Did you ever notice how easy it is to forgive a person any number of faults for one endearing characteristic, for a certain style, or some commitment to life - while someone with many good qualities is insupportable for a single defect if it happens to be a boring one?
Shirley HazzardThe sweetness that all longed for night and day. Some tragedy might be idly guessed at-loss or illness. She had the luminosity of those about to die.
Shirley HazzardMarriage is like democracy - it doesn't really work, but it's all we've been able to come up with.
Shirley HazzardIt's nervous work. The state you need to write in is the state that others are paying large sums of money to get rid of.
Shirley HazzardThe United Nations emerged as a temple of official good intentions, a place where governments might - without abating their transgressions - go to church; a place made remote - by agreed untruth and procedural complexity, and by tedium itself - from the risk of intense public involvement.
Shirley Hazzard