Hannah Kent Quotes

They pick a mouse to tame a cat.

Nora had always believed herself to be a good woman. A kind woman. But perhaps, she thought, we are good only when life makes it easy for us to be so. Maybe the heart hardens when good fortune is not there to soften it

I have a deep and ongoing love of Iceland, particular the landscape, and when writing 'Burial Rites,' I was constantly trying to see whether I could distill its extraordinary and ineffable qualities into a kind of poetry.

My dad would tell me bedtime stories, and he used to always leave them open-ended and finish at a crucial point with the words, 'dream on'. Then it was my responsibility to finish the story as I was drifting off to sleep. We would call them dreaming stories.

So lonely I make friends with the ravens that prey on lambs.

What woman lives on her own with a goat and a low roof of drying herbs? What woman keeps company with the birds and the creatures that belonged to the dappled places? What woman finds contentment in such a solitary life, has no need of children or the comfort of a man? One who has been chosen to walk the boundaries. One who somehow has an understanding of the mysteries of the world and who sees in the clawing briars God's own handwriting.

I could have been a pauper; I could have been their servant, until those words! They anchor me to a memory that snatches the breath out of me. They are the magic words, the curse that turns me into a monster, and now I am Agnes of Illugastadir, Agnes of the fire, Agnes of the dead bodies with the blood, not burnt, still clinging to the clothes I made for him.

All my life people have thought I was too clever. Too clever by half, they'd say. That's exactly why they don't pity me. Because they think I am too smart, too knowing to get caught up in this by accident. But Sigga is dumb, and pre-y, and young, and that is why they dont want to see her die.

When I write, I write for myself, and I have high expectations ... so I'm just trying to meet those. I'm not going to distract myself with other people's expectations.

I don't like to pretend I was guided in any way by the supernatural world, but the more you talk about that, the easier it is to dismiss those notions.

We became caught in the cracks between what we said and what we meant,

I applied for funding to embark on an overseas field trip in Iceland, and spent six weeks there happily holed up in the national archives, museums and libraries, sifting through ministerial and parish records, censuses, maps, microfilm, logs, and local histories.

Criminals of this stature are usually sent abroad for their punishment, where there are jailhouses

She doesn't look like a criminal, he thought. Not since she's had a bath.

I've been half-frozen for so long, it is as though the winter has set up home in my marrow.

In the cowshed, my head hard against the floor, Natan broke the very yolk of my soul.

Some folks are forced to the edges by their difference. (...) But 'tis at the edges that they find their power.

Is love constant for you? Have you ever loved a woman? A person you love as much as you hate the hold they have on you?

People speak of the fear of the blank canvas as though it is a temporary hesitation, a trembling moment of self-doubt. For me it was more like being abducted from my bed by a clown, thrust into a circus arena with a wicker chair, and told to tame a pissed-off lion in front of an expectant crowd.

It was only later that I suffocated under the weight of his arguments, and his darker thoughts articulated. It was only later that our tongues produced landslides, that we became caught in the cracks between what we said and what we meant, until we could not find each other, did not trust the words in our own mouths.

I imagine, then, that we are all candle flames, greasy-bright, fluttering in the darkness and the howl of the wind, and in the stillness of the room I hear footsteps, awful coming footsteps, coming to blow me out and send my life up away from me in a grey wreath of smoke. I will vanish into the air and the night. They will blow us all out, one by one, until it is only their own light by which they see themselves.

Illugastadir, the farm by the sea, where the soft air rings with the clang of the smithy, and gulls caw, and seals roll over in their fat. Illugastadir, where the night is lit by fire, where smoke turns in the early morning to engulf the stars, and in ruins, always Illugastadir, cradling dead bodies in its cage of burnt beams.

The weight of his fingers on mine, like a bird landing on a branch. It was the drop of a match. I did not see that we were surrounded by tinder until I felt it burst into flames.

It was not hard to believe a beautiful woman capable of murder, Margret thought.As it says in the sagas, Opt er flago i fogru skinni. A witch often has fair skin.

Dreadful birds, dressed in red with breasts of silver buttons, and cocked heads and sharp mouths, looking for guilt like berries on a bush.

There are secrets at the heart of every story; there is something that must be uncovered or discovered, both by the reader and by the characters.

When did a smile ever get anyone into trouble?

God has had His chance to free me, and for reasons known to Him alone, He has pinned me to ill fortune, and although I have struggled, I am run through and through with disaster; I am knifed to the hilt with fate.

I was a very imaginative child, and my parents were very encouraging of that. My sister and I would put on plays; I would write my own stories.

Never be caught staring at someone. They'll think you want something from them.

Believe me, Nóra. An old broom knows the dirty corners best

He turned his head, ice crystals caught in his hair. "Agnes. Don't pretend you disagree. This is all there is and you know it. Life, here, in our veins. There is the snow, and the sky, and the stars and the things they tell us, and that's all. Everyone else - they're blind. They don't know if they're living or dead.

But I needed to create a life of my own. And here I

The treachery of a friend is worse than that of a foe.

