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 HartnettShe 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 HartnettA small town is nothing but eyes and gaping maw; it pecks at its own like a flock of vicious birds.
Sonya HartnettHow does one craft happiness out of something as important, as complicated, as unrepeatable and as easily damaged as life?
Sonya HartnettEvery atom in me feels composed of lead. This is what dying is: a pull to the ground.
Sonya HartnettAffection makes fools. Always, without exception, love digs a channel that's sooner or later flooded by the briny water of despair.
Sonya HartnettLove 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 HartnettNothing 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 HartnettYeah, 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 HartnettI suppose that's what happens when you make other people's lives miserable: life gets miserable back at you.
Sonya HartnettMore 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 HartnettI 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 HartnettI want my life to be mystifying," she declared, although she didn't know what she meant.
Sonya HartnettShe doesn't understand that doors, walls, fences, ceilings - they're helpless to keep out what determinedly desires to get in.
Sonya HartnettNo 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 HartnettYou'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