Quotes from Amy Witting

Innocence may not be all it's cracked up to be.

Children could vanish without trace, but not parents.

You can do what you like to a writer if you don't mind being put in a book.

If women didn't throw themselves at men's heads, the human race would not proceed.

Wealth and beauty-whatever dangers they brought, one never wished them away.

You know, when there's a noise breaking into your sleep and you don't want to wake up, you can dream a long complicated dream that explains the whole noise away.

How easy it all was, to get drunk, to go mad, to vandalise, to commit fraud. Perhaps she had always had criminal tendencies;

Children aged and moved away. Friendships aged and grew better.

The word divorce which stood stark in the future reached back into the past, how far?

Is it possible to cause so much misery to another human being, simply by being oneself? she wondered, feeling a reflection of that misery. No help for it; she must continue to be herself.

People who mean harm have it over the rest of us. They always win. And the only thing to do is to keep away from them.

Moral decisions. She had thought she was done with them. You did your best and then wondered for the rest of your life if you'd done the right thing.

Remembering what a disagreeable experience madness had been, she averted her thoughts with haste.

I'm not worrying about the environment at the moment. I'm having enough trouble with my own.

One needs to be briefed before one talks to writers

Ella hadn't thought before to question her mother's happiness-but how many of her mottoes and devices had been antidotes to despair.

It's amazing though," said Kenneth, "what you can get away with if you give up caring about anything else, like self-respect and pride and all that stuff. Turning yourself into a projectile, so to speak.

This world. This human race. It isn't divided into sexes. Everybody thinks it's divided into sexes but it isn't. It's the givers and the takers. The diners and the dinners.