![Shirley Hazzard quotes: Solitude, which is held to be cause of eccentricity, in fact imposes excessive normality, and least in public ... [p. 7]](http://www.wisefamousquotes.com/images/shirley-hazzard-quotes-544276.jpg "Shirley Hazzard quotes: Solitude, which is held to be cause of eccentricity, in fact imposes excessive normality, and least in public ... [p. 7]")
![Shirley Hazzard quotes: It mattered to us both to have some point of reference in that strange place, some means of attesting to the effect it had on us. [p. 87]](http://www.wisefamousquotes.com/images/shirley-hazzard-quotes-1902945.jpg "Shirley Hazzard quotes: It mattered to us both to have some point of reference in that strange place, some means of attesting to the effect it had on us. [p. 87]")
What you fear most will happen to you - that is the law. 
Poetry has been the longest pleasure of my life. 
Marriage is like democracy - it doesn't really work, but it's all we've been able to come up with ... 
Svoboda was not a brilliant man. He was a man of what used to be known as average and is now known as above-average intelligence. 
Madness might sometimes give access to a kind of knowledge. But was not a guarantee. 
I never had, or wished for, power over you. That isn't true, of course. I wanted the greatest power of all. but not advantage, or authority. 
He had the complexion, lightly webbed, of outdoor living and indoor drinking, and was a high, handsome man who might have been cruel. 
One can only discover what has already come into existence. 
He worked in Interim Reports, before being upgraded to Annual Reports. 
I was often, later on, to act out with Giaconda a circumspection I did not feel: her abundance made others reticent; her openness evoked discretion. 
Sometimes, surely, truth is closer to imagination or to intelligence, to love than to fact? To be accurate is not to be right. 
The sweetness that all longed for night and day. Some tragedy might be idly guessed at-loss or illness. She had the luminosity of those about to die. 
I see that you are highly defensive." ... Caro said, "I withhold my analysis of your own attitude.
One doesn't really profit from experience; one merely learns to predict the next mistake. 
Nothing creates such untruth in you as the wish to please. ![Shirley Hazzard quotes: I said, "Some people do know more than others. That contributes to the impression that someone, somewhere,knows the whole thing." [p. 38]](http://www.wisefamousquotes.com/images/shirley-hazzard-quotes-1074456.jpg "Shirley Hazzard quotes: I said, \"Some people do know more than others. That contributes to the impression that someone, somewhere,knows the whole thing.\" [p. 38]")
I said, "Some people do know more than others. That contributes to the impression that someone, somewhere,knows the whole thing." [p. 38] 
Americans' great and secret fear is that America may turn out to be a phenomenon rather than a civilization. 
In England, life is a long process of composing oneself ... 
When you realize someone is trying to hurt you, it hurts less.""Unless you love them.
I have a superstition that if I talk about plot, it's like letting sand out of a hole in the bottom of a bag. 