Quotes from Incarceron

“Walls have ears.
Doors have eyes.
Trees have voices.
Beasts tell lies.
Beware the rain.
Beware the snow.
Beware the man
You think you know.
-Songs of Sapphique”
― Catherine Fisher, quote from Incarceron

“Only the man who has known freedom
Can define his prison.”
― Catherine Fisher, quote from Incarceron

“I have walked a stair of swords,
I have worn a coat of scars.
I have vowed with hollow words,
I have lied my way to the stars
-Songs of Sapphique”
― Catherine Fisher, quote from Incarceron

“All my years to this moment
All my roads to this wall.
All my words to this silence
All my pride to this fall.
-Songs of Sapphique”
― Catherine Fisher, quote from Incarceron

“The world is a chessboard, Madam, on which we play out our ploys and follies. You are the Queen, of course. Your moves are the strongest. For myself, I claim only to be a knight, advancing in a crooked progress. Do we move ourselves, do you think, or does a great gloved hand place on our squares”
― Catherine Fisher, quote from Incarceron

“Despair is deep. An abyss that swallows dreams. A wall at the world's end. Behind it I await death. Because all our work has come to this.”
― Catherine Fisher, quote from Incarceron

“I remember a story of a girl in Paradise who ate an apple once. Some wise Sapient gave it to her. Because of it she saw things differently. What had seemed gold coins were dead leaves. Rich clothes were rags of cobweb. And she saw there was a wall around the world, with a locked gate.”
― Catherine Fisher, quote from Incarceron

“Where are the leaders?' Sapphique asked.
'In the fortresses,' the swan replied.
'And the poets?'
'Lost in dreams of other worlds.'
'And the craftsmen?'
'Forging machines to challenge the darkness.'
'And the Wise, who made the world?'
The swan lowered its black neck sadly.
'Dwindled to crones and sorcerers in towers.”
― Catherine Fisher, quote from Incarceron

“Because I have dreams and in those dreams I see the stars”
― Catherine Fisher, quote from Incarceron

“We are chained hand and foot by protocol, enslaved to a static, empty world where men and women can’t read, where the scientific advances of the ages are the preserve of the rich, where artists and poets are doomed to endless repetitions and sterile reworking of past masterpieces. Nothing is new. New does not exist. Nothing changes, nothing grows, evolves, develops. Time has stopped. Progress is forbidden”
― Catherine Fisher, quote from Incarceron

“Freedom is a small price to pay for survival.”
― Catherine Fisher, quote from Incarceron

“Nothing has changed, or will change.
So we must change it.”
― Catherine Fisher, quote from Incarceron

“Despair is deep. An abyss that swallows dreams.”
― Catherine Fisher, quote from Incarceron

“Master, I'm afraid. I am, truly. This place scares me. At home, I know who I am, what to do. I'm the Warden's daughter, I know where I stand. But this is a dangerous place, full of pitfalls. All my life, I've known it was waiting for me, but now I'm not sure I can face it. They'll want to absorb me, make me one of them, and I won't change. I won't! I want to stay me."
Jared sighed and she saw his dark gaze was fixed on the veiled window.
"Claudia, you're the bravest person I know. And no one will change you. You will rule here, though it won't be easy...”
― Catherine Fisher, quote from Incarceron

“None of us have much idea where we are. Perhaps all our lives are too concerned with where, and not enough with who.”
― Catherine Fisher, quote from Incarceron

“We forbid growth and therefore decay. Ambition, and therefore despair. Because each is only the warped relection of the other.”
― Catherine Fisher, quote from Incarceron

“And the poets?'
'Lost in dreams of other worlds.'...
'And the wise, who made this world?'
The swan lowered its black neck sadly.
'Dwindled to crones and sorcerers in towers.”
― Catherine Fisher, quote from Incarceron

“Shut up!" Finn turned, furious. "Look at you both! The only friends I have in this hell and all you can do is fight over me. Do either of you care about me? Not the seer, the fighter, the fool who takes all the risks, but me, Finn?”
― Catherine Fisher, quote from Incarceron

“In great ceremony they entered the prison.
They were never to be seen again.”
― Catherine Fisher, quote from Incarceron

“They came out. They were children. They wore rags and their skin was livid with sores. Their veins were tubes, their hair wire. Sapphique reached out and touched them.
'You are the ones who will save us,' he said.”
― Catherine Fisher, quote from Incarceron

“. . . or is it that man contains within himself the seeds of evil? That even if he is placed in a paradise perfectly formed for him he will poison it, slowly, with his own jealousies and desires?”
― Catherine Fisher, quote from Incarceron

“Walls have ears. Doors have eyes. Trees have voices. Beasts tell lies. Beware the rain. Beware the snow. Beware the man You think you know.”
― Catherine Fisher, quote from Incarceron

“She wanted to lift it. But first she ran Jared’s disc cautiously over its surface. Nothing. She glanced around once. Everything was quiet. So she picked up the key. The room crashed. Alarms howled; rays of laserfire shot up from the floor, ringing her in a cage of red light. A metal grille slammed over the door; hidden lights burst on and she stood frozen in the uproar in terror, her heart slamming in her chest, and in that instant the disc jabbed a pepperpoint of red pain urgently into her thumb. She glanced down at it. Jared’s message was breathless with terror.”
― Catherine Fisher, quote from Incarceron

“Who can chart the vastness of Incarceron?
Its halls viaducts, its chasms?
Only the man who has known freedom
Can define his prison.”
― Catherine Fisher, quote from Incarceron

“No one has entered since. We know about the Wombs too, though not where they are. Incarceron is efficient; it was designed to be. It doesn’t waste dead matter, but recycles everything. In those cells it grows new inmates. Perhaps animals too.”
― Catherine Fisher, quote from Incarceron

“You are my father, Incarceron.
I was born from your pain.
Bone of steel; circuits for veins.
My heart a vault of iron.”
― Catherine Fisher, quote from Incarceron

“Down the endless halls of quilt
My silver thread of tears is split.
My fingerbone the key that broke
My blood the oil that smooth the lock.”
― Catherine Fisher, quote from Incarceron

“There is a door we know, a tiny, secret door...
- legends of sapphique”
― Catherine Fisher, quote from Incarceron

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“My, how foolish I am! You know what I've always thought? I've always thought a body would have to be sick and dying before they saw the Lord. And I imagined that when He came it would be like looking at the Baptist window: pretty as colored glass with the sun pouring through, such a shine you don't know it's getting dark. And it's been a comfort: to think of that shine taking away all the spooky feeling. But I'll wager it never happens. I'll wager at the very end a body realizes the Lord has already shown Himself. That things as they are, just what they've always seen, was seeing Him. As for me, I could leave the world with today in my eyes.”
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“was good enough when good men held the office, but always when you create an office that a man can lay hands on, an evil man will someday lay hands on it.”
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“If I could blame it on all
the mothers and fathers of the world,
they of the lessons, the pellets of power,
they of the love surrounding you like batter ...
Blame it on God perhaps?
He of the first opening
that pushed us all into our first mistakes?
No, I'll blame it on Man
For Man is God
and man is eating the earth up
like a candy bar
and not one of them can be left alone with the ocean
for it is known he will gulp it all down.
The stars (possibly) are safe.
At least for the moment.
The stars are pears
that no one can reach,
even for a wedding.
Perhaps for a death.”
― Anne Sexton, quote from The Awful Rowing Toward God

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