Emily Hancy > Emily's Quotes

“There are people who think contraception is immoral because the object of copulation is procreation. In a similar way there are people who think the only reason to read a book is to write a book; people should call up books from the dust and the dark and write thousands of words to be sent down to the dust and the dark which can be called up so that other people can send further thousands of words to join them in the dust and the dark. Sometimes a book can be called from the dust and the dark to produce a book which can be bought in shops, and perhaps it is interesting, but the people who buy it and read it because it is interesting are not serious people, if they were serious they would not care about the interest they would be writing thousands of words to consign to the dust and the dark. There are people who think death a fate worse than boredom.”
― Helen DeWitt, The Last Samurai

“I confess that I am often lost in all the dimensions of time, that the past sometimes feels nearer than the present and I often fear the future has already happened.”
― Deborah Levy, Hot Milk

“My problem is that I want to smoke the cigar and for someone else to light it. I want to blow out smoke. Like a volcano. Like a monster. I want to fume. I do not want to be the girl whose job it is to wail in a high-pitched voice at funerals.”
― Deborah Levy, Hot Milk

“I was flesh thirst desire dust blood lips cracking feet blistered knees skinned hips bruised, but I was so happy not to be napping on a sofa under a blanket with an older man by my side and a baby on my lap.”
― Deborah Levy, Hot Milk

“I wanted my whole life so far to slip away with the rolling waves, to begin a different kind of life. But I didn't know what that meant or how to get to it”
― Deborah Levy, Hot Milk

“Sometimes you simply needed someone kind to sit with you while you dealt with things.”
― Gail Honeyman, Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine

“Although it’s good to try new things and to keep an open mind, it’s also extremely important to stay true to who you really are.”
― Gail Honeyman, Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine

“A philosophical question: if a tree falls in a forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound? And if a woman who's wholly alone occasionally talks to a pot plant, is she certifiable? I think that it is perfectly normal to talk to oneself occasionally. It's not as though I'm expecting a reply. I'm fully aware that Polly is a houseplant.”
― Gail Honeyman, Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine

“There are days when I feel so lightly connected to the earth that the threads that tether me to the planet are gossamer thin, spun sugar. A strong gust of wind could dislodge me completely, and I’d lift off and blow away, like one of those seeds in a dandelion clock. The threads tighten slightly from Monday to Friday.”
― Gail Honeyman, Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine

“When you're struggling hard to manage your own emotions, it becomes unbearable to have to witness other people's, to have to try and manage theirs too.”
― Gail Honeyman, Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine

“You can't have too much dog in a book.”
― Gail Honeyman, Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine

“Did men ever look in the mirror, I wondered, and find themselves wanting in deeply fundamental ways? When they opened a newspaper or watched a film, were they presented with nothing but exceptionally handsome young men, and did this make them feel intimidated, inferior, because they were not as young, not as handsome? Did they then read newspaper articles ridiculing those same handsome men if they gained weight or wore something unflattering?”
― Gail Honeyman, Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine

“Whenever I'd been sad or upset before, the relevant people in my life would simply call my social worker and I'd be moved somewhere else. Raymond hadn't phoned anyone or asked an outside agency to intervene. He'd elected to look after me himself. I'd been pondering this, and concluded that there must be some people for whom difficult behavior wasn't a reason to end their relationship with you. If they liked you -- and, I remembered, Raymond and I had agreed that we were pals now -- then, it seemed, they were prepared to maintain contact, even if you were sad, or upset, or behaving in very challenging ways. This was something of a revelation.”
― Gail Honeyman, Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine

“Your voice changes when you’re smiling, it alters the sound somehow.”
― Gail Honeyman, Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine

“There was nothing to tempt me from the choice of desserts, so I opted instead for a coffee, which was bitter and lukewarm. Naturally, I had been about to pour it all over myself but, just in time, had read the warning printed on the paper cup, alerting me to the fact that hot liquids can cause injury. A lucky escape, Eleanor! I said to myself, laughing quietly. I began to suspect that Mr. McDonald was a very foolish man indeed, although, judging from the undiminished queue, a wealthy one.”
― Gail Honeyman, Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine

