Margo Lanagan Quotes

There's this assumption that all children have the luxury of a childhood where their innocence is always respected and their main occupation is pleasant play - at the age of 18 or 21, they are then thrust into the real world and shown its uglier side, but not before. ~ Margo Lanagan

You are pure-hearted and lovely, and you have never done a moment's wrong. But you are a living creature, born to make a real life, however it cracks your heart. ~ Margo Lanagan

I'm a very promiscuous reader. My dad's a big science fiction fan, so I'd read 'Dune,' and 'Watership Down' and 'The Lord Of The Rings.' ~ Margo Lanagan

Now you are in the true world, and a great deal more is required of you. Here you must befriend real wolves, and lure real birds down from the sky. Here you must endure real people around you, and we are not uniformly kind; we are damaged and impulsive, each in our own way. It is harder. It is not safe. But it is what you were born to. ~ Margo Lanagan

You are pure-hearted, Branza, and lovely, and you have never done a moment's wrong. But you are a living creature, born to make a real life, however it cracks your heart. However sweet that other place was, it was not real. It was an artifact of your mam's imagination; it was a dream of hers and a desire; you could not have stayed there forever and called yourself alive. Now you are in the true world, and a great deal more is required of you. Here you must befriend real wolves, and lure real birds down from the sky. Here you must endure real people around you, and we are not uniformly kind; we are damaged and impulsive, each in our own way. It is harder. It is not safe. But it is what you were born to. (357) ~ Margo Lanagan

You must watch and wait, Branza, to see what powers you have and don't have. It is not like home. We ruled there. Everything fell into place around what we wanted. Here, we are not the only ones wanting, and we must make room for other people's desires. ~ Margo Lanagan

These words came, quite clear, like small, evil people, across the cobbles to Branza's ankles, where they stood and smirked up at her. ~ Margo Lanagan

I felt freed to please myself, to find my way as I would, in a world that was much vaster than I had realized before, in which I was but one star-gleam, one wavelet, among multitudes. My happiness mattered not a whit more than the next person's - or the next fish's, or the next grass-blade's! - and not a whit less. ~ Margo Lanagan

It is only, she thought, that I thought you brought my bear, and life lit up for a moment. And now it is returned to its usual dimness, which truly I had thought was bright enough for me. ~ Margo Lanagan

How on earth do people imagine we equip children for life if we never show them the sorts of issues other people encounter, if we never talk through with them how they might deal with difficulty or violence or unexpected shocks and surprises? ~ Margo Lanagan

All the expressions that are possible crossed its face, as if its thoughts were wise and limitless one moment, daft and animal the next. And Liga too was pulled towards awe, that this little girl-thing gave off such an air of being entitled, and then towards pity at its abjectness and its frailty and-how soft it was, the surface of it, and so warm! She could not believe the tiny makings of its mouth, or its perfected eyelashes, its ears like uncrumpling buds, all down and tenderness. She was full of the joy of her father being gone-that she could sit like this all night if she wanted, not bothered or harangued, without a remark from any other person, and watch this creature busy with its morsel of life, its scrap of sleep, its breaths light as moth-wings lifting its narrow red chest. ~ Margo Lanagan

My mum was a librarian, and she brought home a lot of interesting books, and we just read and read. I suppose I didn't really think I could be a writer myself until I was working in editing in my 20s and discovered that actually, the books that came in were not very much like published books. ~ Margo Lanagan

You may never be entirely happy; few people are. You may never achieve your heart's desire in this world, for people seldom do. Sit by enough deathbeds, Branza, and you will hear your fill of stories of missed chances, and wrong turnings, and spurned opportunities for love. It is required of you only to be here, not to be happy. ~ Margo Lanagan

Her parents didn't understand that braille meant big clunky books that marked you as different, while audiobooks live invisibly on your phone and text-to-speech gave you the whole damn internet. ~ Scott Westerfeld

