Quotes from The Way the Crow Flies

Ann-Marie MacDonald ·  848 pages

Rating: (11.5K votes)


“There are some stories you can't hear enough. They are the same every time you hear them. But you are not. That's one reliable way of understanding time.”
― Ann-Marie MacDonald, quote from The Way the Crow Flies


“Afterwards, in bed with a book, the spell of television feels remote compared to the journey into the page. To be in a book. To slip into the crease where two pages meet, to live in the place where your eyes alight upon the words to ignite a world of smoke and peril, colour and serene delight. That is a journey no one can end with the change of a channel. Enduring magic.”
― Ann-Marie MacDonald, quote from The Way the Crow Flies


“Writing. Opening a vein in your wrist with a spoon.”
― Ann-Marie MacDonald, quote from The Way the Crow Flies


“As time went by, it mattered less and less that in 1969 a rocket went from Florida to the moon and men walked there. Good men. People's dads. Those were only events, scattered in time. Draw them close, rub them between thumb and finger till they look like larvae, soften like silk, distend to knot, to weave. It takes a village to kill a child.”
― Ann-Marie MacDonald, quote from The Way the Crow Flies


“She rejoins the crowd and watches with her friends, but she feels like an emptied glass - that crestfallen feeling of walking out from a movie theatre in the middle of the day, out from the intimate matinée darkness and the smell of popcorn, which is the smell of heightened colour and sound and story, into the borderless bright of day. Bereft.”
― Ann-Marie MacDonald, quote from The Way the Crow Flies



“Tell the story, gather the events, repeat them. Pattern is a matter of upkeep. Otherwise the weave relaxes back to threads picked up by birds to make their nests. Repeat, or the story will fall and all the king's horses and all the king's men. . . . Repeat, and cradle the pieces carefully, or events will scatter like marbles on a wooden floor.”
― Ann-Marie MacDonald, quote from The Way the Crow Flies


“Perhaps God dropped them on their heads before they were born.”
― Ann-Marie MacDonald, quote from The Way the Crow Flies


“Between a mother’s eyes and her son’s face, there is not air. There is something invisible and invincible. Even though—or because—he will go out into the world, she will never lose her passion to protect him.”
― Ann-Marie MacDonald, quote from The Way the Crow Flies


“You always run into something no matter where you go. Turns out you're someplace after all.”
― Ann-Marie MacDonald, quote from The Way the Crow Flies


About the author

Ann-Marie MacDonald
Born place: in Baden-Baden, Germany
Born date October 29, 1958
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