Sonya Hartnett Quotes

• She 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 Hartnett

  Beautiful, Butterfly, Cat

  Sonya Hartnett (2011). “The Ghost's Child”, p.140, ReadHowYouWant.com

  47 Copy quote

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

  Sonya Hartnett

  Wall, Doors, Desire

  37 Copy quote

• More 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 Hartnett

  Children, Believe, Heart

  18 Copy quote

• Let me fly, let me see things that are hidden from other eyes.

  Sonya Hartnett

  Eye, Sonya, Let Me

  Sonya Hartnett (2011). “Of A Boy”, p.145, ReadHowYouWant.com

  8 Copy quote

• You'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

  Lonely, Rain, Fall

  8 Copy quote

• Love 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 Hartnett

  Rain, Night, Love Is

  8 Copy quote

• A small town has as many eyes as a fly

  Sonya Hartnett

  Eye, Towns, Small Town

  Sonya Hartnett (2006). “Surrender”, Candlewick Press (MA)

  7 Copy quote

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

  Sonya Hartnett

  Important, Doe, Crafts

  4 Copy quote

• Strange how love coexists with hate, how they render eachother mute, how the swilling of them together makes a new and softer, sympathetic thing.

  Sonya Hartnett

  Hate, Together, Strange

  7 Copy quote

• No 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 Hartnett

  Blue, Sky, Bird

  10 Copy quote

• 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 Hartnett

  Pain, Disappointment, Stupid

  Sonya Hartnett (2006). “Surrender”, Candlewick Press (MA)

  7 Copy quote

• There's fire in my fingers. I burn everything I touch.

  Sonya Hartnett

  Fire, Fingers

  Sonya Hartnett (2006). “Surrender”, Candlewick Press (MA)

  4 Copy quote

• There is nothing that is more beautiful than everything else in the world.

  Sonya Hartnett

  Beautiful, World

  Sonya Hartnett (2011). “The Ghost's Child”, p.41, ReadHowYouWant.com

  4 Copy quote

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

  Sonya Hartnett

  People, Miserable, Miserable Life

  Sonya Hartnett (2006). “Surrender”, Candlewick Press (MA)

  4 Copy quote

• A small town is nothing but eyes and gaping maw; it pecks at its own like a flock of vicious birds.

  Sonya Hartnett

  Eye, Bird, Towns

  Sonya Hartnett (2006). “Surrender”, Candlewick Press (MA)

  4 Copy quote

• Words on the page are never prisoners of the page

  Sonya Hartnett

  Pages, Prisoner

  6 Copy quote

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

  Sonya Hartnett

  Water, Despair, Fool

  Sonya Hartnett (2006). “Surrender”, Candlewick Press (MA)

  4 Copy quote

• I would always be lonely, but no more alone.

  Sonya Hartnett

  Lonely

  Sonya Hartnett (2006). “Surrender”, Candlewick Press (MA)

  4 Copy quote

• Life is lived on the inside. What's outside doesn't matter.

  Sonya Hartnett

  Matter, Life Is

  Sonya Hartnett (2006). “Surrender”, Candlewick Press (MA)

  4 Copy quote

• 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.

  Sonya Hartnett

  Letting Go, Fear, Moving

  7 Copy quote

• I want my life to be mystifying," she declared, although she didn't know what she meant.

  Sonya Hartnett

  Want, Knows

  Sonya Hartnett (2011). “The Ghost's Child”, p.37, ReadHowYouWant.com

  4 Copy quote

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

  Sonya Hartnett

  Dying, Atoms, Feels

  4 Copy quote

• 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 -

  Sonya Hartnett

  Brother, Revenge, Reflection

  Sonya Hartnett (2006). “Surrender”, Candlewick Press (MA)

  5 Copy quote

• Nothing 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 Hartnett

  Fairy Stories, Trying, Way

  Sonya Hartnett (2011). “The Ghost's Child”, p.128, ReadHowYouWant.com

  4 Copy quote

• 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.

  Sonya Hartnett

  Beautiful, Long, Dying

  4 Copy quote

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