The scents of these three, for instance, were so distinct, though they were clearly a family: the dark girl more savory and the golden-haired one more honeylike and they woman sweetest of all- I could not place what flower it was she recalled to me, or what sweetmeat. ~ Margo Lanagan

But heart's desires? My dear, I see by your misery - by this very request you are making - that you know more of true men's and women's hearts than once you did, than your mother's world permitted you to see. Such chipped and cracked and outright broken things they are, are they not? They have their illnesses too, and their impulses. And hearts are not always connected well to minds, and even if they are, minds are not always clear and commonsensical. A heart may desire a thing powerfully indeed, but that heart's desire might be what a person least needs, for her health, for her continuing happiness. ~ Margo Lanagan

How sweet it was to be scolded by such a tiny. ~ Margo Lanagan

I had know it and never known it. ~ Margo Lanagan

And then she fell, from standing, foot-fins together, straight into the wavelets, where she was now seal, and she flung herself down toward the deeper water. ~ Margo Lanagan

But how could they be tormenters if Branza refused to be tormented by them? ~ Margo Lanagan

Nothing in my tale seemed to surprised the woman. The cat, on the other hand, seemed not to find a word of it credible. ~ Margo Lanagan

Home is home, no? - whatever layabouts you live with, whatever tempers and timidities. I was glad to glimpse them, and glad to go to my own bed among them, with the right smell and the right hollows holding me ... ~ Margo Lanagan

He was fine, and foreign, and he did not belong here. I held him close, not crushing, not waking him, letting him sleep, and I suffered. I had never felt such feelings before. I would do anything for him; I would do anything. Anything that was asked of me, that would increase his happiness or health, I would do, and willingly. So I told myself, rocking him, the winter sky white at the window. ~ Margo Lanagan

Seals do not sit about and tell, the way people do, and their lives are not eventful in the way people's are, lines of story combed again and again, in the hope that they will yield more sense with every stroke. ~ Margo Lanagan

With her heels kicking the stone's side high above the ground, Branza was a girl again, though she was full-grown long ago; though the years had accumulated behind her in their great pointless pile. ~ Margo Lanagan

The night is suddenly vaster, colder, clearer.
All the stars zing; the mountains glitter; towns and villages gather like bright mould in the valley-seams and along the coasts.
Every movement in byre and bunny-hole, of leaf against leaf, of germ in soil and stream, turns and gleams and laminates every other, the whole world monstrously fancy, laced tight together, yet slopping over and unraveling in every direction, a grand brilliant wastage of the living an the dying. ~ Margo Lanagan

Life is so long, and too hard, and then it ends so cruel and sudden! ~ Margo Lanagan

As if the world were a pot on the boil and someone had taken its lid off and let the steam pour up wildly. ~ Margo Lanagan

What about the world do you most love?
The fact that I'm not here by myself.
-from interview by Jeff Vandermeer in Clarkesworld magazine ~ Margo Lanagan

How different other families were, the shape of them, the things they presumed, the children that grew up in them. ~ Margo Lanagan

There is something about talking in the night, with the shreds of sleep around your ears, with the silences between one remark and another, the town dark and dreaming beyond your own walls. It draws the truth out of you, straight from its little dark pool down there, where usually you guard it so careful, and wave your hands over it and hum and haw to protect people's feelings, to protect your own ... You can bring out the jaggedest feelings - if you are my wife and know how to state them calm - into the night quiet. They will float there for consideration, harming no one. ~ Margo Lanagan

How could a person be clumsy, just standing? And yet she felt she was, as clumsy as one of those blocks of boxwood being seasoned there, unshaped, indelicate. ~ Margo Lanagan

Witty, brooding, contemplative, explosive: take your pick. ~ Margo Jefferson

And when I read one of those scapegoat pieces about the "viciousness" of drug pushers, and extolling the basic humanitarianism of the nark-squad hero, I'm saddened. Because it isn't Margo and it isn't Max who keeps the traffic moving: it's that same nark-squad hero with a small, brown paper bag that hustlers and pushers alike have to keep filled if they want to stay on the street. ~ Nelson Algren

