“She read books of poetry, though they had lately begun to stoke her fury. It was all very well for these poets, who wandered off to have adventures and then could string them to words, to music. Anything she might write would be formless, a creature of rage and stormcloud. No music there.”
― Ilana C. Myer, quote from Last Song Before Night
“A surface, she reflected, exists for so many reasons, concealment only one. For it may also serve to protect, from others and from oneself. And perhaps, in an unexpected twist, to protect others from oneself.”
― Ilana C. Myer, quote from Last Song Before Night
“It would occur to her later that sympathy is disarming even without surprise, but unexpected sympathy leaves no defense.”
― Ilana C. Myer, quote from Last Song Before Night
“I will ride horses like wind I will warm my hands at fires I will savor darkened wines I will not think of the road’s end.”
― Ilana C. Myer, quote from Last Song Before Night
“She lit a candle and set it down at the altar amid a sea of tiny flames. Each of them the same, as if all the dreams and desires of people were indistinguishable from one another. The prayer of a female poet, perhaps the only one in Eivar, no different from a mother’s prayer for her sickening infant or a farmer’s prayer for a good harvest.”
― Ilana C. Myer, quote from Last Song Before Night
“Do I have your leave to keep on clinging to a dream of you?”
― Ilana C. Myer, quote from Last Song Before Night
“Dear Son,
I would call you by name, but I’m waiting for your mother to decide. I only hope she is joking when she calls you Albert Dalbert.
For weeks now I have watched your mother zealously gather her tokens for this box. She’s so afraid of you not knowing anything about her, and it bothers me greatly that you’ll never know her strength firsthand. I’m sure by the time you read this, you’ll know everything I do about her.
But you’ll never know her for yourself and that pains me most of all. I wish you could see the look on her face whenever she talks to you. The sadness she tries so hard to hide. Every time I see it, it cuts through me.
She love you so much. You’re all she talks about. I have so many orders from her for you. I’m not allowed to make you crazy the way I do your Uncle Chris. I’m not allowed to call the doctors every time you sneeze and you are to be allowed to tussle with your friends without me having a conniption that someone might bruise you.
Nor am I to bully you about getting married or having kids. Ever.
Most of all, you are allowed to pick your own car at sixteen. I’m not supposed to put you in a tank. We’ll see about that one. I refuse to promise her this last item until I know more about you. Not to mention, I’ve seen how other people drive on the roads. So if you have a tank, sorry. There’s only so much changing man my age can do.
I don’t know what our futures will hold. I only hope that when all is said and done, you are more like your mother than you are like me. She’s a good woman. A kind woman. Full of love and compassion even though her life has been hard and full of grief. She bears her scars with a grace, dignity, and humor that I lack.
Most of all, she has courage the likes of which I haven’t witnessed in centuries. I hope with every part of me that you inherit all her best traits and none of my bad ones.
I don’t really know what more to say. I just thought you should have something of me in here too.
Love,
Your father (Wulf)”
― Sherrilyn Kenyon, quote from Kiss of the Night
“For what is love itself, for the one we love best? - an enfolding of immeasurable cares which yet are better than any joys outside our love.”
― George Eliot, quote from Daniel Deronda
“IKEA,” chanted the dead. “First we feast, then IKEA. First we feast, then IKEA.”
― Christopher Moore, quote from The Stupidest Angel: A Heartwarming Tale of Christmas Terror
“Trust you? Good God, of course I trust you. It's you who won't trust me, you damned little fool.'" He laughed silently, and bent down to her, putting his arms round her, and he kissed her then as he had kissed her in Launceston, but deliberately now, with anger and exasperation. "Play your own game by yourself, then, and leave me to play mine," he told her. 'If you must be a boy, I can't stop you, but for the sake of your face, which I have kissed, and shall kiss again, keep away from danger.”
― Daphne du Maurier, quote from Jamaica Inn
“Living, being in the world, was a much greater and stranger thing than she had ever dreamed.”
― Ursula K. Le Guin, quote from The Tombs of Atuan
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