Chloe Thurlow

“We are trapped in a net of our our own self-doubt, on the programming force fed to us by parents, schools, society. In a certain light, on certain days, you can see that net. And once you can see it, you can learn to make it go away.”

“All good art is political. Between the lines of every book, the author implants messages for the unsuspecting reader. If not, what point does it serve?”

“The future is trapped in a cage opened only by the key of genius.”

“It is in the nest of disappointment where depression lays its eggs.”

“There was a monster in me that had to be fed by success. There is a monster in us all that has to be fed by something.”

“I gaze out of the window at the lanes of red taillights streaming towards the hills, the city laid out in anonymous grids and quadrants, the view confirming that I was much more alone than I thought, and all those red lights inspired nothing more than a sense that I, too, should be fleeing somewhere.”

“Beautiful girls – the true beauties – are rarely vain, arrogant, poseurs. It is the girl who makes disproportionate efforts with makeup, clothes, heels and hair who suffers these conceits. They are girls who have made themselves appear beautiful without ever reaching the exalted status of being beautiful girls.”

“If you add the shadow of death to a moment of passion you are in that instant free of all normal ties, your mind grows still and your body enters a state of non-being.”

“The seed of all impulse is a feeling bursting to express itself in action.”

“After making love there is nothing like making love, slowly, idly, like walking without a destination, or swimming in a warm sea.”

“Depression comes from not accepting the way things are - and seeing no way too change them.”

“When you cut the cords on the safety net and walk out on the highwire, you become yourself and become all that you can be and all that you were meant to be. But first, you must cut the cords.”

“When I was 6 I wanted to be a nurse. When I was 14 I wanted to be a spy or a lion tamer. When I was 16 I wanted too be a highwire walker or an acrobat. Or maybe a clown with a white face. Then I gave up wanting to be anything other than what I am and what I am is a woman with a woman's needs and a woman's desires.”

“Little matters much and much doesn't matter at all.”

“Literature is the question without the answer. Philosophy is the answer without the question.”

“Inside our mind there is hidden place that contains the mind within the mind. There, you will find another version of yourself that may be your true self. We do not find that self by travelling, by searching. We find that self by sitting still, being quiet and looking inside. Ask yourself: who am I? And your true self will answer.”

“Writers strive for the impossible: perfection. Even the universe is flawed.”

“When you lose yourself in a book the hours grow wings and fly.”

“The quest of the alchemists to turn lead into gold is a metaphor for our attempts to turn the base metal of ourselves, that person hooked on consumerism, filled with angst and ambition, into the gold of what we can be and really are.”

“Life is a long road with lots of junctions and every time you chose to go one way, you may just have easily have gone the other. We don't make choices so much as choices are made like a new fashion we slip into without realising.”