Quotes from The Heretic's Daughter

“Life is not what you have or what you can keep. It is what you can bear to lose.”
― Kathleen Kent, quote from The Heretic's Daughter

“Sharing secrets is the way in which women tie themselves together, for it reveals complicity and trust. Holding secrets shows trustworthiness and a sort of quite defiance. It is a natural thing for a female to hold secrets within her breast until the time is ripe to release them. Does it not follow the way in which her body is formed? A woman is made with that dark and mysterious recess that can grow a child safely until the child is ready to come out onto the birthing bed. And like birthing, secrets present themselves in many ways. some slip easily into the world, others must be torn out, if the body is unwilling.”
― Kathleen Kent, quote from The Heretic's Daughter

“We, all of us, must be left alone to make good on our own consciences. And no county magistrate or judge or deacon can separate us from the truth, for they are only men.”
― Kathleen Kent, quote from The Heretic's Daughter

“A needle is such a small brittle thing. It is easily broken. It can hold but one fragile thread. But if the needle is sharp, it can pierce the coarsest cloth. Ply the needle in and out of a canvas and with a great length of thread one can make a sail to move a ship across the ocean. In such a way can a sharp glossy tongue, with the thinnest of thread of a rumor, stitch together a story to flap in the breeze. Hoist that story upon the pillar of superstitious belief and a whole town can be pulled along with the wind of fear.”
― Kathleen Kent, quote from The Heretic's Daughter

“I took a step. And then another. And so it went as we followed Father, who had come to take us forever away from Salem. And with every step I thought of my mother's courage as she faced her judges. With every step I thought of her cleaving to the truth even as she fell the short distance of the rope. With every step I thought of her pride, her strength, her love.
And with every step I thought, I am my mother's daughter, I am my mother's daughter...”
― Kathleen Kent, quote from The Heretic's Daughter

“I would move the earth to save your mother. D'ye hear me, Sarah? I would tear down the walls of her jail and carry her to the wilds of Maine, but it is not what she wants. She will throw herself at her judges because she believes that her innocence will show through all the lies and deceptions...She humbles me with her strength.”
― Kathleen Kent, quote from The Heretic's Daughter

“Men are always the last to ken what women know by sniffing the air. That's why God gave bodily might to Adam, to balance the inequities of strength. For if Eve had been given the power to serve her cunning and cruelty, there would have been a terrible reckoning for all mandkind, and the archangel would have trod on Adam's heels to escape paradise unsinged.”
― Kathleen Kent, quote from The Heretic's Daughter

“But guilt is a ghost that takes the shape of the body it inhabits and consumes all that is tender within its shell: brain, bowels, and heart.”
― Kathleen Kent, quote from The Heretic's Daughter

“But a child, so recently come into the world from the void of creation, can be more resilient than the strongest man, more strong willed than the hardiest woman. A child is like an early spring bulb that carries all the resources needed within its skin for the first push through the soil towards the sun. And just as a little bit of water can start the bulb to grow, even through fissured rock, so can a little kindness give a child the ability to push through the dark.”
― Kathleen Kent, quote from The Heretic's Daughter

“If I do not do this thing, then it may go on and on. Nothing of the greater good comes without struggle and sacrifice in equal measure, be you man or woman, and in this way are we freed from tyranny.”
― Kathleen Kent, quote from The Heretic's Daughter

“If we could see the fullness of our tomorrows, how many of us would take desperate action to change the future? What if our far seeing showed us the loss of our homes, our families, our very lives, and to save it all we would need only to barter away our most precious souls. Who among us would give up what we cannot see for what we can hold in our hands? I believe many of us would peel ourselves away from our immortal selves as easily as the skin from a boiled plum if it meant we could remain on the earth for a while, our bellies full and our beds warm and safe at night. (214)”
― Kathleen Kent, quote from The Heretic's Daughter

“It's how the English run their courts. They sacrifice innocents, thinking to keep evil at bay, and call it a kind of justice. But they are no more just than this pole is a man.”
― Kathleen Kent, quote from The Heretic's Daughter

“He said that some people can live from birth to death and have no more thoughts in their heads about the reasons for living than a beetle. But that we were different, he and I. We needed more than a clod of dirt to make our rising up and lying down worth something.”
― Kathleen Kent, quote from The Heretic's Daughter

“...with every step I thought of my mother's courage as she faced her judges. With every step I thought of her cleaving to the truth even as she fell the short distance of the rope. With every step I thought of her pride, her strength, her love. And with every step I thought, I am my mother's daughter, I am my mother's daughter...”
― Kathleen Kent, quote from The Heretic's Daughter

“I see the world...and call it by what I feel it should be, not by what others who in their dull reveries think it is.”
― Kathleen Kent, quote from The Heretic's Daughter

“Can you keep a secret, Sarah?" she asked. I nodded, remembering all our secrets shared together in her mother's house, and she said, her breath hot in my ear, "You cannot harvest the corn until you go into the corn."

