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1 " Felix has always believed that if there is one thing in life that is fated it is our birth, that far-fetched conspiracy of circumstances which have to occur in order for us to get born. "
― Glenn Haybittle , The Memory Tree
2 " It’s our memories that teach us who we are. "
3 " Never leave home without your memories. "
4 " One consequence of ignorance is that it misdirects anger. "
5 " To tell a lie is to risk being caught out and there’s excitement in avoiding traps: it was an aspect of my childhood I was perhaps averse to relinquishing. "
6 " The temptation to betray a secret, always breathing its hot breath in your ear. "
7 " Power needs plots because plots are secret until they unfold and the most gratifying kind of power is holding onto an explosive secret. "
8 " Everything sacred begins with a circle of motion. "
9 " There they are. Dancing in a circle. Shadows swinging over the snow. Calling upon the ancestors. Each wearing the sacred shirt. Side stepping to the left in time to the echoing heartbeat of the drums and the echoing yearning of the songs. There they are. Dancing in a circle. Shadows swinging over the firelit snow. Calling upon the ancestors. Expecting something wonderful to happen. Everyone singing. We will live again. We will live again. "
10 " If you’re not going to feel how are you going to know what to think? Isn’t it in the nature of feeling to evolve thought? "
11 " It’s in our dreams that we pull people towards us. "
12 " At that moment the ghost dance seems to Zinnia like the relationship of two people who never quite consummate the love they feel for each other. "
13 " Every night I build a fire for you, Alowa. Every night I dance on the rooftop for you. Look at the flames, Alowa. Aren’t they beautiful? Look at the smoke. I’m dancing in the smoke, Alowa. "
14 " The cabinets and shelves are a bright busy choreography of oils, shampoos, conditioners, scrubs, lotions, salts, unguents. Zinnia loves buying pots and bottles and tubes of alchemised essences that smell like yearning or intimacy on the skin. "
15 " The panic attacks have been a part of Zinnia’s life for almost six months. They allow no pathway back to the innocent complacency with which she once made sense of the world around her. With every new attack more of her identity crumbles. Every day the panic rubs something else out that has been achieved with application, sometimes with inspiration. "
16 " Italian as a language, she thinks, suits children with its singsong cadences and rising lingering inflections, its quick swinging gait and easy adaptability to argument, to passionate outbursts. "
17 " Italy, like areas of her childhood, is a part of her world she has always kept secret from her husband. These are places she goes to renew her virginity. "
18 " She remembers once handing her father a flower she picked and how in the act of giving she experienced herself as that flower - the sticky stalk resin, the hard green shoots, the sheltered stamens and raw red anthers. She needed him to understand her no less than she needed to remain a mystery. "
19 " There’s something liberating about the absence of home comforts which appeals to the child in us. It’s perhaps the first time in our lives when we get a hint of how exciting it can be to be naked. "
20 " Agreements have to be made in the dark for them to be binding. "
