Susan Fletcher Quotes

I've heard fate talked of. It's not a word I use. I think we make our own choices. I think how we live our lives is our own doing, and we cannot fully hope on dreams and stars. But dreams and stars can guide us, perhaps. And the heart's voice is a strong one. Always is.
Your heart's voice is your true voice. It is easy to ignore it, for sometimes it says what we'd rather it did not - and it is so hard to risk the things we have. But what life are we living, if we don't live by our hearts? Not a true one. And the person living it is not the true you.

Fear is the price we pay for love.

Oh there is always sadness. Always grief. I have heard folks say this life could be all hardship and sorrow, if we let it be. If we let our hearts seal over.

Which people take the time to care for their souls, these days? I reckon not many. But ... hear this: I think that maybe in our lives
in our scrabbling for food, in the washing of our bodies and warming of them, in our small daily battles
we can forget our souls. We do not tend to them, as if they matter less. But I don't think they matter less.

They are two brothers whose language to each other is mostly the farm, and the weather, or sport, but it is rarely a language that talks of the past or of what they think and feel. They sit, like stones.

It is an extraordinary world - full of love, grief, coincidence - and we shall never understand it. We should never try to. We should only be grateful for it. I reckon we should love, breathe, and say all will be well and believe it. And we should share our best stories, as often as we can.

Grieving needs space, and it needs so much time. And it needs to be done; it cannot be trodden round or not looked in the eye.

It is evening. The moon is small, and new. There are stars, and a stream's sound, and I can hear the wings of insects, in the dark. I think what gifts we are given, such gifts
every day.

I had thought the second sight was a dream, or a vision, a sudden rush of breath. I had thought that the truth might step into my hut, like a ghost, and say its name
that I might find it, if I sought it. But, I was wrong.
You will know it, in time ...
I knew it, now. And I knew it was a feeling
deep, in the chest, or in more than the chest. It was a feeling in the bones, in the womb, in the soul.

Tell me about Stackpole then...
Like I am now, but smaller.

She never choose anything except her husband, her motherhood and her trust in God. The rest of it was put upon her and she bears it and does her best.

Rona of the hurting heart. We've all had one of those. We have all picked at the seal of things that have been closed against us, and locked.

Isn't it the rarest thing? Never mind the whale migrations, or total eclipses of suns and moons: love that lasts, and is returned in equal measure, is the rarest thing she knows of.

I cannot talk of the power of want, of how much desire can do. I don't think it can be measured. I think want is forgotten too quickly or dismissed as being worth far less than the other feelings -love, hate, envy. But to want something ... To wish for it so much that you think you cannot last, your heart and body cannot continue to hunger for something as much as this. It comes from loss. We want what we do not have. We want what we had, but don't now.

But maybe the best thing I learnt was this: that we cannot know a person's soul and nature until we've sat beside them, and talked.

Hope. It is the frailest of words.

If you let words go buzzing out of your mouth like bees, she always told me, they will come back and sting you.

Marjan. I have told him tales of good women and bad women, strong women and weak women, shy women and bold women, clever women and stupid women, honest women and women who betray. I'm hoping that, by living inside their skins while he hears their stories, he'll understand over time that women are not all this way or that way. I'm hoping he'll look at women as he does at men
that you must judge each of us on her own merits, and not condemn us or exalt us only because we belong to a particular sex.

Mostly, she sees the good in the world, the light where there is dark ... She sees beauty where we mostly pass it by. But tonight, she was heavy-hearted. I think sometimes she unfolds all her losses and stares at them, in the dark.

Imagine it. Use all your strength and imagine it exactly. And it will happen that way.

Carefully, she stands. And she runs her hand across the top of Thomasina's gravestone as she leaves, like how, as girls, they would let go of hands - gradually, moving their fingertips over each other's palms, as gently as raindrops. She has done this for sixty-eight years and there is a dip on the stone from this. She has worn the stone down with her loving goodbyes.

The only evil in the world is the one that lies in people - in their pride, and greed, and duty. Remember that.

There are many different words inside a city. The world of the rich and the world of beggars. The world of men and the world behind the veil. The worlds of Muslims and of Christians and of Jews.
If you are a rich woman living inside a harem, the world of a poor Christian beggarman is as foreign as China or Abyssinia.
All the worlds touch at the bazaar. And the other place where they touch is in stories. Shahrazad crossed borders all the time, telling tales of country women and Bedouin sheikhs, of poor fishermen and scheming sultanas, of Jewish doctors and Christian brokers, of India and China and the lands of the jinn.
If we don't share our stories - trading them across our borders as freely as spices and ebony and silk - we will all be strangers forever.

I trusted him like I trusted the sky to stay above my head

Love is too small a word - too small.

There are moments.
You will know them.

I have learnt that nothing stays the same. Today might seem the same as yesterday but no day ever is; we may want no changes to ever come, but changes do, in time. They cannot be helped; it is how the world turns.

