36 Quotes by Sheridan Hay

some letters one really writes to oneself; some letters just describe what it is we hope will be returned.

There’s so much love sent through the mail.

Just an idea.” He waved a thick hand. “I think Auden meant that whenever there’s a gift there’s a guilty secret, a thorn in the flesh. Both things are given at once, and the nature of one depends on the other.

I loved the city. We were anonymous, and even then I had the sense that cities were yielding; that they moved over and made room.

Liberation was in the very scale of the city: a goldfish bowl one could never grow to fit.

Peculiar to Sydney, in those days, was a single word written in chalk in beautiful, looping copperplate on street corners. Sydney was known for it, the word chalked at the feet of the inhabitants and visitors, like a letter consisting of a lone word, but personally addressed to each member of a crowd. . . .It says ‘Eternity,’ love. . . . A man has been writing that word in chalk for thirty years. It’s famous now.

I . . . watched the storm through an amnion of water.

Looking up into the trees, I noticed that one still had a few dark leaves clinging to the upper branches. Under my gaze, the leaves became a semé of birds, scattering upward and away in a salutary swoop, leaving only a plastic bag, caught and hanging listlessly in the bare limbs.

He lit his pipe, and the match head in that room of paper and leather flared up like an idea.