Short stories are often strong meat. Reading them, even listening to them, can be challenging, by which I do not mean hard work, simply that a certain amount of nerve and maturity is required.

Sarah Hall

Categorized in : Work Strong Hard Work Maturity

People went through life like well handled jugs, collecting chips and scrapes and stains from wear and tear, from holding and pouring life.

jugs tears people

There are stories told to him only at this time of year. Fantastic, magical stories, the old Hollier in the woods finding only three red berries, which peel back in the night to reveal gifts of frankincense, gold and myrrh, Christmas in hot deserts, dust-blown countries, the necklace of tears, and the story of the robin.

christmas night country

I'll tell you this, lad: A tattoo says more of a fellow looking at it than it can do of the man who's got it on his back.

tattoo he-man men

I don't like novels that tie everything up in a plot-y way. I always think that's not really true of life, particularly of people in power.

novel people thinking

We should not forget that when we limp away afflicted through the spirit, it is not to the factory gates or to the corporate steps we pilgrimage. Instead we go to the sea for its salt. We find shade under the sycamores on the great avenues. Or we go to the rivers where water tells us modestly of its own sickness.

sea rivers water

Those partial to drink were hiding faults and dishonesty. They were sloppy souls, even the ones with pleasant manners and fine noses.

faults soul noses

At night, in the garden, it occurs to you that it might have been your heart that left you as you reached the capital. Your heart might not have travelled well, closed up in its cavity, quivering and gnawing at the bars of your ribcage during the commute. It might be tracking north now, along edgelands, past spoil-heaps and stands of pylons, under motorway passes, back to the higher ground. Back to him.

heart night past

The man had added to his body in a way that was brave and timeles... by Sarah Hall

The man had added to his body in a way that was brave and timeless and beyond adornment.

body brave men

All innocent mechanisms are muddied up with experience. Children become less and less translucent. Layers of guile and suspicion grow. It's the law of paternal disenchantments.

layers law children

Of all the conditions we experience, solitude is perhaps the most... by Sarah Hall

Of all the conditions we experience, solitude is perhaps the most misunderstood.

conditions misunderstood solitude

You didn’t understand what he was saying, until he kissed you. It was a kiss of such complicity, of such uncomplicated sympathy, that you felt for the first time not alone in your suffering.

kissing suffering firsts

You’ve been wondering lately when the moment is that somebody is... by Sarah Hall

You’ve been wondering lately when the moment is that somebody is truly lost to you.

moments wonder lost

Swimming in the cold and the dark of British autumn is not for th... by Sarah Hall

Swimming in the cold and the dark of British autumn is not for the faint-hearted.

autumn cold swimming dark

You think back and you ask yourself why you became so interested in wolves. I think it was because when I was very small, growing up in a little hamlet near Shap, we would go to Lowther Wildlife Park for birthday parties. Now closed, it was only three miles from my parents' house.

yourself parents you birthday

For about two years, while researching 'The Wolf Border,' I was a complete wolf bore. I would regurgitate everything I was researching, whether people were interested or not.

wolf border everything people

My favourite pool is located in a remote valley in the eastern Lake District, surrounded by vine-hung cliffs and slippery boulders. It has a torrential sheet waterfall at one end and is almost black in colour, so it appears bottomless, a portal to nowhere.

lake end pool black

I like extreme situations: people pushed out of their comfort zon... by Sarah Hall

I like extreme situations: people pushed out of their comfort zones; the civil veneer stripped off.

out like comfort people

I was brought up in the north of England, which is probably no rougher than anywhere else, but I remember as a child being kind of mesmerized by girls fighting on the playground.

being child fighting remember

Writing, and its theatre of operation, is better than working shifts packing frozen sausages; that's all I need to think about if I'm having difficulties.

difficulties better think writing

It's taken me 15 years to feel I might be able to write and publish short stories, and for the assiduous checks of the industry to allow some through.

short some feel me