Sonya Hartnett

“I do not really write for children: I write only for me and for the few people I hope to please, and I write for the story.”

“I don't understand why one should be one thing or the other. Writing, to me, is writing is writing. It should be a flexible tool. Whatever skills I have, have to work for me; I won't be dictated by them.”

“I have spent a great deal of my time defending my work against those who see it as too complicated, too old in approach, too bleak to qualify as children's literature. This has been the bane of my life.”

“I've never really been able to tolerate zoos.”

“I spent three years at RMIT doing a bachelor of arts and media studies. It was a hugely formative experience. As someone who had a private Catholic school upbringing, the world suddenly became a much bigger and better place for me.”

“I feel it in my bones that if I had a kid, I would not either continue to write or have written the book I have done. So it's just me and the dog. I've always gotten along better with animals than I have with children, anyway.”

“I have thought you could not give everything to your books and also to your children, so for a long time, I thought if I had a child or a family, I'd think, 'How would I support them?' because basically I would stop writing.”

“I'll always struggle over saying I'm a writer, even if I won the Booker Prize.”

“I thought about how stupid it is, that all of us are born destined to desire somebody else, though desire brings with it such disappointment and pain. Humankind's history must be scored bloody with heartbreak. This hankering for affection is a blight upon us.”

“They thought back on the tales that the soldier had told. They remembered Hazel, the gentle Bethlehem donkey, who used the last of her strength helping those who needed her. They remembered the donkey who stood on the mountain and accepted suffering so that others would not know pain. They remembered the donkey with a hundred names, the sturdy friend of Jack who proved that the most humble being can have the most courageous heart. They gazed at the soldier, who said, 'I fear that John will be sorry he gave the silver donkey to me. The silver donkey belongs to the trustworthy and the brave.”

“I think there is something in my books that says these are people doing their best under difficult circumstances - sometimes they do wrong things and make mistakes, but who doesn't? And who wants to read about somebody who never does?”

“How does one craft happiness out of something as important, as complicated, as unrepeatable and as easily damaged as life?”

“If I'm desperate, I'll read anything. But even when I can be choosy, I still have no hard-and-fast rules. I have rules about what I won't read, rather than what I will. No science fiction, no romance, no chick lit. Although even these rules can be broken.”

“I mostly wrote 'Thursday's Child' to explore the idea of a wild child - a creature who lived much as humans used to live, when our needs were simple and our worlds were small.”

“I fail to see how turning the subject over like compost can do anything except raise its stink.”

“Evangeline's obliviousness was a reason to like her rather than not: I liked least those schoolfellows whose awareness of me invariably caused misery.”

“My life was pouring out my feet and seeping through cracks in the floor; yet still I knelt and did not move, for fear she'd let go my hands. Let me stay, I wanted to beg: Please don't make me go.”

“I am dying: it's a beautiful word. Like the long slow sigh of the cello: dying. But the sound of it is the only beautiful thing about it.”