Quotes from The Summer Tree

Guy Gavriel Kay ·  383 pages

Rating: (18.6K votes)


“There are kinds of action, for good or ill, that lie so far outside the boundaries of normal behavior that they force us, in acknowledging that they have occurred, to restructure our own understanding of reality. We have to make room for them.”
― Guy Gavriel Kay, quote from The Summer Tree


“We salvage what we can, what truly matters to us, even at the gates of despair.”
― Guy Gavriel Kay, quote from The Summer Tree


“Dave hung up. And unplugged the phone. With a fierce and bitter pain he stared at it, watching how, over and over again, it didn't ring.”
― Guy Gavriel Kay, quote from The Summer Tree


“One didn't stop to talk with creatures from one's nightmares.”
― Guy Gavriel Kay, quote from The Summer Tree


“Daylight was coming outside, but it was not only that: courage cast its own light.”
― Guy Gavriel Kay, quote from The Summer Tree



“For some moments the two men sat quietly, each wrapped in his own thoughts, then Ivor rose. 'I should speak to Levon about tomorrow's hunt,' he said. 'Sixteen [eltors], I think.'

'At least,' the shaman said in an aggrieved tone. 'I could eat a whole one myself. We haven't feasted in a long time, Ivor.'

Ivor snorted. 'A very long time, you greedy old man. Twelve whole days...why aren't you fat?'

'Becaues,' the wisest one explained patiently, 'you never have enough food at the feasts.”
― Guy Gavriel Kay, quote from The Summer Tree


“But courage was not lacking in her heart, though it might be foolhardy and unwise.”
― Guy Gavriel Kay, quote from The Summer Tree


“Alluding and attacking, summoning a courage, embodying a gallantry of defiance that hurt to see, it was so noble and so doomed.”
― Guy Gavriel Kay, quote from The Summer Tree


About the author

Guy Gavriel Kay
Born place: in Weyburn, Saskatchewan, Canada
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Popular quotes

“The essence of this knowledge was the ability to `see all' and to `know all'. Was this not precisely the ability Adam and Eve acquired after eating the forbidden fruit, which grew on the branches of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil'? · Finally, just as Adam and Eve were driven out of the Garden, so were the four First Men of the Popol Vuh deprived of their ability to `see far'. Thereafter `their eyes were covered and they could only see what was close ...' Both the Popol Vuh and Genesis therefore tell the story of mankind's fall from grace. In both cases, this state of grace was closely associated with knowledge, and the reader is left in no doubt that the knowledge in question was so remarkable that it conferred godlike powers on those who possessed it. The Bible, adopting a dark and muttering tone of voice, calls it `the knowledge of good and evil' and has nothing further to add. The Popol Vuh is much more informative. It tells us that the knowledge of the First Men consisted of the ability to see `things hidden in the distance', that they were astronomers who `examined the four corners, the four points of the arch of the sky', and that they were geographers who succeeded in measuring `the round face of the earth'. 7 Geography is about maps. In Part I we saw evidence suggesting that the cartographers of an as yet unidentified civilization might have mapped the planet with great thoroughness at an early date. Could the Popol Vuh be transmitting some garbled memory of that same civilization when it speaks nostalgically of the First Men and of the miraculous geographical knowledge they possessed? Geography is about maps, and astronomy is about stars. Very often the two disciplines go hand in hand because stars are essential for navigation on long sea-going voyages of discovery (and long sea-going voyages of discovery are essential for the production of accurate maps). Is it accidental that the First Men of the Popol Vuh were remembered not only for studying `the round face of the earth' but for their contemplation of `the arch of heaven'?”
― Graham Hancock, quote from Fingerprints of the Gods: The Evidence of Earth's Lost Civilization


“He kissed me for a long moment, holding my shoulders, perhaps to keep me from pressing my whole body against his. Then he tried to lift my bag.

"My God," he said. "What happened?"

"I found out one may check out twenty books at a time from the school library.”
― Laura Whitcomb, quote from A Certain Slant of Light


“She had gradually changed her name. "Jane" was too dull. Last year, she'd added a "y", becoming Jayne, which had more personality.”
― Caroline B. Cooney, quote from The Face on the Milk Carton


“Those long remembered can alone claim to be long forgotten.”
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