Margot Livesey Quotes

She was afraid of numbers the way some people are of spiders. The sight of them made her want to hide. What I loved about them, their clarity, was for her duplicity. Behind an innocent 2,or 5, or 9, she spied a mass of traps and pitfalls.

In The Last of Her Kind, Sigrid Nunez once again creates characters of such depth and situations of such vivid moral complexity that reading these pages is like living them. Only as I closed the book did I sadly realize that Georgette and Ann weren't my neighbors. But happily I can revisit them again, and again, in this beautiful and absorbing novel.

He said everyone had a book, or a writer, that was the key to their life

E had found himself thinking that marriage was not merely an empty ritual. It was a plea for patience on the part of those involved, and for the mercy on the part of bystanders.

You can molest someone without touching them, without even saying anything. Just the inappropriate desire can be harmful.

So often my own emotions were hidden not only from other people but from myself. or perhaps it was the other way round: i was hiding from them.

In The Care and Management of Lies the wonderfully talented Winspear writes irresistibly about the First World War, both in the trenches of France and the fields of England. Her richly complex characters walk right off the page and into our imaginations, as we fight with them, farm with them, cook with them. I devoured this dazzling novel.

As far as I'm concerned it's the other way round. We repeat what we remember. Only forgetfulness sets us free.

In his scintillating new novel, Matt Bondurant explores a crucial period in the history of Virginia and of his family. His gorgeous, precise prose brings to life an amazing cast of characters, including Sherwood Anderson, and the often deadly battles of Prohibition. The Wettest County in the World is a remarkably compelling, highly intelligent, and deeply moving novel.

If you feel yourself to be a full member in the world, you probably won't turn to writing, because other methods of communication, more direct methods, will strike you as being more available.

Running, I soon realized, was the best way to stay ahead of fear.

If someone tells you a lie, they're not telling you the truth, but they are telling you something. It just takes longer to figure out what.

A vivid portrait of a teenage girl and her family in disarray. Meredith is a wonderful narrator, witty, feisty, full of yearning, and the story she tells is as complicated as life itself. This is a richly satisfying novel.

She knew she oughtn't to scold but she couldn't bear such a hyperbole. People couldn't live without food and air or shelter and money. Romantic love was an extra, nice if it came along, but definitely superfluous to the main requirements of existence.