There are times when I wonder whether I'm not already dead. This is no life; waiting in darkness, in silence, in a room so squalid I have forgotten the smell of fresh air. The

And though the snow smothered the valley and the milk froze in the dairy, my soul thawed.

I so often feel that I am barely here, that to feel weight is to be reminded of my own existence.

I always knew I wanted to be a writer. I just wasn't sure what I wanted to do as a money-making job.

Cruel birds, ravens, but wise. And creatures should be loved for their wisdom if they cannot be loved for kindness.

The last bed, the last roof, the last floor. The last of everything brings lugs of pain, as though there will be nothing left, but smoke from fires abandoned.

For the first time in my life, someone saw me, and I loved him because he made me feel I was enough.

Sleep came to me like a thin tide of water. It would lap against my body but never submerge me.

Those who are not being dragged to their deaths cannot understand how the heart grows hard and sharp, until it is a nest of rocks with only an empty egg in it.

The next morning I woke, and for a few moments I didn't know where I was. Then my memory of the night came back to me, and anger tightened my stomach, invigorating me.

She made mistakes and others made up their minds about her. People around here don't let you forget your misdeeds. They think them the only things worth writing down.

I can picture the way he looked, and recall the weather, and the play of light across his stubbled face, but that virgin moment is impossible to recapture.

Everything I said was taken from me and altered until the story wasn't my own.

I had an interest in Scandinavian countries because I'd never seen snow.

The shore is of pebbles, and huge tangles of seaweed float in the bay and look like the hair of the drowned.

I first heard the story of Agnes Magnusdottir when I was an exchange student in the north of Iceland.

Lauga had asked Margret whether she thought there would be an outward hint of the evil that drives a person to murder. Evidence oft he Devil: a herelip, a snaggletooth, a birthmark; some small outer defect. There must be a warning, some way of knowing, so that honest people could keep their guard.

They see I've got a head on my shoulders, and believe a thinking woman cannot be trusted.

It's a lie. Man has created God out of fear of dying.

I cannot think of what it was not to love him. To look at him and realise I had found what I had not known I was hungering for. A hunger so deep, so capable of driving me into the night, that it terrified me.

I have made a mistake. They condemn me to death and I ask for a boy to coach me for it. A red-headed boy, who gobbles his buttered bread and toddles to his horse with the seat of his pants wet, this is the young man they hope will get me on my knees, full of prayer. This is the young man I hope will be able to help me, although with what and how I cannot think.

It's not fair. People claim to know you through the things you've done, and not by sitting down and listening to you speak for yourself.

A bubble of fear passes up my spine. It's the feeling of standing on ice and suddenly hearing it crack under your weight - both thrilling and terrifying together.

I could flee to the heath. Show them that they cannot keep me locked up, that I am a thief of time and will steal the hours denied to me!

If I believed everything everyone had ever told me about my family I'd be a sight more miserable than I am now

She invented her own language to say what everyone else could only feel.

I really hate the term 'historical novel' - it reminds me of bodice-rippers. But I'm hooked on research, and I really, really enjoy it.

I had expected that at some point during the first draft a light would go on, and I would understand, finally, how to write a book. This never happened. The process was akin to blindly walking in the dark, feeling my way only by touch, and only recognising dead ends when I smacked into them.

Some folks are born different, Nance. They are born on the outside of things, with skin a little a thinner, eyes a little keener to what goes unnoticed by most. Their hearts swallow more blood than ordinary hearts; the river runs differently for them.

Most writers are drawn to what is unknown, rather than what is clear in any tale.

Poverty scrapes these homes down until they all look the same, and they all have in common the absence of things that ought to be there. I might as well have been at one place all my life.

I used to have 20/20 vision, believe it or not; that's gone because of all the reading I did when I wasn't supposed to, reading in the back of a car, waiting for each street light to go past so I could grab another sentence.

Endless days of dark indoors and hateful glances are enough to set a rime on anyone's bones.

Up in the highlands blizzards howl like the widows of fishermen and the wind blisters the skin off your face. Winter comes like a punch in the dark. The uninhabited places are as cruel as any executioner.

I might have starved to death. I would be mud-slick, stuffed to the guts with cold and hopelessness, and my body might know it was doomed and give up on its own. That would be better than idly winding wool on a snowy day, waiting for someone to kill me.

To know what a person has done, and to know who a person is, are very different things.

No doves come from ravens' eggs

How hidden the heart, Nance thought. How frightened we are of being known, and yet how desperately we long for it.

I dreamt of the execution block last night. I dreamt I was alone and crawling through the snow towards the dark stump. My hands and knees were numb from the ice, but I had no choice.
When I came upon the block, its surface was vast and smooth. I could smell the wood. It had none of the saltiness of driftwood, but was like bleeding sap, like blood. Sweeter, heavier.
In my dream I dragged myself up and held my head above it. It began to snow, and I thought to myself: "This is the silence before the drop." And then I wondered at the stump being there, the tree it might have been, when trees do not grow here. There is too much silence, I thought in my dream. Too many stones.
So I addressed the wood out loud. I said: "I will water you as though you still lived." And at this last word I woke.