If you look at the body of any writers' work, you can figure out the questions that animate them. I think that is what real writers do. They don't tell people how to live or what to think. They write in order to try to answer their own deepest questions.

Isobelle Carmody

The deepest wounds aren't the ones we get from other people hurting us. They are the wounds we give ourselves when we hurt other people.

Isobelle Carmody

love relationship friendship

Laughter is a powerful weapon for it carries the light. To laugh is to defy the darkness.

Isobelle Carmody

laughter powerful light

The worst predijudice is unknowing. We think we treat others as equals, but, in our deepest heart, we regard ourselves as superior. In part, this is because we are, in ways, powerful. But that does not make the race of humans (funanga) better than that of the dog or equine.

Isobelle Carmody

powerful dog heart

Only humans think death is evil. But it is nature. Evil exist's only in life. There is much good and evil alloted to each life.

Isobelle Carmody

good-and-evil evil thinking

If human lives be,

Isobelle Carmody

beast life-is sweet

Life has always been a matter of putting one's feet down carefully

Isobelle Carmody

matter feet

Sometimes success demands a certain refined insanity.

Isobelle Carmody

demand success insanity

‎It is better to pursue a hopeless hope than to give in to black despair.

Isobelle Carmody

despair black giving

The very shape of our dreams defines us. We learn about the world and try out our thoughts and visions in them. Our dreams goad us and drive us and summon and sustain us and when we are old they comfort us. Magic is a kind of dream, and love is a dream, and hope is a dream. Without our dreams, there is no sweetness, no purpose to life.

Isobelle Carmody

magic dream love-is

The mirror had broken into millions of pieces and the wind blew them all over the world. If a person got a speck in their eye, the person would only see the ugly side of things from then on, but if a piece got in their blood and it reached their heart, it would freeze into a solid block of ice and they couldn't feel anything anymore

Isobelle Carmody

block eye heart

Never trust a mirror,' his mother had told him. 'They never tell the truth unless you make them.

Isobelle Carmody

telling-the-truth mirrors mother

My favourite mentor brother told me that there were three kinds of people: followers, leaders and scouts. Scouts are capeable of leadership, but they could not tolerate the responsibility of it. Disinclined to take orders either, they invariably flouted authority and fomented strife. This is why scouts, he said wryly, were the first to be sent into danger, It was half hoped they would be killed. 'I fear you are destined to trouble us as a scout, little sister' he said

Isobelle Carmody

brother responsibility order

Short stories do not say this happened and this happened and this happened. They are a microcosm and a magnification rather than a linear progression.

Isobelle Carmody

insightful stories writing

Long fiction is wonderful and you can lose yourself in it as a reader and as a writer, but short stories don't allow the same kind of immersion. Often the best stories hold you back and make you witness them. This may be one of the reasons some people reject the form. That and the fact that they are harder work to read. A story will not let you get comfortable and settle in. It is like a stool that is so small that you must always be aware of sitting.

Isobelle Carmody

writing long people

Maruman does not loll.

Isobelle Carmody

doe

Many truths which are not believed are called lies,' the Laughing Beast said. 'Mirrors do not themselves lie unless they have been enchanted. Ordinary mirrors merely reflect what is revealed to them. People lie and mirrors reflect people. If your mother feared mirrors in your land, she feared herself.

Isobelle Carmody

mother fear lying

Here's the thing. I hate kids. Always have. I mean, I know the job of the race, biologically speaking, is to achieve immortality through reproduction, but the idea of getting impregnated and blowing up like a balloon as I serve as a carrier and service unit for this other person who will eventually burst out of me in the most terrifying way imaginable, then carry on using me one way or another for the rest of my life, is right up there with throwing myself off the top of a twenty-story building. If I have a biological clock, it is digital and does not tick.

Isobelle Carmody

hate jobs mean

Sometimes I am afraid for people like you who have to know things. Your kind will dig and hunt and worry at it until one day you will find what is hidden, waiting for you.

Isobelle Carmody

waiting worry people

You are born with the yearning arrow, my Glynna, though you are not yet fully aware of it. It is not a happy thing to possess, for nothing on earth - no goal, no person how ever beloved - will answer it. It points to the sky and to the heavens and the stars and when it cannot reach them, it must fall back to pierce your heart.

Isobelle Carmody

stars heart fall

Impatience is not the least of your faults, Malik, it is a kind of greed and someday it may see you undone.

Isobelle Carmody

faults greed may