18 Quotes by Ruth Park

He who climbs a cliff may die on the cliff, so what? Always a risk-taker by nature, now I became one by intent.

In a still hot morning, the tide went out and didn't come back in. This was not a spectacular event. The sea did not roll up like a scroll, like the sky in Revelations. It quietly withdrew.

The world is full of novels in which characters simply say and do. There are certainly legitimate genres in which this is sufficient. But in real and lasting writing the character is.

Writing is a passion I have never understood, yet a storyteller is all I have ever wanted to be.

Having a baby is different from all the ordinary ways of being hurt. it’s worth it all. Other pain isn’t worth anything, but that is.

The announcer, in milky tones, rolled out the commercial; it was all about some sort of washing powder that made laundry days a mere frolic in the backyard.

Elva had said nothing to anyone. She prayed earnestly that she was “all right”, explaining over and over again to God what the doctor had said, and how she couldn’t properly look after the children she already had. Elva liked to pray in front of a statue similar to the one in her mother’s living-room. She was not praying to the statue, but it was a kind of magical doll that kept her thoughts focussed on the Being to whom she prayed.

Then she said, with piteous defiance, “If I could love her, the Good Lord could, and he won’t be too hard on an old lady who didn’t have an easy life.

What has being a girl to do with anything if a person in properly qualified?′... ‘It’s what you call prejudice,’ she said.