Eleanor Catton

Love cannot be reduced to a catalogue of reasons why, and a catalogue of reasons cannot be put together into love.

A woman fallen has no future; a man risen has no past.

Never underestimate how extraordinarily difficult it is to understand a situation from another person's point of view.

She is a loner, too bright for the slutty girls and too savage for the bright girls, haunting the edges and corners of the school like a sullen disillusioned ghost.

For although a man is judged by his actions, by what he has said and done, a man judges himself by what he is willing to do, by what he might have said, or might have done—a judgment that is necessarily hampered, not only by the scope and limits of his imagination, but by the ever-changing measure of his doubt and self-esteem.

Reason is no match for desire: when desire is purely and powerfully felt, it becomes a kind of reason of its own.

If home can't be where you come from, then home is what you make of where you go.

It is a feature of human nature to give what we most wish to receive.

Remember that anybody who is clever enough to set you free is clever enough to enslave you.

Solitude is a condition best enjoyed in company.

We spend our entire lives thinking about death. Without that project to divert us, I expect we would all be dreadfully bored. We would have nothing to evade, and nothing to forestall, and nothing to wonder about. Time would have no consequence.