And then Margo proceeded to lie. "He's actually my cousin," she said. Then she sidled up to me, out her hand aroud my waste so that I could feel each of her fingers taut against my hip bone, and she added, "And my lover. ~ John Green

Because Margo knows the secret of leaving, the secret I have only just now learned: leaving feels good and pure only when you leave something important, something that mattered to you. Pulling life out y the roots. But you can't do that until your life grown roots. ~ John Green

At length the Turk turned to Larry:
'You write, I believe?' he said with complete lack of interest.
Larry's eyes glittered. Mother, seeing the danger signs, rushed in quickly before he could reply.
'Yes, yes' she smiled, 'he writes away, day after day. Always tapping at the typewriter'
'I always feel that I could write superbly if I tried' remarked the Turk.
'Really?' said Mother. 'Yes, well, it's a gift I suppose, like so many things.'
'He swims well' remarked Margo, 'and he goes out terribly far'
'I have no fear' said the Turk modestly. 'I am a superb swimmer, so I have no fear. When I ride the horse, I have no fear, for I ride superbly. I can sail the boat magnificently in the typhoon without fear'
He sipped his tea delicately, regarding our awestruck faces with approval.
'You see' he went on, in case we had missed the point, 'you see, I am not a fearful man. ~ Gerald Durrell

A good hunter keeps her distance from non-coven people," she says with a touch of ice in her voice - doing a dead-on imitation of Mrs. Keyes.
"A good hunter keeps herself chaste," Z adds.
"A good hunter will explode from lack of contact with the opposite sex," Sascha deadpans.

Margo shakes her head in disgust. "A good hunter will cut the crap and do what she's suppose to do. ~ Amanda Marrone

The fundamentalist Zionist lobby controls politics and the media in the US and Australia. ~ Margo Kingston

It doesn't mean anything;
It doesn't change anything,
Except the way I see myself,
And it's not supposed to do that.
I shouldn't feel this way;
I should cry this way,
But I kind of do.
Yeah, I kind of do. ~ Margo T. Rose

There is no state of final fulfillment. Each change opens new doors and ushers in new possibilities. ~ Margo Adair

For better or worse, there is not a situation in one's daily life that does not have feminist subtext, superstructure, implications and one is constantly aware of it, even when you want to rest it stands up and hits you in the face. ~ Margo Jefferson

Oh, bullshit. You didn't come here to make sure I was okay. You came here because you wanted to save poor little Margo from her troubled little self, so that I would be oh-so-thankful to my knight in shining armour ~ John Green

We're not going to break anything. Don't think of it as breaking in to SeaWorld. Think of it as visiting SeaWorld in the middle of the night for free. ~ John Green

Your smile breaks my heart,
And your laughter burns my skin,
And if I had to tell you how I feel,
That's where I'd begin. ~ Margo T. Rose

Love is never easy or guaranteed. Real love is a leap, you know. As you get older, you learn how hard it is, how hard everything is, how we never know if there's ground beneath our feet, or if we'll be hurt or heartbroken. But we leap anyway. You have to take that leap. ~ Margo Rabb

I'm from East Texas, yes. ~ Margo Martindale

There was a girl, once upon a time and in your time. She embraced her life up to a point, then rejected it, and from that rejection have come all her difficulties. ~ Margo Jefferson

Abbott is a good man to fix up messes and make new policy work ... If he gets it right - and Howard will back him with big bucks - Abbott could clean-up his image and restore his appeal as a future leader. ~ Margo Kingston

That night,I lay on my side,staring out the window into the invisible world outside.I kept trying to fall asleep,but then my eyes would dart open,just to check.I couldn't help but hope that Margo Roth Spiegelman would return to my window and drag my tired ass through one more night I'd never forget. ~ John Green

