Best 7 quotes of Ann Wroe on MyQuotes

I got very keen on biography because I wanted to change it. I wanted to stretch the form. I think of it as a way of capturing souls.

Ingratitude is the frost that nips the flower even as it opens, that shrivels the generous apple on the branch, that freezes the fountain in mid-flow and numbs the hand, even in the very act of giving. It is a sin of silence, absence and omission, as winter's sin is a lack of light; a sin against charity, which otherwise warms the heart and, in the truest sense, makes the world turn.

Some sins have no season. We are as likely to be angry in November as to lose our rag in March ... There is, though, something autumnal about greed, apple-cheeked and wheat-crowned, purpled knee-high in grapes; something summery in sloth, as the hammock creaks in the fly-drowsy heat; and more than a tickle of spring in lust, as birds pair and the sap rises. Among these, ingratitude is winter, the worst of seasons.

His teachings, said his disciple Musaeus, had one simple theme: 'Everything comes into being from the One and is resolved into the One again.

It was generally believed, said Theophilus, that Orpheus learned his music from the birds. His small voice, piping after theirs, filled with all the secret stories of the earth.

Time slipped and slid around him, unanchored by any fact that could be verified. Perhaps it did not matter. 'Where does our story take place, and when?' asked Cocteau at the start of Orphée. 'It's the privilege of legends to be ageless. Comme il vous plaira. As you please.

Tuning must come first. Each recital begins with a careful tightening of the pegs on the cross-bar, twisting them in their socket of red threads as each string is plucked and tested. He uses his thumb for this, softer and subtler than the plectrum, his head bent to the vibrating string and his lips slightly open, breathing quickly, as over the body of a lover.