121 Quotes by Anne Michaels

If love wants you; if you’ve been melted down to stars, you will love with lungs and gills; with feathers and scales; with warm blood and cold.

Like other ghosts, she whispers; not for me to join her, but so that, when I’m close enough, she can push me back into the world.

I could easily imagine carrying a favoured item to the ends of the earth, if only to help believe I’d see its beloved owner again.

Sometimes I can’t look you in the eye; you’re like a building that’s burned out inside, with the outer wall still standing.

When you are alone – at sea, in the polar dark – an absence can keep you alive. The one you love maintains your mind. But when she’s merely across the city, this is an absence that eats you to the bone.

Write to save yourself,’ Athos said, ’and someday you’ll write because you’ve been saved.

Perhaps loneliness is the real proof that we belong to something greater than ourselves, the way absence is proof of what was once a presence.

There’s a precise moment when we reject contradiction. This moment of choice is the lie we will live by. What is dearest to us is often dearer to us than truth.

All grief, anyone’s grief... is the weight of a sleeping child.