Sonya Hartnett

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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 -

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

I would always be lonely, but no more alone.

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

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.