Eleanor Catton

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Love cannot be reduced to a catalogue of reasons why, and a catalogue of reasons cannot be put together into love

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Solitude is a condition best enjoyed in company

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I would make up silver lies studded with shards of perfect detail like mosaic splinters, sharp and everlasting, the kind of tiny faultless detail that would make them all sure that what I said was true. I would have alibis. I would bring in other people and teach them a story, and rehearse it so carefully and for so long that soon they’d all start to believe that what they said was actually true

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We were talking nonsense, and I said something silly about unrequited love, and he became very serious, and he stopped me, and he said that unrequited love was not possible; that it was not love. He said that love must be freely given, and freely taken, such that the lovers, in joining, make equal halves of something whole

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What an unrequited love it is, this thirst! But is it love, when it is unrequited?