Most people have no imagination. If they could imagine the sufferings of others, they would not make them suffer so.

— Anna Funder

My father was a doctor,' she says, 'a very kind man. He died in the early '70s, relatively young.' She taps the cigarette packet on the table. 'Of lung cancer.'' Oh.'' But the thing about that is,' she says as she exhales, 'it doesn't take very long at all.

— Anna Funder

One does not remember one’s own pain. It is the suffering of others that undoes us

— Anna Funder

People were crazy with pain and secrets.

— Anna Funder

Prison left me with some strange little tics.' She has taken all the door off their hinges in all the apartments she has lived in since. It's not that she has anxiety attacks about small spaces, she says, it's just that she starts to sweat and go cold. 'This apartment is perfect for me,' she says, looking around the open space.' How about elevators?' I ask, recalling the schlep up the stairs. 'Exactly,' she replies, 'I don't like them much either.' One day, years later, her husband Charlie was fooling around at home, playing the guitar. Miriam said something provocative, and he stood up suddenly, lifting his arm to take off the guitar strap. He was probably just going to say 'That's outrageous', or tickle her or tackle her. But she was gone. She was already down in the courtyard of the building. She does not remember getting down the stairs-it was an automatic flight reaction.

— Anna Funder

She is brave and strong and broken all at once. As she speaks it is as if her existence is no longer real to her in itself, more like a living epitaph to a life that was.

— Anna Funder

Ten days are time enough to die, to be born, to fall in love and to go mad. Ten days is a very long time.

— Anna Funder

The cynic sees only cynicism, the depressive can taint creation with one glance

— Anna Funder

There are no people who are whole" he says. "Everyone has issues of their own to deal with. Mine might be a little harder, but the main thing is how on deals with them.

— Anna Funder

When I got out of prison, I was basically no longer human,' Miriam says.

— Anna Funder