Quotes from Last Song Before Night

Ilana C. Myer ·  415 pages

Rating: (850 votes)


“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


About the author

Ilana C. Myer
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“The greatest mystery the universe offers is not life but size. Size encompasses life, and the Tower encompasses size. The child, who is most at home with wonder, says: Daddy, what is above the sky? And the father says: The darkness of space. The child: What is beyond space? The father: The galaxy. The child: Beyond the galaxy? The father: Another galaxy. The child: Beyond the other galaxies? The father: No one knows.

You see? Size defeats us. For the fish, the lake in which he lives is the universe. What does the fish think when he is jerked up by the mouth through the silver limits of existence and into a new universe where the air drowns him and the light is blue madness? Where huge bipeds with no gills stuff it into a suffocating box and cover it with wet weeds to die?

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