Valerie Martin

“...because it requires the total surrender of my will and finally, ultimately, the wholesale destruction of my ego. That is hard. It…

— Valerie Martin

“Everyone else felt the need to assure me that Mother's death was part of God's plan. Exactly, I wanted to shout after…

— Valerie Martin

“Don't be a chicken, be a cat!" said Cecil. "Be adventurous".”

— Valerie Martin

“Actors are superstitious about beggars, perhaps because we're largely in the same line.”

— Valerie Martin

“But you said you no longer care for the world's opinion," I said to him, "nor will I.”

— Valerie Martin

“Sex can be estranging; it can drive two otherwise compatible people apart.”

— Valerie Martin

“What was the good at having an ideal if everyone is trying to beat everyone else at admitting how impossible it is…

— Valerie Martin

“And it seemed to me that longing was everything, longing is all we are.”

— Valerie Martin

“One feels relieved these days when a play is not like television.”

— Valerie Martin

“...most people never experience such a passion, that I had been incredibly, divinely fortunate to have found, in a world where most…

— Valerie Martin

“I see I have this patience to wait it out, and the truth is no matter how dark I feel I would…

— Valerie Martin

“He put a dark place in me and I can't forgive him for that. But it's a part of me now and…

— Valerie Martin

“Self-inflicted pain has a calming effect; it clears the head, diminishes one's fascination with the ego, and most important, gives one the…

— Valerie Martin

“I've caused you pain, and I'm sorry for it,' she said. 'But perhaps that pain will keep you from forgetting me.”

— Valerie Martin

“The natural beauty of the earth made hard for me to consider the pathetic struggle of humans on the face of it.…

— Valerie Martin

“We long for a life we never had but of which we seem to have a clear memory; a life in wich…

— Valerie Martin

“(A) trip to the attic is an excursion into history, and...all over the world the present unravels beneath the stored detritus of…

— Valerie Martin

“The air was still. It was that hour before evening when the sun sheds great horizontal beams just above the horizon and…

— Valerie Martin

How, given the canine teeth and close-set eyes that declare the human animal to be a predator, had we come up with…

— Valerie Martin

“That's my problem. I'm constantly wary. I can't trust anyone.”

— Valerie Martin

“To fear an inner life, she thought, was the greatest foolishness. It was like fearing a breath of air. Why did people…

— Valerie Martin

“(M)uch as we might imagine we can leave the past behind, it has a nasty way of pressing its hoary old face…

— Valerie Martin