beautiful things, and allowed herself to grow old and unlovely. She had felt the heat of a leviathan's roar, and the warmth within a cat's paw. She had conversed with the wind and had wiped soldier's tears. She had made people see, she'd seen herself in the sea. Butterflies had landed on her wrists, she had planted trees. She had loved, and let love go. So she smiled. — Sonya Hartnett

Every atom in me feels composed of lead. This is what dying is: a pull to the ground. — Sonya Hartnett

Life is lived on the inside. What's outside doesn't matter. — Sonya Hartnett

Nothing was easy, and sometimes she failed, and sometimes she thought that the fairy stories were right, that there must indeed be easier ways of living happily ever after; but defeat is a poor ending to any tale, so she kept trying. — Sonya Hartnett

I thought about how stupid it is, that all of us are born destined to desire somebody else, though desire brings with it such disappointment and pain. Humankind's history must be scored bloody with heartbreak. This hankering for affection is a blight upon us. — Sonya Hartnett

Some things about him are the same as ever. He still looks painfully angelic. — Sonya Hartnett

Let me fly, let me see things that are hidden from other eyes. — Sonya Hartnett

There's fire in my fingers. I burn everything I touch. — Sonya Hartnett

Goodbye, fin,' I say. And I wish I was going with him, to some warm sheltered hideaway in the hills, wish that I, too, could lie down beside the dog, feel his unbroken heartbeat, smell the dust in his fur.
There's only hours. I steel my courage.
Surrender. — Sonya Hartnett

A small town has as many eyes as a fly — Sonya Hartnett

I am Gabriel, the messenger, the teller of astonishing truths. — Sonya Hartnett

Affection makes fools. Always, without exception, love digs a channel that's sooner or later flooded by the briny water of despair. — Sonya Hartnett

I fail to see how turning the subject over like compost can do anything except raise its stink. — Sonya Hartnett

It is scary, sometimes, Tomas admitted. But the scary bits are what make you brave. — Sonya Hartnett

I could not let power win ... Other remarkable things had to happen now, a whole string of remarkable things, one after another until the war was won. I was small, and I'd only done one small thing, really: but still it was a mighty thing. Mightier than what power was doing, with its bombs and guns. It was something great. It was enough. — Sonya Hartnett

Justin is twenty-four years old: the world will never be more suited to him than it is now, he will never feel more embraced by life or have greater faith in his right to exist. The earth and the oxygen, the cities and lights, the nights and the beaches seem created for him and for those like him. — Sonya Hartnett

We walked into the forests which encircled the town. I have never liked them, their dark throat, their sullen height, their slump-shouldered gloom. But Evangeline walked steadily into their maw, and I followed her. She wanted to see the swathes which, years ago, the firebug had burned. The furnaced forest was green again, though here and there stood leafless trunks cindered to the core; on the scruffy dirt lay stiff black limbs tangled in morning-glory. Evangeline touched her palm to the charcoal, murmured, 'Poor things. — Sonya Hartnett

I love you, she told him, and he knew that this was true, and she knew that he believed her; but when she said it she saw the chain around his ankle, a length of links that let him wander, but not far. She did not see the chain around her own ankle, because love is blind. — Sonya Hartnett

Andrej thought about it - the notion that the
world was riddled with holes where certain people and animals were meant to be, but weren't. — Sonya Hartnett

Evangeline's obliviousness was a reason to like her rather than not: I liked least those schoolfellows whose awareness of me invariably caused misery. — Sonya Hartnett

In the quest for power, truth is always the first thing left behind. — Sonya Hartnett

I don't understand why one should be one thing or the other. Writing, to me, is writing is writing. It should be a flexible tool. Whatever skills I have, have to work for me; I won't be dictated by them. — Sonya Hartnett

More than this, I believe that the only lastingly important form of writing is writing for children. It is writing that is carried in the reader's heart for a lifetime; it is writing that speaks to the future. — Sonya Hartnett

My life was pouring out my feet and seeping through cracks in the floor; yet still I knelt and did not move, for fear she'd let go my hands. Let me stay, I wanted to beg: Please don't make me go. — Sonya Hartnett

I have spent a great deal of my time defending my work against those who see it as too complicated, too old in approach, too bleak to qualify as children's literature. This has been the bane of my life. — Sonya Hartnett

But what she feels is sometimes hard to express ... Much of what is best in her is warped on the voyage from within to without. — Sonya Hartnett

Love is like moonlight or thunder, or rain on a tin roof in the middle of the night; it is one of those things in life that is truly worth knowing. — Sonya Hartnett

You always underestimated me. You thought you made me harmless when you gave angelhood to me. You forgot that some angels are warriors. Where there's warriors, there's war. I will fight to the death. It's my duty. I am not afraid. — Sonya Hartnett

She despised the sadness that hung inside her like old lace. — Sonya Hartnett

Nonethless it had been a castle, with all that this implies: it had had towering walls and turrets, beams as great as trees, arched doorways wide enough for processions to pass through, ceilings so cavernous that owls nested in them. It had had wings and ramparts and thin windows from which to shoot arrows, internal courtyards, banquet rooms, hidden doors, secret passages. It had had a chapel and, in its bowels, a dungeon. It housed sculptures and paintings, tapestries and cushions, carpets and carvings, its fortressed heart had been clad in glit, silver, glass, gold, damask, ivory, ermine. — Sonya Hartnett

