26 Quotes by Christos Tsiolkas

She did not want the pleasurable and comfortable mediocrity in which she now wallowed to be the sum of her life.

In the three minutes it takes the song to play I’m caught in a magic world of harmony and joy, a truly ecstatic joy, where the aching longing to be somewhere else, out of this city, out of this country, out of this body and out of this life, is kept at bay.

Transcendence is realising that people do not deserve pity or love or compassion. People deserve contempt.

She moved in her world in slow motion. The little pills she took kept her safe, her eyes were empty of colour, of light. Every couple of years Joe’s father would take his wife to Greece, make a trek to a valley where the Virgin was said to appear. They would drink the holy water, cross themselves, and still the woman would search through her bag to get to the little pills that kept her sane. Sanity is a chemical reaction.

Once you lose someone’s respect it is the hardest thing to win back.

Regrets, of course; only an imbecile did not have regrets. Regrets, some shame, a little guilt. But they had all done the best they could, they had raised their children well, educated them, housed them, made them safe and secure. They had all been good people. Death was never welcome but He always came. It was only to be truly lamented when He took the young, those neither prepared nor deserving of it. Then Death was cruel. Manolis watched the foam rise in the briki and he turned off the flame.

Discomfort is sometimes what is most precious to me about great art.

But just because no-one sang the story, no-one wrote the book, no-one filmed it, that doesn’t mean it didn’t happen.