That was the trouble with experience; it taught you that most people were capable of anything, so that loyalty was never quite on firm ground -- or, rather, became a matter of pardoning offenses instead of denying their existence. — Shirley Hazzard Copy Share Image
It's nervous work. The state you need to write in is the state that others are paying large sums of money to get rid… — Shirley Hazzard Copy Share
Great literature is like moral leadership; everyone deplores the lack of it, but there is a tendency to prefer it from the safely dead. — Shirley Hazzard Copy Share
When people say of their tragedies, 'I don't often think of it now,' what they mean is it has entered permanently into their thoughts,… — Shirley Hazzard Copy Share
“But that's a way to go on loving--a place, or a person. To miss it. In fact, to go away, to put yourself in… — Shirley Hazzard Copy Share
“I see that you are highly defensive." . . . Caro said, "I withhold my analysis of your own attitude.” — Shirley Hazzard Copy Share
“... although the sufferings of children are the worst, being inextinguishable--children themselves seldom have a proper sense of their own tragedy, discounting and keeping… — Shirley Hazzard Copy Share
“I said, "Some people do know more than others. That contributes to the impression that someone, somewhere,knows the whole thing." [p. 38]” — Shirley Hazzard Copy Share
“Dark had meant Dora, had meant words and events sordid with self. Struggling to the light from Dora's darkness, Caro had acquired conscience and… — Shirley Hazzard Copy Share
Marriage is like democracy - it doesn't really work, but it's all we've been able to come up with. — Shirley Hazzard Copy Share
“Sometimes, as now, her heart twisted and broke under his determination to wound her. At others, she was almost convinced that she felt nothing… — Shirley Hazzard Copy Share
“Chief Coordinator of DALTO – the Department of Aid to the Less technically Oriented, working to induce backwards nations to come forwards.” — Shirley Hazzard Copy Share
“Occasion revived an illusion of discovery, as if one woke in a strange room to wonder afresh not only where but who one was;… — Shirley Hazzard Copy Share
When you realize someone is trying to hurt you, it hurts less." "Unless you love them. — Shirley Hazzard Copy Share
Since the moment of the United Nations' inception, untold energies have been expended by governments not only toward the exclusion of persons of principle… — Shirley Hazzard Copy Share
