Karen Maitland Quotes

I gazed back up the dome of the heavens painted on the ceiling above. It was only then that I noticed somethings else in the painted sky, directly above the bed. The sun, moon and stars were positioned in swirls around some object in the centre, like angels clustered round the throne of God. But this was no throne, nor was it God. [Vincent]

The monk, Gregory the Great, tells how a nun, in her greed, ate a lettuce without first making the sign of the cross to protect herself against the evil spirits that hide between its leaves, and so she became possessed by a demon. Greetwell

Why do mortals think that suffering is a coin with which they can buy justice or salvation? ... life is a steal if you are a talented thief, and if you are not, then you may suffer all you please but if will buy you nothing but pain.

If I had killed someone, it would certainly have come as no surprise to him, since he was always telling I'd end my days on the gallows. [Vincent]

Home is the place you return to when you have finally lost your soul. Home is the place where life is born, not the place of your birth, but the place where you seek rebirth. When you no longer have to remember which tale of your own past is true and which is an invention, when you know that you are an invention, then is the time to seek out your home. Perhaps only when you have come to understand that can you finally reach home.

Yet the ink on the page was ancient, faded. (...) Fresh iron-gall ink was as black as Beelzebub's beards.

We forget how bawdy and brutal the Middle Ages were.

His gaze was fixed so intently on me that, though I had been determined to look him in the eye as his equal, I found myself having to stare down at the corner of the table in order to stammer out a word.

That is the art of being a good librarian. You must always be able to lay hands on anything your master requires. Keep everything, chiot, throw away nothing, however insignificant or old. You never know when it might be needed. "The cornerstone which the builders rejected", that is what an ancient book is, Vincent, a cornerstone. Many might consider it worthless, but one day it may prove to be the very stone upon which the whole house stands. Words, Vincent, always hoard the written words as if they were royal jewels. [Gaspard]

She was like an outline of the painting of the Holy Virgin that an artist has sketched in black and white, but not yet filled with colour.

Miracles are like murders. After the first one, each becomes easier than the last for, with each success, the miracle-worker's certainty in himself becomes stronger.

There was a new king and his name was pestilence. And he had created a new law - thou shalt do anything to survive.

Sometimes mercy is not a kindness and pity is not love.

You've heard tales of beauty and the beast. How a fair maid falls in love with a monster and sees the beauty of his soul beneath the hideous visage. But you've never heard the tale of the handsome man falling for the monstrous woman and finding joy in her love, because it doesn't happen, not even in a story-teller's tale.

Maybe that is what Hell is, being trapped for ever in your own nightmares and never being able to wake. [Gisa]

You will sleep till the stars fall from the heavens ans the seas turn into dust. [Father Arthmael]

The earth makes creatures well again. When you are sick you are put to bed, and when you are very sick, you are put into the earth to make you well.

I have been wronged by so many men that I find it hard to trust anyone and see only greed and malice in every heart. [Sylvian]

Are you finally admitting that you can sell a man hope? Have I at last succeeded in teaching you that?'
He laughed and flicked his whip again, harder. He was in a better mood than I had seen for months.
'No, Camelot, not hope. Hope is for the weak; have I not succeeded in teaching you that? To hope is to put your faith in others and in things outside yourself; that way lies betrayal and disappointment. They didn't want hope, Camelot; they wanted certainty. What a man needs is the certainty that he is right, no selfdoubt, no fleeting thought that he might be wrong or misled. Absolute certainty that he is right, that's what gives a man the confidence and power to do whatever he wants and to take whatever he wants from this world and the next.

The day that I left my home, I had prayed that my children would forget me. I wanted to spare them the pain of remembering. But that night, as I crouched in the white mist, waiting, I knew more than anything that I wanted them to remember, I wanted desperately to go on living in someone's memory. If we are not remembered, we are more than dead, for it is as if we had never lived.

A child's fingernails should never be cut in the first year. The mother must bite them off or he'll become a thief. But when they are first cut at a year old, they must be buried under an ash tree so that witches can't take them and cause the child harm. Lincoln

They all wait impatiently for the blessed cloak of darkness to cover their wretched little deeds, but the sun will not be hurried by the whims of men.

The essence of the moon, gathered by a virgin, added to the death of innocence. [Sylvian]

Besides, I'm not sure they let ferrets into Heaven and I'd miss old Mavet.

There is no higher soul than that of man and it is from man that the stone of eternal life must be drawn. Therefore the book that contains the knowledge of that stone must be wrapped in human flesh. No matter how sick a man might be, no matter what his deformities, his healing lies within these pages. [Sylvian]

Both the vessel and the receiver must be chosen carefully according to the nature of the ting to be distilled.

In 1255, Louis IX of France presented an elephant to Henry III of England to add to the menagerie of exotic animals he kept in the Tower of London.

For a moment there was an expression of greedy excitement in his eyes, like you see in the eyes of men when they are looking at woman who arouses their lust.

On the other hand, curiosity was eating me up, and curiosity is a demon who will not relinqish its hold on you until its voracious appetite has been satisfied.

In the Middle Ages, I think the French kings murdered slightly fewer of their family members than the English kings, though I haven't actually counted the heads.

You are the sacred consummation of the sun and the moon and the shadow and you will become the poison of death. [Sylvian]

Pay heed, my darlings, and always take the greatest care over the company you keep in life: if death strikes you without warning, you may be stuck with them til the moon turns to blood and wouldn't that be a torment?

Reckon it's best if you don't have anyone you care about; then it can't hurt you. Don't have to be afraid of losing someone if you no one to lose.

On the shelves of her uncle's shop a jar contains the powdered skull of a suicide, a well-known cure for the falling sickness.

