Affection makes fools. Always, without exception, love digs a channel that's sooner or later flooded by the briny water of despair.

— Sonya Hartnett

But what she feels is sometimes hard to express... Much of what is best in her is warped on the voyage from within to without.

— Sonya Hartnett

Evangeline's obliviousness was a reason to like her rather than not: I liked least those schoolfellows whose awareness of me invariably caused misery.

— Sonya Hartnett

Every atom in me feels composed of lead. This is what dying is: a pull to the ground.

— Sonya Hartnett

How does one craft happiness out of something as important, as complicated, as unrepeatable and as easily damaged as life?

— Sonya Hartnett

I am dying: it's a beautiful word. Like the long slow sigh of a cello: dying. But the sound of it is the only beautiful thing about it.

— Sonya Hartnett

I am dying: it's a beautiful word. Like the long slow sigh of the cello: dying. But the sound of it is the only beautiful thing about it.

— Sonya Hartnett

I fail to see how turning the subject over like compost can do anything except raise its stink.

— Sonya Hartnett

In the quest for power, truth is always the first thing left behind.

— Sonya Hartnett

I suppose that's what happens when you make other people's lives miserable: life gets miserable back at you.

— Sonya Hartnett