God works as he chooses - we have our tests and He has His revelations

What if...? A question we ask to hurt ourselves.

Is that why we give flowers? To express admiration? Sometimes. But there are other reasons. A symbol of love or of commiseration. A way of saying thank you. A mark of respect. Proof we like someone and want them to smile. And we put flowers on graves to say Look, we still think of you. You've left a space behind.

Strange, what the heart can bear. It can carry grief beyond measure. It can bear a weight that is too great to speak of. But a heart can't bear the world. It has its limits ...

The Highland way says it's who you say you love and who you serve, which is of worth. Not some title that is passed down upon you by tradition. That's the English way, and the Lowland way
but who can be born a nobleman? Nobility is earned ... 'Tis our choices that make us.

Those moments that we remember. The tiniest moments or parts of a moment - a tap of a nail against a mug or the sound of a man swallowing, or how the sweeping beam finds the kitchen walls and then leaves them. We count the seconds, he and I.

Love is blind, they say
but isn't it more that love makes us see too much? Isn't it more that love floods our brain with sights and sounds, so that everything looks bigger, brighter, more lovely than ever before?

That was Leah, before the fade came. Before the sea mist of depression rolled in without much warning and dampened her, softened her so that she had less strength. She had always been sensitive - that was the word he'd heard for her and it was the right word. She saddened at the lobsters that Tom hauled ashore; she bruised, as ripe fruits do ...
Still. There is something in Leah. A flash of metal. A piece of grit in the pearl.

But they fly. It is what fledged birds must do, and she's always known that. The nest can't always be full.

He thinks he can see all her grief in her face, all her love and empty days.

The Sultan tapped his tented fingers, staring into the distance. Suddenly, he lunged toward me, took hold of my wrist, and pulled me roughly down to sit on the cushion beside him. "This . . . mermaid," he said through clenched teeth, leaning in so close to me that I could smell the mint on his breath. "The one who sang to the king at night." His voice was fierce, but quiet. I couldn't tell if anyone but me could hear. "How . . ." he began. "How did she think of the king . . . in her heart?"
I glanced quickly up at his face and saw there a look that took me by surprise. An oddly soft, vulnerable, hurting look. The look of a man who might cry out in his sleep at night, like a child. But then the stony mask slid back.
"Did she despise him," the Sultan asked, "for making her sing for her life each night? Did she only pretend affection to save her own skin? Did she . . . loathe him for what he had done before, to his other wives? For his . . . sins?"
"No, my lord," I said softly. "She loved him."
"Do you swear it?" He gripped my wrist harder, until it hurt.
"Yes, my lord. She told me - " I stopped, corrected myself. "She told the mermaid with the broken fin. She said the king - the merman king, my lord - she said that he had a deep hurting inside him. She said that she wanted to soothe him. And when the mermaid with the broken fin . . . questioned how the queen could love him - because of the things you just said, my lord - the queen said, 'I'm not ashamed

We are the Magick
we are. The truest magick in this world is in us ... It is in our movements and in what we say and feel.

I want him to see me as I saw him then. I want him to find me alone at the end of the day with the sun in my hair. I want his heart to buckle, too.

Mr Phipps seemed to think criminality was passed down through the generations like a stutter, or a squint, or in my case red hair.

But you've brought him happiness, Eponine; he is happy because of you - and that was my only comfort as I cried and cried, feeling so lonely, in my house of leaves.

She had a theory that you should try to fill your life with people with wrinkles next to their eyes because it means they've got it right; they've lived and laughed ...

This is the place. I was certain. For the heart knows its home when it finds it, and on finding it, stays there.

And in my head I laid out the stories the islanders told me... the flakes of silver, the seals who are wiser than humans, the girl who floated like a patchwork star.

I hoarded all the stories that reflected the light and dazzled me.

We all have our demons to deal with, Little Pigeon. It's when we cherish them - cradle them to our breasts and feed them, day after day-that's when they curdle our souls.

A man can be beautiful, I see that now. It's not just a woman's term, not a word reserved for romantic, virtuous, elegant things. I don't think beauty is neat anymore. It's unordered. It's unbrushed hair and a torn back pocket. It's bright and strange and lovely, and if I were to paint him, I'd use all the warm colours - ochre, gold, plum, terracotta, scarlet, burnt orange. I want him to see me as I saw him then, I want him to find me alone at the end of the day with the sun in my hair. I want his heart to buckle, too. I want him to stop someone out in the square and say, who's that? Do you know her? Where is she from?"

- from Eve Green's mother's account.
"It is written on a piece of thin, yellow paper, and is folded in half. I like this account. I like it because it's true, she's right. We all want out lovers to see us that way - unaware, natural, serene. We want to change their world with one glance, to stop their breath at the sight of us.

No war. Fight with your pen. Give your battle-cry in ink, and mark your dreams down on a page