I awoke with tears on my face, my hands clutching at the ribs around my heart. I had for more than forty years kept the past behind an impenetrable wall of my own devising. I thought that to move beyond this wall and revisit the past would scorch my reason and make me mad. But then, as I lay sweating in bed, restless and prickly, it came to me that to harvest a field of corn one does not wade into the dark middle of things and cut the stalks from the inside out. It is best done starting with the outside ears and working inward, stalk by stalk, keeping the light of the sun always at one's back so that its rays can illuminate each ear of corn, be it whole and sweet or black and blighted. And in this way does one make a meal that feeds a starving body back to wholeness. (183)”
― Kathleen Kent, quote from The Heretic's Daughter

“It is true that some people will lose their desire for life and refuse food and drink after the death of a beloved, or if there is too much pain and injury to the body. But a child, so recently come into the world from the void of creation, can be more resilient than the strongest man, more strong willed than the hardiest woman. A child is like an early spring bulb that carries all the resources needed within its skin for the first push through the soil towards the sun. And just a little bit of water can start the bulb to grow, even through fissured rock, so can a little kindness give a child the ability to push through the dark.”
― Kathleen Kent, quote from The Heretic's Daughter

“When I closed the door Grandmother was already seated at her spinning wheel. Her foot was on the treadle but her eyes were thoughtfully on me. The spinner was beautifully carved of dark oak with leaves twining their way round and round the outer rim. It must have been very old, as the designs were too fanciful to have been made i the new England. She called to me and asked me if I could spin. I told her yes, well enough, but that I could sew better, which was a statement only half true. A camp surgeon would have a better hand with a cleaver to a limb than I with a needle on the cloth. She spun the wool through knotted fingers glistening with sheep's oil and wrapped the threads neatly around the bobbin. Gently probing, she teased out the story of our days in Billerica just as she teased out the fine thread from the mix and jumble of the coarse wool in her hands.”
― Kathleen Kent, quote from The Heretic's Daughter

“There are winter evenings in Massachusetts when there is no wind and the crust on the snow seems to hold in the cold. And if the moon is three-quarters full, its light adds a kind of warmth to the surrounding earth.”
― Kathleen Kent, quote from The Heretic's Daughter

“A scarecrow was a thing of bold-faced tactics, out in the full light of day. A "murmet," the "r" softly rolling against the tongue spoke of murmuring stealth, as though it hunted marauding crows in the dark of twilight.”
― Kathleen Kent, quote from The Heretic's Daughter

“And when we at last descended the final step, he turned, and the rustling crowd parted raggedly, like crested waves before the prow of a ship, making a space for us to walk. I understood at that moment fully and suddenly why he would not carry me, and why he had not come to my defense in times past when I was battling for my place in the world. It was not because he failed to love me, but because he loved me so well. He had brought us food and clothing and kind words when we were imprisoned; he did not abandon us. But he would never seek to weaken me so that I could not withstand the burdens and cruelties or harsh judgments of the world.”
― Kathleen Kent, quote from The Heretic's Daughter

“I see the world, Sarah, and call it by what I feel it should be, not by what others who in their dull reveries think it is.”
― Kathleen Kent, quote from The Heretic's Daughter

“Life is not what you have or what you can keep. It is what you can bear to lose.”
― Kathleen Kent, quote from The Heretic's Daughter

“She was too singular, too outspoken, too defiant against her judges, in defense of her innocence, and it was for this, more than for proof of witchcraft, that she was being punished.”
― Kathleen Kent, quote from The Heretic's Daughter

“Men are always the last to ken what women know by sniffing the air. That's why God gave bodily might to Adam, to balance the inequities in strength. for if Eve had been given the power to serve her cunning and cruelty, there would have been a terrible reckoning for all mankind, and the archangel would have trod on Adam's heels to escape paradise unsinged.”
― Kathleen Kent, quote from The Heretic's Daughter

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