Sometimes I feared I'd turn into a bat myself, stuck up there night and day, scrathing away. [Vincent]

A witch cannot die until her familiars or imps are dead. If a witch desires to put an end to her suffering she must call each familiar by name and order it to die. Then, when the last is dead, she too will die. Greetwell Edward

I was about to add it was as likely a friendship as Lucifer and the Archangel Michael sharing a jug of ale, but I stopped myself. [Vincent]

Hope itself is always genuine. It's only what it's placed in that can prove to be false.

They were just the ordinary sounds of of people beginning their day, silly raucous, discordant, but they were the most beautiful sounds on earth, the sounds of living people.

Some of what you see, my child, may make you affraid, revolted even, but you must remember that all life is born of corruption. The reborn can rise only from death and decay. Resurrection springs only from the tomb.

If they don't utter the words, it cannot happen. But words, once spoken, seal a man or maid for life or death. [Gisa]

There was a man with the sun in the place of his head and a woman with the moon instead of a face.

I'd love to own Newstead, partly because it belonged to Lord Byron, but also to try to uncover what dark secrets really lie beneath.

We couldn't bring the sheep back to life, so there was nothing for it but to eat the evidence.

I truly believed that the creation of hope was the greatest of all the arts, the noblest of all the lies.

She's one of the fay folk; half of her is a woman, but she has the legs of a goat, except no one ever sees those for she hides them under her robes. She sleeps deep in the black pool while it's day, but at witch-light she rises in robes green as pond weed, glowing in the dark with her silver hair trailing behind her. She's so beautiful any man who glimpses her can't take his eyes off her. but that's just her witchery for inside she's really a withered old crone with a heart as black as a marsh pool.

Mortals are strange creatures; they cling to life even when that life is nothing but pain and misery, yet they will throw away their lives for a word, an idea, even a flag. Wolves piss to mark their territory. Smell the stench of another pack and wolves will quietly slink away. Why risk a fight when it might maim or kill you? But humans will slash and slaughter in their thousands to plant their little piece of cloth on a hill or hang it from a battlement.

Hope may be an illusion, but it's what keeps you from jumping in the river or swallowing hemlock. Hope is a beautiful lie and it requires talent to create it for others. And back then on that day when they say it first began, I truly believed that the creation of hope was the greatest of all the arts, the noblest of all the lies. I was wrong.

People sense that our reaction to phenomena such as epidemics or religious war is not that different to how we reacted to plagues or to battles a millennia ago.

My brave husband came back from fighting the Turks and brought me a robe of silk and a necklace of human teeth. He sat up at night by his hearth telling tales of battle. Apparently the Turks are ten times more ferocious and fearless than the Scots. 'Perhaps we should invite them here to drive the Scots back,' I suggested, and he laughed, but he didn't kiss me. That's when I learned the truth about scars. A man with a battle scar is a veteran, a hero, given an honoured place at the fire. Small boys gaze up fascinated, dreaming of winning such badges of courage. Maids caress his thighs with their buttocks as they bend over to mull his ale. Women cluck and cosset, and if in time other men grow a little weary of that tale of honour, then they call for his cup to be filled again and again until he is fuddled and dozes quietly in the warmth of the embers.

But a scarred woman is not encouraged to tell her story. Boys jeer and mothers cross themselves. Pregnant women will not come close for fear that if they look upon such a sight, the infant in their belly will be marked. You've heard of the tales of Beauty and the Beast no doubt. How a fair maid falls in love with a monster and sees the beauty of his soul beneath the hideous visage. But you've never heard the tale of the handsome man falling for the monstrous woman and finding joy in her love, because it doesn't happen, not even in fairytales. The truth is that the scarred woman's husband buys her a good thick veil and

They say despair is a terrible thing, but hope is worse: it keeps you shackled for ever, like a dog in a wheel, always running, but never able to go anywhere, save round and round.

Et moriendo docebo - I will teach you how to die.

It was a mark of just how saintly I was that I hand't smothered him to death long ago. [Vincent]

You have already excommunicated half the village because they will not pay their tithes. So why wouldn't they come to us? Can you excommunicate them twice over? As for the sick, most are here because the Mother Church in her great charity has already damned them and driven them out. The churches are emptier than a pauper's purse and little wonder, for men get more solace from the alewives than from their priests. More stand now outside your church than within it. What difference does it make if you forbid them burial in your churchyard, since they cannot afford the soul-scot you charge them to be buried there? Those who still look to God make their prayers far away from the church, where the air is sweeter and their voices are not smothered beneath your hypocrisy and greed.

If anyone fears theft, let him scatter caraway seeds among those things of value and if a thief should try to steal them he shall be held in that place. Likewise, if a woman fears her husband may stray she should sew caraway seeds into his clothes, so that no other woman may steal him away from her. Mistress

The hand of a man hanged on the gallows has healing powers. If it be stroked across a sore, tumour or goitre, the evil shall pass to the dead man and the sick will be cured. If a woman be barren she should go to a gibbet at night, climb up and reach through the bars and draw the corpse's hand across her womb three or seven times and her curse will leave her. Lincoln

He was a good-looking man, but then rogues usually are

How long have I been here? I haven't been able to tell day from night with eyes covered." [Vincent]
"Nor could you anyway, in here. There are no windows and the walls are so thick you cannot hear the church bells. It was built so that the one who prayed here would not be aware of the passage of time or the world outside. When we reach into the higher planes, we pass beyond time. Only the body is governed by time, but that too, I will change". [Sylvian]

We had taken her for granted until she was no longer there, like an ancient tree you don't truly see until it is felled, and then only from the empty space in the sky do you suddenly grasp its stature.