77 Quotes by Jane Hamilton

The magical descriptions of Italy and hilarious observations about love, travel, natives and foreigners in Love in Idleness are but a few of its many pleasures. Amanda Craig has created a hot shimmery climate in which a cast of old friends, quirky family members and naughty children who make love potions come to know themselves and their hearts. A delightful brew.

Is it love that connects us, is that what it is? I never knew that the feeling I have is regular old love because it's so-intricate. Perhaps there is another name for it, one we don't yet know. I used to think that love was simple and noticeable, like rain falling, so that just as you'd look at your skin and say Water, you would also wake in the morning and say Love. But it has been underneath, this new and old thing I feel, subterranean, silent and steady, like blood, rushing along and along without often making itself known.

My god has always been a laissez-faire deity, giving you the initial goods and sending you on to make your way.

This was life, I supposed, running and running and running, and realizing along the way that the phantom was getting closer.

Ordinary life was laced with miracles, I knew that, had read enough poetry to understand that we are elevated with the knowing, and yet it was difficult to notice and be grateful when one was continually fatigued and irritated. I suppose that unquenchable sense of wonder is what separates us dolts from the saints and the poets.

Life on earth, filled with uncertainty and change, seemed far more difficult than what lay beyond the grave.

We all need people to tell us that we were the ones who had been deeply wronged.

From early on I valued the gift of memory above all others. I understood that as we grow older we carry a whole nation around inside of us, places and ways that have disappeared, believing that they are ours, that we alone hold the torch for our past, that we are as impenetrable as stone.

I feel like I don't have all the ingredients a person is supposed to have.