Fiona McFarlane > Quotes

“The boat entered the Harbour. The wide, bright city crowded up against the water, but drew back from its very edge; Ruth saw green parklands full of trees with white flocks of parrots burning out of them. The parrots surprised Ruth, she imagined Sydney to be more like England than Fiji.”
― Fiona McFarlane, The Night Guest

“Ruth made a face into the phone. A lovely time! I carried you under my ribs for nine months, she thought. I fed you with my body. I'm God. The phrase that occurred to her was 'son of a bitch'. But then she would be the bitch.”
― Fiona McFarlane, The Night Guest

“Ruth disapproved of this pointless industry. A triple-cleaned house, in her opinion, looked too much as if it had been licked all over by a cat's antiseptic tongue.”
― Fiona McFarlane

“Trap your tongue if it tattles out of turn.”
― Fiona McFarlane, The Night Guest

“Yeah,' Phillip would say, 'I'm sure she's the salt of the earth.'

But didn't salt stop the earth from producing greenery? Didn't crops never again grow in fields sown with salt? So who would want to be the salt of the earth?”
― Fiona McFarlane, The Night Guest

“There's some sense in not going back. That way, you preserve it.”
― Fiona McFarlane, The Night Guest

“Ellen smiled and nodded. 'Just like their father.' She was proud of them; she watched until they were out of sight.

'Isn't it funny to watch children grow?'

Ellen said, 'It's a privilege.'

Ruth scrutinised this possibility. No, she thought, it's melancholy and strange. Children were so temporary.”
― Fiona McFarlane, The Night Guest

“The boat entered the Harbour. The wide, bright city crowded up against the water, but drew back from its very edge; Ruth saw green parklands full of trees with white flocks of parrots bursting out of them. The parrots surprised Ruth, she imagined Sydney to be more like England than Fiji.”
― Fiona McFarlane, Art Appreciation

“Similarly important: the sun doesn’t set in Swedish, it walks down.”
― Fiona McFarlane, The Sun Walks Down

“Once you've left home, you've left,' said Frida. 'You go back with your head held high, or you don't go back.”
― Fiona McFarlane, The Night Guest

“Frida's concern now was her mother's house, which she referred to as 'the house she died in'.”
― Fiona McFarlane, The Night Guest

“Blue is the coolest colour,' said Frida. And blue, when Frida said it, was the coolest colour; it simply was.”
― Fiona McFarlane, The Night Guest

“To this, Mrs Rapp responds, as if quoting somebody, ‘Anything that embodies itself with freedom seeks a rounded shape.”
― Fiona McFarlane, The Sun Walks Down

“Failure is a stooped, pale figure with an open mouth and swollen eyes.”
― Fiona McFarlane, The Sun Walks Down

“Skill gives you power: you can see the future because your skill will make it happen.”
― Fiona McFarlane, The Sun Walks Down

“They call a painting of a winter field Solitude; Karl would call it Winter Field. He wants to do what comes easily to him, which is to be a body encountering the world. He wants sensory experience first, then emotion, then intellect”
― Fiona McFarlane, The Sun Walks Down

“For now he studies what he thinks may be his final true desert sunset. The sky burns and leaps, it gilds and candles—every drenched inch of it, until the sun falls below the ranges. Then the sky darkens. The red returns, stealthy now, with green above and lilac higher still. It deepens into purple. Here’s the strange new cloud, hovering in its own grey light. Then night comes in, black and blue and grey and white, and the moon in its green bag swings heavy over the red nation of the ranges.”
― Fiona McFarlane, The Sun Walks Down

“The world, with its endless distinctions, wasn’t a place you lived inside of, as he’d thought; instead, you walked and ran and bowled upon it, individually, as Henry did. The most important division, Billy came to feel, was that between talent and mediocrity: a boy was either good at cricket, or he wasn’t.”
― Fiona McFarlane, The Sun Walks Down

“Englishwoman”
― Fiona McFarlane, The Sun Walks Down