Shirley Hazzard
Shirley Hazzard
Shirley Hazzardis an Australian author of fiction and non-fiction. She was born in Australia, but holds citizenship of the United Kingdom and the United States. Her 1970 novel, The Bay of Noon, was shortlisted for the Lost Man Booker Prize in 2010 and her 2003 novel The Great Fire won the U.S. National Book Award for Fiction...
NationalityAustralian
ProfessionNovelist
Date of Birth30 January 1931
CountryAustralia
large nervous others paying rid state sums
It's a nervous work. The state that you need to write is the state that others are paying large sums to get rid of.
asked boring defect easy endearing faults forgive good happens number qualities single
Do you ever notice, asked Luisa, "how easy it is to forgive a person any number of faults for one endearing characteristic . . . while someone with many good qualities is insupportable for a single defect if it happens to be a boring one?
writing needs nervous
It's nervous work. The state you need to write in is the state that others are paying large sums of money to get rid of.
pleasure has-beens
Poetry has been the longest pleasure of my life.
balance fairness life-balance
There is balance in life, but not fairness.
commitment numbers forgiving
Did you ever notice how easy it is to forgive a person any number of faults for one endearing characteristic, for a certain style, or some commitment to life - while someone with many good qualities is insupportable for a single defect if it happens to be a boring one?
confusion tragedy lasts
The tragedy is not that love doesn't last. The tragedy is the love that lasts.
love thinking wish
One would always want to think of oneself as being on the side of love, ready to recognize it and wish it well -but, when confronted with it in others, one so often resented it, questioned its true nature, secretly dismissed the particular instance as folly or promiscuity. Was it merely jealousy, or a reluctance to admit so noble and enviable a sentiment in anyone but oneself?
hotel-lobby waiting foyers
Italians are never punctual; the café, the convenient place to wait, absolves them from that. There is no question of hanging about, no looking lost and unwanted or even disreputable, as there is in hotel lobbies or the foyers of restaurants. One just sits and enjoys the scene, and waits.
marriage democracy able
Marriage is like democracy - it doesn't really work, but it's all we've been able to come up with ...
government risk church
The United Nations emerged as a temple of official good intentions, a place where governments might - without abating their transgressions - go to church; a place made remote - by agreed untruth and procedural complexity, and by tedium itself - from the risk of intense public involvement.
loyalty people matter
That was the trouble with experience; it taught you that most people were capable of anything, so that loyalty was never quite on firm ground -- or, rather, became a matter of pardoning offenses instead of denying their existence.
beauty physical-beauty true-nature
Perhaps if we lived with less physical beauty we would develop our true natures more.
leadership literature moral
Great literature is like moral leadership; everyone deplores the lack of it, but there is a tendency to prefer it from the safely dead.