Karen Foxlee Quotes

Do you promise?' said Edie, which changed things.

The cool air Edie speaks of? It drifts down off the mountain, unraveling itself through trees, dipping its fingers in the streams. It comes in through the back door and through the windows cast open for it. The fat possums shiver and return to their meals. It lifts up the months on the calendar and leafs through the newspaper pattern in a pile on the table. It fills up the yellow kitchen and overflows into the hallway and spills into the rooms.
Rose closes her eyes again and smiles.

The Main Street is wide, ridiculously wide, as though when it was built, the town was expecting something amazing to arrive, a thousand people to stake their claim to a patch of soggy green land, a huge boat, Titanic-size, on the back of a truck.

All those days had been removed, simply and precisely, whole weeks brimming with cloudless blue skies neatly severed and discarded. We needed Beth's name shouted not whispered.

There's no point being frightened of the night.

Girls are good at running away. It's a fact.

The problem with magic was that it made her feel very alone.

When she stopped kissing him his hand went to her waist to pull her back. the sun beat down on us. The day quivered. The sky was as deep as the ocean. We breathed underwater.

If you ever shoot a great magical owl with an arrow, you should remember this, Ophelia. Everything is connected. If you touch the ground, you touch the tops of trees. If you touch the trees, you touch the wings of birds.

There is a whole week inside each day.

Before everything happened I wished i had double voice box like a song bird so I could sing two songs at once, the way a bird can harmonize with itself. I wanted to sing crystal clear notes. I wanted to sing them one after anther in ascending order. And at the same time I wanted to let another fountain of notes descend from my heart.

I would be a wedge-tailed eagle. I would only live for the joy of flight. I would soar at great heights, on top of the wind. I would be above everything, over the little towns clinging to the highway. I would be a part of everything.

And you might think a name is just a name, nothing but a word, but that is not the case. Your name is tacked to you. Where it has joined you, it has seeped into your skin and into your essence and into your soul. So when they plucked my name from me with their spell, it was as heavy as a rock in their hands but as invisible as the wind, and it wasn't just the memory of my name, but me myself. A tiny part of me that they took and stored away.

I'm really disappointed about how you've turned out, shouted Mum like Beth was a slightly burnt biscuit.

After the kiss some of it still sparkled in the air around her.

Do you know what love is like, Rose? It's like having a sky, a whole sky racing inside you. Four seasons' worth of sky. One minute you are soaring and then you are all thunderclouds and then you are deep with stars and then you are empty.

Everything that she saw glowing during the day seemed tarnished beside the light that was at the heart of the evening. the bleached color of things replaced by a beauty that stole into everything. the pale yellow leaves grew golden. The white gems opened up their hearts and shone.

There's no way to slow it down now it has begun.

Ophelia had never been prophesied before. It made her feel annoyed.

When you are in love, you think nothing will ever be the same but then the tide rushes out and there it is, everything, just as it was.

Wizards, she thought, when she gained her composure. What good were they if they couldn't tell you how to do stuff, if they were always talking in riddles and saying they knew everything before it even happened? It wasn't very helpful.
If she were a wizard, she'd write reports for people. She'd make sure everything was very clear. She'd write, Looking for a magical sword? No problem. Go to the fifth floor, turn left, open a large wooden chest, et cetera, et cetera. She'd have check boxes. Found your magical sword? Place X here.

This is because secrets are terrible things.
Even the simplest ones

The strangest think I have learned is that it's impossible to know what's inside someone. The wizards didn't teach me this, but I have learned it myself. Those who appear tall and straight and very good are sometimes rotten on the inside, and others, huge and clawed and apparently very bad, sometimes contain a pure and sweet form of goodness. The biggest trap is to judge a person by their outer casing. Their skin. Their hair. Their snow-white feathers.

She was running out of the room as fast as she could, with the sword raised before her. She called back to her father. I'll be back soon. I've just got to save the world.

It was only a little piece of knowledge but it felt as shiny and solid as a new twenty-cent piece in my hand to know i could find the thing that was wrong.

It was like a slap. I dont remember her being mean before that. It made Miranda smile. The smile that unlocked something in Beth like a key

There will be nothing to say something terrible has happened, but they will know it all the same. Nothing will be found. Not a trace of the girl in the midnight dress.

Big secrets were catastrophic. However hard you try to hide them, they bob to the surface and you must go over them again and again. They are taken out so often they become worn smooth as a river stone. You have to carry them around you like a baby. The secret grows until you feel like you are a skin that covers it, a thin skin, easily split, ripe

But later, when he found the note, he realized he was very late and had to run.