“Three words, Ignis aurum probat. “Fire tests gold.” The rest of the phrase: “. . . and adversity tests the brave.”
― Gail Honeyman, Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine

“Maybe we'd all be much more effective communicators if we all shut up more.”
― Trent Dalton, Boy Swallows Universe

“Do your time before it does you.”
― Trent Dalton, Boy Swallows Universe

“August is one year older than me but August is one year older than everybody. August is one year older than the universe.”
― Trent Dalton, Boy Swallows Universe

“Every day of your life has been leading up to tomorrow. But of course every day of your life led up to today.”
― Trent Dalton, Boy Swallows Universe

“Adult men. Fucking adult men. Nutters, all of them. Can’t be trusted. Fucking sickos. Freaks. Killers. What was this man’s road to becoming Batman on a side street of inner-city Brisbane? How much good was in him? How much bad? Who was his father? What did his father do? What did his father not do? In what ways did other adult men fuck his life up?”
― Trent Dalton, Boy Swallows Universe

“Slim’s always talking about this, the little movies within the movie of your own life. Life lived in multiple dimensions. Life lived from multiple vantage points. One moment in time – several people meeting at a circular dining table before taking their seats – but a moment with multiple points of view. In these moments time doesn’t just move forward, it can move sideways, expanding to accommodate infinite points of view, and if you add up all these vantage point moments you might have something close to eternity passing sideways within a single moment. Or something like that.”
― Trent Dalton, Boy Swallows Universe

“He stares into my eyes and he tries to understand me and I think he does because he breathes and that's what humans do. We breathe. And we think. But we get mad too. We get so sad and we get so mad.”
― Trent Dalton, Boy Swallows Universe

“If we are to attempt to understand Indigenous philosophy it has to begin with the profound obligation to land.”
― Bruce Pascoe, Dark Emu

“The underestimation of Indigenous achievement was a deliberate tactic of British colonialism. Large structures of North American First Nations people were similarly ignored, or credited to earlier Europeans; and in South Africa, Cecil Rhodes made it illegal for anyone to mention the huge Shona structures found in what was once Rhodesia and is now Zimbabwe.”
― Bruce Pascoe, Dark Emu

“Some say the idea that the world's trajectory is driven by conquest followed by innovation and intensification is satisfying to the Western mind because of our psychological dependence on our imperialist history. But if we give consideration to the idea that change can be generated by the spirit, and through that by political action, the stability of Australian Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander cultures might be more readily explained.”
― Bruce Pascoe, Dark Emu

“European colonists cleared or damaged bush because they did not value it and introduced to more than sixty-five per cent of the continent mono-cultures of non-Australian species they did value... it is our southern Eurasian ancestors... who are actually nomads because we overpopulate... damage land in the process, then wage wars on neighbours to take their land in order to continue to over-populate, and on it goes.”
― Michael Archer

“Any country will have naysayers among its citizenry, be it regarding climate change, birth control, taxation, gun control, or speed limits; however, if the general population persists in hiding from obvious facts of history, we are destined to repeat the selective opinions of the colonists.”
― Bruce Pascoe, Dark Emu

“I do not believe guilt is inherited, but responsibility is, and there is nobody alive today whose existence has not been shaped by colonialist, racist forces. That is a legacy we all live with, and we should all deal with the consequences. If you have benefitted, then soaking yourself in remorse and guilt does not help anyone. What you can do, though, is ask constantly how you have felt those benefits. At whose expense were they gained?”
― Alice Procter, The Whole Picture: The Colonial Story of the Art in Our Museums... and Why We Need to Talk About It

“A reminder to remember: just because the sharpness of the sadness has faded does not mean that it was not, once, terrible. It means only that time and space, creatures of infinite girth and tenderness, have stepped between the two of you, and they are keeping you safe as they were once unable to.”
― Carmen Maria Machado, In the Dream House