Quotes from Forest Born

“I hate them," Enna said. "Whoever is responsible for making me sleep outside without pillows, I hate them."
Mmm-hmmm...," Dasha said. Rin had noticed that the Tiran girl often had trouble remembering how to speak in the morning.
If Finn were here," Enna continued to mumble as she rewrapped her head cloth, "he'd let me rest my head on his chest at night. Or leg. Or arm. And then he'd find whoever was responsible for the whole sleeping outside with no pillows situation and hold him while I kicked him in the shins.”
― Shannon Hale, quote from Forest Born

“Dasha!' Rin yelled, 'Dasha!'
A face looked up, then two. They started walking toward her, then running. Dasha was in front, her eyes set on Razo, her face caught in an expression of desperate hope.
'Razo,' she said, .... 'Razo, it had better be you. If it just looks like you, I am going to kill you. It had better-'
He'd reached her by then. They embraced, and he swung her around, her legs lifting in the air, her tunic swirling...Then Dasha was kissing Razo's face and crying and smiling and declaring all his perfections.
'Well, this isn't half-bad,' said Razo, 'I think I'll die more often.'
Dasha embraced him again and squeezed until Razo had to admit he was injured. 'Love the lips, not the ribs,' he said, and pulled her into a long kiss.”
― Shannon Hale, quote from Forest Born

“The to Cathal was battered and only one wagon wide, with swells of hard earth where mud had frozen during cold ad rainy seasons. Enna tripped often, and cursed each time she tripped, until Dasha said, "Enna, you might watch your language."
Enna grimaced. "I was. You should hear my thoughts.”
― Shannon Hale, quote from Forest Born

“You've been quiet lately...but it's not so much the quiet as something inside the quiet.”
― Shannon Hale, quote from Forest Born

“Enna leaned back her head and laughed at the sky. 'Of course he wasn't! Who could kill Razo?”
― Shannon Hale, quote from Forest Born

“Does anyone smell roasting meat?' said Razo, 'Oh, wait, it's just Geric's face.”
― Shannon Hale, quote from Forest Born

“I'm the sheen on water, Rin thought. I'm a looking glass. I'm not real.”
― Shannon Hale, quote from Forest Born

“Finn leaped from his horse to greet Enna, and she entwined herself into him, their arms around each other, their faces close. Thoug they did not kiss, Rin thought that the way they looked at each other was even more intimate.
'Let's get married,' Enna was saying with yearning in her voice. 'Please, let's get married right now.'
Finn put his face into her neck and whispered something that made her hum.”
― Shannon Hale, quote from Forest Born

“The three girls were sitting and lying beside her, holding one another, weeping, their arms and legs and hair tangled like the roots of close trees, sobs shaking them like leaves in a high wind.”
― Shannon Hale, quote from Forest Born

“No one had ever called her wild before. She wanted to be wild now, for him. Wild seemed more enticing then a bowl of berries.”
― Shannon Hale, quote from Forest Born

“Rin slept inside the oak’s thought. Its own memories of weather and growth continued to hum, and like a pond, its stillness reflected back herself.”
― Shannon Hale, quote from Forest Born

“..giving into despair was like eating poisonous berries to keep from feeling hungry.”
― Shannon Hale, quote from Forest Born

“If it had been a color, it might have been green. If it had touched her ears, it might have sounded rhythmic, like the creak of a rocking chair or drone of a bee. If it had a scent, it might have been sweet and drowsy, like fresh pine on the fire.”
― Shannon Hale, quote from Forest Born

“It's good to cry a bit, 'cause that helps us get through the rough parts. And the winter is though, there's no doubt. But we just hang on until spring when that ache will be all but swallowed up.”
― Shannon Hale, quote from Forest Born

“The boar, the stag, and the eagle met on the last craggy peak of the world, look down, and sighed at what they saw. The boar was a king, and he said, "There is not enough people." The stag was a poet, and he said, "There is not enough beauty." The eagle was a cleric, and her said, "There is not enough mystery." Then the wolf, arriving late, looked up instead of down and said, "There is not enough hunger," and promptly ate them all.
If the boar was king, the stag was poet, and the eagle was cleric, then what was the wolf?”
― Shannon Hale, quote from Forest Born

