Ann-Marie MacDonald Quotations

In terms of the secrets that imbue and underlie Fall on Your Knees, they were as much of a mystery to me as I was creating the story as they are to the readers.

There are some stories you can't hear enough. They are the same every time you hear them. But you are not. That's one reliable way of understanding time.

Piece by piece living is hard to do. It may even feel like the hardest thing. But it has this going for it: you never need to know what it is you're carrying on your shoulders.

The world should not be organized to require heroines, and when one is required but fails to appear, we should not judge.

Materia had been just six when they docked in Sydney Harbour and her father said, 'Look. This is the New World. Anything is possible here.' She's been too young to realize that he was talking to her brother.

You think you're safe. Until you see a picture like that. And then you know you'll always be a slave to the present because the present is more powerful than the past, no matter how long ago the present happened.

They are so young, they forget that the world is not as in love with them as they are.

Memory plays tricks. Memory is another word for story, and nothing is more unreliable.

Tell the story, gather the events, repeat them. Pattern is a matter of upkeep. Otherwise the weave relaxes back to threads picked up by birds to make their nests. Repeat, or the story will fall and all the king's horses and all the king's men. . . . Repeat, and cradle the pieces carefully, or events will scatter like marbles on a wooden floor.

Lies like that are not a sin, they are a sacrifice.