A book collection is a cross between a Rorschach test and This Is Y our Life. It marks your life clearly like rings on a tree. ~ Margo Kaufman

A simple life gives birth to more clarity, inner peace and meaningful relationships. ~ Margo Vader

The human psyche is pathetic," I say–I declaim–to my psychopharmacologist.
"It's what we have, Miss Jefferson," he replies, "it's what we have."
And what I have is what I take to my psychotherapist each week. What I have is what we make together, each supplying the material she knows best.
There are days when I still want to dismantle this constructed self of mine. You did it so badly, I think. You lost so much time. And then I tell myself, so what?
So what?
Go on. ~ Margo Jefferson

The Stark River flowed around the oxbow at Murrayville the way blood flowed through Margo Crane's heart. ~ Bonnie Jo Campbell

Many doctors spend their time looking For the symptoms of illness, Rarely acknowledging that illness is itself a symptom. ~ Margo Adair

I believe in the teachings of Christ. I think that's a good way to set your moral compass. ~ Margo MacDonald

No effort based on love is wasted. ~ Margo Kaufman

When we sat down, Lacey started reading "Song of Myself," and she agreed that none of it sounded like anything and certainly none of it sounded like Margo. We still had no idea what, if anything, Margo was trying to say. She gave the book back to me, and they started talking about prom again. ~ John Green

Depression is so treacherous - it can be so alluring as well as punishing. After all, it's yours and yours alone - no one else can interfere with it. ~ Margo Jefferson

For me, I hope last year was the last when anger, frustration and despair ruled my professional psychology. ~ Margo Kingston

Don't be sorry;
Don't you cry.
It's enough
That you tried.
I love you,
And that won't change.
It's not your fault
Things worked out this way ~ Margo T. Rose

Radar half raised his hand. I dutifully called on him. Yes, I was wondering if it would be possible for you to write a sestina about Margo Roth Spiegelman's breasts? Your six words are: pink, round, firmness, succulent, supple, and pillowy. ~ John Green

Just so we know where we stand, darling."
"I'll tell you just where we stand, darling.I don't need your insulting offer.I'm running my life my way."
"And that's been such a rousing success so far."
"I know what I'm doing.Take that ridiculous smirk off your face."
"I can't.It sticks there every time you say you know what you're doing." But he tucked all the papers back in his briefcase, closed it. "I'll say this,I don't think it's an entirely moronic idea-this place."
"Well,I'll sleep easy now, knowing I have your approval."
"Approval's a little strong.It's more like hopeful resignation." He gave the banister a last wiggle. "But I believe in you,Margo."
Temper died into confusion. "Damn you, Josh.I can't keep up with you."
"Good." He strolled over, flicked a finger down her cheek. "I think you're going to make something out of this shop that'll surprise everyone. Especially you." He leaned down,and when he kissed her this time it was light and friendly. "Got cab fare?"
"Excuse me?"
Grinning, he pulled keys out of his pocket. "Fortunately, I had a spare set to the Jag. Don't work too late, duchess."
She didn't smile until he was well out of sight. ~ Nora Roberts

I stopped at a stop sign at the end of the street, and Margo said, "What the hell? Go go go go go," and I said, "Oh, right," because I had forgotten that I was throwing caution to the wind and everything. ~ John Green

Sometimes rebuffing him was a difficult, but this evening Margo whispered something about the prohibition on sex during the Yom Kippur holiday--as if they were a family of rabbis!--and he gave in and turned on his side. Rejected and repelled, he would fall into his nighttime sleep; in just a few moments she would hear that sound she hated, the heavy breathing that would rise to his nostrils and turn into a saw-like din, and Margo would wonder whether to shake him or let him be. If she awaken him, there was a chance he might start probing all over again; if she let him snore, he would disrupt her thinking, and she would not be able to give herself over to the brilliant idea she had come up with while staring in the mirror. ~ Anat Talshir