Edith Pattou Quotes

It was the difference between walking with a stranger and walking with your heartmate. It was the difference between working for duty and working for love.

That indeed would be a great accolade," Monodonock stuttered, his hands frenziedly plucking at his spikey hair, "but the more I think on it, I believe I should miss my little home in the Blue Stack Mountains too much. And indeed, it is an important posting; you never know when the gabha might start stiring up trouble again...

And I realized how much more complicated life is without the benefit of magic. Rubbing linseed oil into my blistered hands, I thought wistfully of how magic lets you skip over the steps of things. That is what makes it so appealing.
But, I thought, the steps of things are where life is truly found, in doing the day-to-day tasks.

I knelt by the design. Yes, there was the sun rising. But the white form I had always thought to be a cloud was a bear. I could see it now, upside down. White bear, isbjorn, stood for north. Father had not been able to help himself. The truth was there, too. Truth and lie, side by side.

That's the trouble with loving a wild thing: You're always left watching the door.

A pine needle fell in the forest. The hawk saw it. The deer heard it. The white bear smelled it

Where is it?" I asked, willing him to tell me.
He laughed suddenly, and I could hear the full-throated, grating sound of the white bear's laughter in it.
"East of the sun and west of the moon," he said.

It is odd, the twists that life will sometimes take. The ewe that you think will give birth with ease dies bringing forth a two-headed lamb. Or the ski trail that you have been told is treacherous, you navigate easily.

I crossed the room to him. "I love you," I said in a rush, afraid I would change my mind.
"Charles," he replied.

And Rose would have had no time at all on the loom were it not for Widow Hautzig's rheumatism. When her rheumatism was acting up, the widow would take a long rest, sometimes even as much as a fortnight if it was a particularly bad bout.
"Thank God for Widow Hautzig's rheumatism," Rose would say every night before bed. Mother once overheard her and scolded her, so Rose was careful to whisper those words to herself from then on.

It was not a monster that lay sleeping on the white sheets. Nor a faceless horror. Nor even the white bear.
It was a man.
His hair was golden, glowing bright as a bonfire in the light of the candle. And his features were fair, I suppose, but he was a stranger and that somehow was the greatest shock of all- that I had been lying all these months beside a complete stranger.

And telling a story, I suppose, is like winding a skein of spun yarn- you sometimes lose track of the beginning.