“We see the surface, blue or silver or gray, and waves hitting the shore. But we know there's so much we can't see, so what we love about it becomes in part what we imagine it is hiding.”
― Shannon Hale, quote from Forest Born

“Then Rin was hugging him. Relief and joy swelled inside her till she thought she would burst.
"Uh . . . ," Razo said, patting her head as if she might be crazy.
"You were dead," she mumbled against his chest.
"I was? Well, I wish someone had told me. Would've been nice to relax on my back for a while. Um, how'd I die?”
― Shannon Hale, quote from Forest Born

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Popular quotes

“That settles it,” said Mr. Trapwood. “We’re going back to the pension. We’re going to pack. We’re going to be on the Bishop first thing tomorrow. Sir Aubrey will have to send someone else out. Nothing is worth another day in this hellhole.”
Mr. Low did not answer. He had caught a fever and was lying in the bottom of a large canoe owned by the Brothers of the São Gabriel Mission, who had arranged for the crows to be taken back to Manaus. His eyes were closed and he was wandering a little in his mind, mumbling about a boy with hair the color of the belly of the golden toad which squatted on the lily leaves of the Mamari River.
There had, of course, been no golden-haired boys; there hadn’t been any boys at all. What there had been was a leper colony, run by the Brothers of Saint Patrick, a group of Irish missionaries to whom the crows had been sent.
“They’re good men, the Brothers,” a man on the docks had told them as they set off on their last search for Taverner’s son. “They take in all sorts of strays--orphans, boys with no homes. If anyone knows where Taverner’s lad might be, it’ll be them.”
Then he had spat cheerfully into the river because he was a crony of the chief of police and liked the idea of Mr. Low and Mr. Trapwood spending time with the Brothers, who were very holy men indeed and slept on the hard ground, and ate porridge made from manioc roots, and got up four times in the night to pray.
The Brothers’ mission was on a swampy part of the river and very unhealthy, but the Brothers thought only about God and helping their fellowmen. They welcomed Mr. Trapwood and Mr. Low and said they could look over the leper colony to see if they could find anyone who might turn out to be the boy they were looking for.
“They’re a jolly lot, the lepers,” said Father Liam. “People who’ve suffered don’t have time to grumble.”
But the crows, turning green, thought there wouldn’t be much point. Even if there was a boy there the right age, Sir Aubrey probably wouldn’t think that a boy who was a leper could manage Westwood.
Later a group of pilgrims arrived who had been walking on foot from the Andes and were on their way to a shrine on the Madeira River, and the Brothers knelt and washed their feet.
“We know you’ll be proud to share the sleeping hut with our friends here,” they said to Mr. Low and Mr. Trapwood, and the crows spent the night on the floor with twelve snoring, grunting men--and woke to find two large and hungry-looking vultures squatting in the doorway.
By the time they returned to Manaus the crows were beaten men. They didn’t care any longer about Taverner’s son or Sir Aubrey, or even the hundred-pound bonus they had lost. All they cared about was getting onto the Bishop and steaming away as fast as it could be done.”
― Eva Ibbotson, quote from Journey to the River Sea

“Just because a person isn't talking about something doesn't mean it's not on their mind. Often, in fact, it's why they won't speak of it.”
― Sarah Dessen, quote from Saint Anything

“In this land
I have made myself sick with silence
In this land
I have wandered, lost
In this land
I hunkered down to see
What will become of me.
In this land
I held myself tight
So as not to scream.
-But I did scream, so loud
That this land howled back at me
As hideously
As it builds its houses.
In this land
I have been sown
Only my head sticks
Defiant, out of the earth
But one day it too will be mown
Making me, finally
Of this land.
-Charlie's poem”
― Anna Funder, quote from Stasiland: Stories from Behind the Berlin Wall

“...speaking as a novelist myself, I know that members of our profession live in our imaginations as much or more as we inhabit what people call 'the real world'...”
― Dan Simmons, quote from Drood

“Freedom, I thought, comes only to the successful”
― Graham Greene, quote from Travels With My Aunt

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