Isobelle Carmody Quotes

The deepest wounds aren't the ones we get from other people hurting us. They are the wounds we give ourselves when we hurt other people.

Life has always been a matter of putting one's feet down carefully

Here's the thing. I hate kids. Always have. I mean, I know the job of the race, biologically speaking, is to achieve immortality through reproduction, but the idea of getting impregnated and blowing up like a balloon as I serve as a carrier and service unit for this other person who will eventually burst out of me in the most terrifying way imaginable, then carry on using me one way or another for the rest of my life, is right up there with throwing myself off the top of a twenty-story building. If I have a biological clock, it is digital and does not tick.

Laughter is a powerful weapon for it carries the light. To laugh is to defy the darkness.

The worst predijudice is unknowing. We think we treat others as equals, but, in our deepest heart, we regard ourselves as superior. In part, this is because we are, in ways, powerful. But that does not make the race of humans (funanga) better than that of the dog or equine.

Cracks especially. You have to be careful of the cracks.. Sometimes they are disguised as something else. A doorway, or a smile or even a winking eye. And if you fall through them, you never know were you will end up.

If human lives be, for their very brevity, sweet, then beast lives are sweeter still...

Never trust a mirror,' his mother had told him. 'They never tell the truth unless you make them.

Sometimes success demands a certain refined insanity.

My favourite mentor brother told me that there were three kinds of people: followers, leaders and scouts. Scouts are capeable of leadership, but they could not tolerate the responsibility of it. Disinclined to take orders either, they invariably flouted authority and fomented strife. This is why scouts, he said wryly, were the first to be sent into danger, It was half hoped they would be killed. 'I fear you are destined to trouble us as a scout, little sister' he said

The very shape of our dreams defines us. We learn about the world and try out our thoughts and visions in them. Our dreams goad us and drive us and summon and sustain us and when we are old they comfort us. Magic is a kind of dream, and love is a dream, and hope is a dream. Without our dreams, there is no sweetness, no purpose to life.

Short stories do not say this happened and this happened and this happened. They are a microcosm and a magnification rather than a linear progression.

‎It is better to pursue a hopeless hope than to give in to black despair.

She's forgetting,' Ellen said to Jack, plumping herself down on a chair. 'All of her life is leaking out of her. Soon there will be nothing left.

If she is afraid of mirrors she is afraid of herself.

Only humans think death is evil. But it is nature. Evil exist's only in life. There is much good and evil alloted to each life.

That was what happened to laughter when you caged it. It became unbearably sad. It was worse than crying.

Sometimes I am afraid for people like you who have to know things. Your kind will dig and hunt and worry at it until one day you will find what is hidden, waiting for you.

Don't you understand that wanting does not belong here, because that is what wounds, and there is never an end to it.

Maruman does not loll.

The short story form allows evocation, suggestion, implication. Its potency often lies in what it does not say.

My heart belongs to you,' He promised. 'Would you have loved me when I was a girl?' 'I have always loved you. Even before I met you I loved the idea of you.

The mirror had broken into millions of pieces and the wind blew them all over the world. If a person got a speck in their eye, the person would only see the ugly side of things from then on, but if a piece got in their blood and it reached their heart, it would freeze into a solid block of ice and they couldn't feel anything anymore

Oh yes. It's open all right, but not many people come in here to look at me now so there's no point in selling tickets. No one is interested in a man who professes to be a monster. They'll give me notice very soon. I started out being a great attraction, but people soon understood that what fascinated them about me was no more than the reflection of their own deformities. All I do is how them what is inside themselves,' He added mournfully.

You are born with the yearning arrow, my Glynna, though you are not yet fully aware of it. It is not a happy thing to possess, for nothing on earth - no goal, no person how ever beloved - will answer it. It points to the sky and to the heavens and the stars and when it cannot reach them, it must fall back to pierce your heart.

Many truths which are not believed are called lies,' the Laughing Beast said. 'Mirrors do not themselves lie unless they have been enchanted. Ordinary mirrors merely reflect what is revealed to them. People lie and mirrors reflect people. If your mother feared mirrors in your land, she feared herself.

Impatience is not the least of your faults, Malik, it is a kind of greed and someday it may see you undone.

Long fiction is wonderful and you can lose yourself in it as a reader and as a writer, but short stories don't allow the same kind of immersion. Often the best stories hold you back and make you witness them. This may be one of the reasons some people reject the form. That and the fact that they are harder work to read. A story will not let you get comfortable and settle in. It is like a stool that is so small that you must always be aware of sitting.