Janette Turner Hospital > Quotes

“The futility of action does not absolve one from the failure to act. -”
― Janette Turner Hospital , The Last Magician

“Nothing, however, is certain except uncertainty and there is always interference in the lines of flight.”
― Janette Turner Hospital, North of Nowhere, South of Loss

“What comes before and after we know not.”
― Janette Turner Hospital, North of Nowhere, South of Loss

“Le seul risque est de ne pas en prendre”
― Janette Turner Hospital, North of Nowhere, South of Loss

“Her days come and go like birds, her dreams like days.”
― Janette Turner Hospital, North of Nowhere, South of Loss

“FLIGHT OF FOLLY. WOMAN TRAPPED IN CAGE OF OPEN DOORS.”
― Janette Turner Hospital, North of Nowhere, South of Loss

“That is where homeland is. In that shifting space, kinfolk know one another by secret signs; and wherever kinfolk meet, homeland soil coalesces about their feet in the mysterious way that coral cays, like seabirds pausing in flight, anchor themselves to the Barrier Reef.”
― Janette Turner Hospital, North of Nowhere, South of Loss

“What's yer name?" he demanded.
The girl searched for a name. "Stella," she said at last, because she had the stars at her fingertips and she had been studying maps of the sky and she was someone else now, not the girl she had been in Ballarat where her grandfather had pointed out the planets and named them, and not the girl she had been in Melbourne, and she certainly didn't want to be the girl she was at her Brisbane school. She was reinventing herself.
"No it's not," the boy said. "You're new. Where're ya from?"
"I'm Stella," she said stubbornly. "I'm from the moon. You wanna look?”
― Janette Turner Hospital, North of Nowhere, South of Loss

“They whisper: no little man from Customs and Immigration stands at the doors of memory or imagination demanding to see your passport. No arts bureaucrat or ComLit satrap can stamp OzLit, CanLit, FemLit, MigrantLit, or Displaced Person on your visa.”
― Janette Turner Hospital, North of Nowhere, South of Loss

“I like to hope that there are more good people in the world than evil people' she said. 'I would like to hope that too', the old man said, 'but I don't. There are good people, however, and our duty in life is to be one of them, even though we will generally be outnumbered.”
― Janette Turner Hospital, The Claimant

“From outer darkness to outer darkness, a feathered meteor through a moment of light...”
― Janette Turner Hospital, North of Nowhere, South of Loss

“Cap notices the first red and gold leaves of the fall eddying on the surface of the lake. Do they make a pattern? Perhaps. She could impose form: a ragged spiral; a cluster disrupted by ducks; a single reed caught between reeds. She could impose symbolic meaning. She believes this may be life's primary requirement: to impose a tolerable meaning on randomness.”
― Janette Turner Hospital, The Claimant

“That is where homeland is. In that shifting space, kinfold know one another by secret signs; and wherever kinfolk meet, homeland soil coalesces about their feet in the mysterious way that coral cays, like seabirds pausing in flight, anchor themselves to the Barrier Reef.”
― Janette Turner Hospital, North of Nowhere, South of Loss