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121 " Music can be the medium of sharing experience in a purified and heightened form; but it can also make being alone a stirring and highly privileged place to be. "
― Glenn Haybittle , Scorched Earth
122 " Males aren't trained to proof-read their naked bodies the way females are. "
123 " Music makes you feel younger, more confident you can take on the world and the obstacles it throws at you. "
124 " Fame, like being in love, can at times bring with it the conceited (and obnoxious) belief that you are a somebody person in a world of nobody people. "
125 " I've always believed first impressions are paramount in life. That we have access to much we need to know about a person in the blink of an eye. That everything subsequently broadcasted is a confirmation of knowledge already fermenting in the distillery of the unconscious. Heightened curiosity discloses and absorbs a wealth of coded information. "
126 " Sex is the great equaliser in life. Whether you're rich or poor, smart or stupid, beautiful or ugly, the pleasure pitch of erogenous zones, the quality of orgasm is not affected. Sex gives everyone equal opportunity. "
127 " Today is a good day. Today she feels she is the master of her craft. Today she is free of the grinding tyranny of doubt. The voice that mocks her ambition. The voice that bites and slanders and causes her more heartache than any other voice. Today she is focused, she is exultant. Her every brushstroke like a wake of radiance. Today she can move the paint around the canvas at will. If only painting were like this every day. Without the sudden extinguishing of light, the collapsing of belief, the cursing and flailing, the knots and clenched fists in a world gone suddenly dark. "
― Glenn Haybittle , The Way Back to Florence
128 " He finds himself remembering the night boat trips with his father. The boat easing through the black current. The moonlight silvering the whispering reeds and the leaves overhead. The air pungent with resin and algae and wet earth. The whisper of the willow leaves trailing in the water. His father standing with the oar, as if he owned and orchestrated the entire night. "
― Glenn Haybittle , In the Warsaw Ghetto
129 " I suspect nothing has more power to alienate one from the wellsprings of all one's creative vitality than being trapped in a loveless marriage. Probably they are the people who no longer feel special, the unhappily married. "
130 " Sacrifice is perhaps the hardest discipline of all to learn in life. It's often to belittle yourself to the agency of something greater. You have to believe in that something greater. "
131 " Sometimes I think to learn an adult perspective on life is simply to become good at telling lies, mostly of a flattering nature and mostly to oneself. "
― Glenn Haybittle , The War in Venice
132 " It's like men and women sing different words to the same song. "
133 " To hold an object that belonged to someone you have loved and lost alters for a moment the weight of your hand and then the weight of your entire body. "
134 " Rome lifts you up but won't let you settle down - it turns you into a bird without a nest. "
135 " I feel some nostalgia for the old red buses of the past that you could hop on and off at will. Nowadays the only way out of a bus is a door you can't open with your own hands. How smugly proud we are of our new-found freedoms in the West - always bragging about them and trying to export them further afield - and yet every year some sly little technological theft of our autonomy is surreptitiously introduced into everyday life. I mean, what better definition of prison is there than an enclosed space whose door you can't open with your own hands? "
136 " The Waves was my favourite book. It moved me so deeply that it became a part of my mind. "
137 " She realises how little she knows about this man. Her knowledge little more than a thin sheen of brightness, like reflected sunlight on an opaque pond. "
138 " Sharp lines draw too much attention to themselves, like vanity. And what's vanity but a series of sharp lines which have yet to be softened? "
― Glenn Haybittle
139 " They always told each other about the parts of the day they had spent apart, sketching in detail so the other could see it, so it became a memory they seemed to share in common. They were good at talking. Sharing stories. Everything he did only seemed to take root when he told her about it. There were times when he arrived home as breathless as an inspired poet with the urgency to talk to her. "
140 " They stood by the open window of their hotel room with the rain sweeping into their faces. A bolt of lightning lit up the Grand Canal. Struck it out of the darkness in a searing eloquent flash. The expectation was that the night to come would be no less bracing, no less eloquent. "