Sandra > Sandra's Quotes

“He avoided small talk at the best of times and this, unquestionably, was a million horrific miles from the best of times.”
― Jane Harper, The Dry

“How short was the road from that decision to this moment? The question ached like a bruise.”
― Jane Harper, The Dry

“To look out and see not another soul between you and the horizon could be a strange and disturbing sight.”
― Jane Harper, The Dry

“Nothing like old-fashioned misogyny to make the ignorant turn down good advice.”
― Jane Harper, The Dry

“Fire would barrel along that chain like a bullet train, he knew. It surged and jumped and gorged itself. It raced like an animal. It ravaged with inhuman efficiency.”
― Jane Harper, The Dry

“It was too late for that now. Some things had to be lived with.”
― Jane Harper, The Dry

“...the value of a work of art is set by desire: who wants to own it and how badly”
― Hannah Mary Rothschild, The Improbability of Love

“Annie believed taste and aromas had the power to transport people from the present to other places. Sometimes this was a journey to a different mood, but it was also a form of time travel.”
― Hannah Mary Rothschild, The Improbability of Love

“Food, she decided, was like performance rather than fine art: its power was in its transience and immediacy.”
― Hannah Mary Rothschild, The Improbability of Love

“Eating was an essential, sensual and communal activity requiring nothing more than taste buds and an open mind.”
― Hannah Mary Rothschild, The Improbability of Love

“That was the glorious thing about art: its value was entirely subjective.”
― Hannah Mary Rothschild, The Improbability of Love

“...love is as much an art as painting or living; it requires practice, finesse, determination, humility, energy and delicacy.”
― Hannah Mary Rothschild, The Improbability of Love

“As we all know, a fierce female mind is a passion-killer. Men prefer the breast to the brain.”
― Hannah Mary Rothschild, The Improbability of Love

“...ignorance is a curse lying in wait for the younger generation, for those who forgot to ask.”
― Hannah Mary Rothschild, The Improbability of Love

“Art only survives by striking a chord in someone’s heart and offering solace and reassurance.”
― Hannah Mary Rothschild, The Improbability of Love

“Nothing drives men crazier than the inability to possess.”
― Hannah Mary Rothschild, The Improbability of Love

“There is nothing so desirable as the unobtainable.”
― Hannah Mary Rothschild, The Improbability of Love

“The difference between a good and a great work of art was down to an almost indistinguishable series of largely unidentifiable factors: the élan of a brushstroke; the juxtaposition of colours; the collisions in a composition and an accidental stroke or two. Like a rolling stone gathering moss, a painting gathered history, comment and appreciation, all adding to its value.”
― Hannah Mary Rothschild, The Improbability of Love

“Wealth did not, he realised, guarantee happiness, but it did offer a measure of security and opportunity.”
― Hannah Mary Rothschild, The Improbability of Love

“Called the Never-Never, the Maluka loved to say, because they who have lived in it and loved it, Never-Never voluntarily leave it.”
― Jeannie Gunn, We of the Never Never

“This is the Land of Plenty of Time; Plenty of Time and Wait a While.”
― Jeannie Gunn, We of the Never Never

“For is it not the knowledge that someone thinks well of us that makes us feel at ease in that person’s company?”
― Jeannie Gunn, We of the Never Never

“In life we generally find in our fellow-men just what we seek; and the Maluka, seeking only the good, found only the good, and drew much of it into his own sympathetic, sunny nature. He demanded the best and was given the best, and while with him, men found they were better men than at other times.”
― Jeannie Gunn, We of the Never Never

“There is no isolation so weird in its feeling of cut-offness as that of a night camp in the heart of the bush.”
― Jeannie Gunn, We of the Never Never

“It is men like the Fizzer who, “keeping the roads open”, lay the foundation-stones of great cities; and yet when cities creep into the Never-Never along the Fizzer’s mail route, in all probability they will be called after Members of Parliament and the Prime Ministers of that day, grandsons, perhaps, of the men who forgot to keep the old well in repair, while our Fizzer and the mail-man who perished will be forgotten; for townsfolk are apt to forget the beginnings of things.”
― Jeannie Gunn, We of the Never Never

“...but forgetting that life is life wherever it may be lived.”
― Jeannie Gunn, We of the Never Never

“...for although necessity may be the mother of invention, she more often brings thankful hearts into this world.”
― Jeannie Gunn, We of the Never Never

“...when the heart is happy it forgets to grow old.”
― Jeannie Gunn, We of the Never Never

“Hoe your own row the best you can. Lend others a hand with theirs. Let God see to the rest.”
― Jeannie Gunn, We of the Never Never

“And the worst thing, the unsurvivable thing, is understanding that there exist people who know in their flesh the truth of all this. They know it because they created it, created hell with their bare hands and then just kept on living, kept on as though they never stopped the world.”
― Emily Maguire, An Isolated Incident