A small town is nothing but eyes and gaping maw; it pecks at its own like a flock of vicious birds. — Sonya Hartnett

If I'm desperate, I'll read anything. But even when I can be choosy, I still have no hard-and-fast rules. I have rules about what I won't read, rather than what I will. No science fiction, no romance, no chick lit. Although even these rules can be broken. — Sonya Hartnett

I do not really write for children: I write only for me and for the few people I hope to please, and I write for the story. — Sonya Hartnett

They thought back on the tales that the soldier had told. They remembered Hazel, the gentle Bethlehem donkey, who used the last of her strength helping those who needed her. They remembered the donkey who stood on the mountain and accepted suffering so that others would not know pain. They remembered the donkey with a hundred names, the sturdy friend of Jack who proved that the most humble being can have the most courageous heart. They gazed at the soldier, who said, 'I fear that John will be sorry he gave the silver donkey to me. The silver donkey belongs to the trustworthy and the brave. — Sonya Hartnett

Just a few more minutes here, I suggest: life hates to leave, worried what it might miss. But Vernon, closer, is shaking his head. This is all. — Sonya Hartnett

I feel it in my bones that if I had a kid, I would not either continue to write or have written the book I have done. So it's just me and the dog. I've always gotten along better with animals than I have with children, anyway. — Sonya Hartnett

It is not asking much
one person
out of all the world. — Sonya Hartnett

I've never really been able to tolerate zoos. — Sonya Hartnett

It's stupid to be that way, so easily hurt; it's better to be like a plank of wood, an emotional mule. It's best not to feel, ... best to have your nerve endings cauterized. — Sonya Hartnett

She doesn't understand that doors, walls, fences, ceilings - they're helpless to keep out what determinedly desires to get in. — Sonya Hartnett

I have thought you could not give everything to your books and also to your children, so for a long time, I thought if I had a child or a family, I'd think, 'How would I support them?' because basically I would stop writing. — Sonya Hartnett

I mostly wrote 'Thursday's Child' to explore the idea of a wild child - a creature who lived much as humans used to live, when our needs were simple and our worlds were small. — Sonya Hartnett

How does one craft happiness out of something as important, as complicated, as unrepeatable and as easily damaged as life? — Sonya Hartnett

Yeah, reflections! The same, but different. Like twins - like blood brothers! And when you need something bad done, like punishment or revenge, you'll just ask me, and I will do it - — Sonya Hartnett

How stupid it is that all of us are born destined to desire somebody else. — Sonya Hartnett

Bad people aren't happy ... Wickedness often wears fancy clothes, dines on rich food, has money, controls armies, rules nations ... but it never seems to know joy. Peace, laughter, trust, ease: these things flee from wickedness like sparrows from the shadow of a hawk. — Sonya Hartnett

You're just a coward, like all those who stand behind the suffering of others. — Sonya Hartnett

On the evening of her eighteenth birthday, Maddy opened her journal and made a list of the jewels and precious stones she'd held. Gold, diamond, emerald; ruby, turquoise, pearl; amber, jade, marble ... There were some she had forgotten. Beneath these she listed what she thought were the most perfect tastes and smells. Coffee, cinnamon, peaches; vanilla, honey, basil; baking bread, fresh bread, toasting bread. — Sonya Hartnett

I want my life to be mystifying, she declared, although she didn't know what she meant. — Sonya Hartnett

Words on the page are never prisoners of the page — Sonya Hartnett

The quest for power is strange in that, once the quest has begun, the destination always seems to shift ever further away. What power one has is never enough; whatever happiness one had turns to bitterness. — Sonya Hartnett

She was the one who wanted to be with him, the one who watched and waited for him, who felt his absence badly. — Sonya Hartnett

I spent three years at RMIT doing a bachelor of arts and media studies. It was a hugely formative experience. As someone who had a private Catholic school upbringing, the world suddenly became a much bigger and better place for me. — Sonya Hartnett

We both knew that what I said was the truth, as well as being a lie. The pure and honest answer was pinging between us, hovering above the weeds. — Sonya Hartnett

How can you know love, and lose it, and go on living without it, and not feel the loss forever?"
"You can't," Feather answered. "You feel the loss forever. But you put it in a corner of yourself, and bit by bit some of your sorrow changes into joy. And that's how you go on living. — Sonya Hartnett

I think there is something in my books that says these are people doing their best under difficult circumstances - sometimes they do wrong things and make mistakes, but who doesn't? And who wants to read about somebody who never does? — Sonya Hartnett

He's used to the freedom of neglect; he likes it. — Sonya Hartnett

You're not supposed to have iron bars around you - no one is supposed to have that. You're supposed to fall down hills and get lonely, and find your own food and get wet when it rains. That's what happens when you're alive. — Sonya Hartnett

No bird in a cage ever speaks. What is there to say? The sky is everywhere, churning above its head, blue and endless, calling out to it. But the caged bird can't answer anything except 'I cannot'. — Sonya Hartnett