Ann-Marie MacDonald

“By fall, they can read. It happened by osmosis, the way it ought to: after they have spent several months on Daddy's lap, following his spoken words with their eyes and pretending to read, their comes a day when they no longer have to pretend.”

“As time went by, it mattered less and less that in 1969 a rocket went from Florida to the moon and men walked there. Good men. People's dads. Those were only events, scattered in time. Draw them close, rub them between thumb and finger till they look like larvae, soften like silk, distend to knot, to weave. It takes a village to kill a child.”

“Adelaide believes that all children should have enough grown-ups around who love them so that one can tell them to fight, one can tell them not to, and one can tell them not to worry so much.”

“She learns a valuable lesson: if you think you are good, just try doing good. You’ll soon find out how inadequate your little drop of goodness is.”

“Writing. Opening a vein in your wrist with a spoon.”

“Perhaps God dropped them on their heads before they were born.”

“Afterwards, in bed with a book, the spell of television feels remote compared to the journey into the page. To be in a book. To slip into the crease where two pages meet, to live in the place where your eyes alight upon the words to ignite a world of smoke and peril, colour and serene delight. That is a journey no one can end with the change of a channel. Enduring magic.”

“One day, I'll sit down with all my books around me, and just start reading.”

“Lily has never gotton used to being alone. They turn in the water and turn again, then Ambrose lifts her above the surface once more and the creek rains down from her. He lays her gently on her back and her heart breaks. Her tears begin to flow because he is leaving - don't go! He sinks into the water on his back - take me with you! His body turns white again and shimmers into segments until all the pieces disappear. Lily lies face down at right angles to the creek, her head hanging over the edge, arms outstretched towards the spot where she last saw her brother.”

“He thought his heart would kill him, he'd had no clue what it was capable of.”

“What is the good of believing fervently in God if you wind up hating Him?”

“She wonders when it was that she began to despair. All these years she mistook it for pious resignation. Now she sees the difference. Such a fine line between a state of grace and a state of mortal sin. What is the good of believing fervently in God if you wind up hating Him?”

“But I have discovered something about modest people. They're just waiting for the call. Then they are the first over the wall and into the temple.”

“The thief you must fear the most is not the one who steals mere things.”

“An unhappily married woman is necessarily a bad cook.”

“They are so young, they forget that the world is not as in love with them as they are.”

“Lies like that are not a sin, they are a sacrifice.”

“Under a smoky streetlamp I stood face to face with my beloved and pricked my fingers against the diamond studs of her immaculate shirt front. Being tall, she slipped her hands naturally about my hips and pulled me close. And being bold, I put my mouth on hers and this time went inside and told her all the things I’d been longing to. Dark and sweet, the elixir of love is in her mouth. The more I drink, the more I remember all the things we’ve never done. I was a ghost until I touched you. Never swallowed mortal food until I tasted you, never understood the spoken word until I found your tongue. I’ve been a sleep-walker, sad somnambula, hands outstretched to strike the solid thing that could awaken me to life at last. I have only ever stood here under this lamp, against your body, I’ve missed you all my life.”

“It's important to attend funerals. It is important to view the body, they say, and to see it committed to earth or fire because unless you do that, the loved one dies for you again and again.”

“Do you think there's such a thing as a ghost who masquerades as a person? Do you believe that there are people whose bodies are still alive here on earth but whose souls are already in hell?”

“Everything in New York is a photograph. All the things that are supposed to be dirty or rough or unrefined are the most beautiful things. Garbage cans at the ends of alleyways look like they've been up all night talking with each other. Doorways with peeling paint look like the wise lines around an old feller's eyes. I stop and stare but can't stay because men always think I'm selling something. Or worse, giving something away. I wish I could be invisible. Or at least I wish I didn't look like someone they want to look at. They stop being part of the picture, they get up from their chess game and come out of the frame at me, blocking my view.”

“My first advantage: I have everything. My second advantage: this is just another island. My third advantage: I am bigger than it all.”

“I am burning. I have to live, I have to sing, I want to transform myself into a thousand different characters and carry their life with me onto the stage where it's so bright and so dark at the same time, just knowing there are three thousand people out there longing to be swept away by the passion that's about to flood out from scarlet curtains, to this I consecrate my body and my soul, I can give no more than all of myself, I feel my heart is a throbbing engine and my voice is the valve, like a wailing train, it has to sing or blow up, there's too much fuel, too much fire, and what am I to do with this voice if I can't let it out, it's not just singing. I am here as a speck, but I don't feel scared or about to be blown away, I feel like all New York is a warm embrace just waiting to enfold me. I am in love. But not with a person. I am passionately in love with my life.”

“For once, Frances is stripped of irony. She is in the presence of something bigger--namely Herself. Or at least the self implied by her new body. This is how the Blessed Virgin visits us. She inhabits our own flesh and makes love out of it. Nothing is ironic in the moment of first love. And Frances is in love. With her body, and what it is bringing forth.”

“It's his last thrill and his last sting of love, as fresh and painful as youth transplanted over time and an ocean. There is nothing left for him now except to die, but that will take a while because he is a creature of habit, and he has got into the habit of being alive.”

“Having experienced her own disappearance, she is conscious of how important it is for people to be seen, so when she looks at them --even the blind one--she also looks for them, just in case they too have got lost and need finding.”

“You think you're safe. Until you see a picture like that. And then you know you'll always be a slave to the present because the present is more powerful than the past, no matter how long ago the present happened.”

“Jetzt bleibt ihm nur noch er Tod, doch der lässt auf sich warten, weil Mahmoud ein Gewohnheitstier ist und sich daran ewöhnt hat, am Leben zu sein.”

“Doch die Erinnerung spielt uns Streiche. Erinnern iat ein anderes Wort für Erfinden, und nichts ist unzuverlässiger.”

“She rejoins the crowd and watches with her friends, but she feels like an emptied glass - that crestfallen feeling of walking out from a movie theatre in the middle of the day, out from the intimate matinée darkness and the smell of popcorn, which is the smell of heightened colour and sound and story, into the borderless bright of day. Bereft.”

“He would have enough money...for a family that would fill his house with beautiful music and the silence of good books.”

“As for sin. I honestly can't believe God is so bored or so lecherous as to care how close my body and its various parts get to someone else's various parts.”

“To believe and yet to have no hope is to thirst beside a fountain.”

“She's no lady. Her songs are all unbelievably unhappy or lewd. It's called Blues. She sings about sore feet, sexual relations, baked goods, killing your lover, being broke, men called Daddy, women who dress like men, working, praying for rain. Jail and trains. Whiskey and morphine. She tells stories between verses and everyone in the place shouts out how true it all is.”

“Materia had been just six when they docked in Sydney Harbour and her father said, 'Look. This is the New World. Anything is possible here.' She's been too young to realize that he was talking to her brother.”

“She is why purgatory was invented.”

“The world should not be organized to require heroines, and when one is required but fails to appear, we should not judge.”

“Piece by piece living is hard to do. It may even feel like the hardest thing. But it has this going for it: you never need to know what it is you're carrying on your shoulders.”

“There are some stories you can't hear enough. They are the same every time you hear them. But you are not. That's one reliable way of understanding time.”

“Hope is a gift. You can't choose to have it. To believe and yet to have no hope is to thirst beside a fountain.”

“Memory plays tricks. Memory is another word for story, and nothing is more unreliable.”