Kate Morton Quotes

Mother didn't understand that children aren't frightened by stories; that their lives are full of far more frightening things than those contained in fairy tales. ~ Kate Morton

My cheeks burned: with disillusionment, with the feverish afterglow of confrontation, but most hotly with embarrassment. I had perceived a closeness where none existed. ~ Kate Morton

You'll beat this. I know it doesn't feel like it, but you will. You're a survivor."
"I don't want to survive it."
"I know that, too," Nell had said. "And it's fair enough. But sometimes we don't have a choice ... ~ Kate Morton

She says there are stories everywhere and that people who wait for the right one to come along before setting pen to paper end up with very empty pages. ~ Kate Morton

People might think writing is a hard business, but it's nowhere near acting. ~ Kate Morton

They'd fallen into an easy routine, the three of them. Breakfast together in the morning, then Hughie would leave for work and she and Nell would get started in the house. Lil found she liked having a second shadow, enjoyed showing Nell things, explaining how they worked and why. Nell was a big one for asking why-why did the sun hide at night, why didn't the fire flames leap out of the gate, why didn't the river get bored and run the other way?-and Lil loved supplying answers, watching as understanding dawned on Nell's little face. For the first time in her life, Lil felt useful, needed, whole. ~ Kate Morton

She wasn't sure exactly, but she'd known it absolutely: there was more to life, and it was waiting for her. ~ Kate Morton

I don't have many friends, not the living, breathing sort at any rate. And I don't mean that in a sad and lonely way; I'm just not the type of person who accumulates friends or enjoys crowds. I'm good with words, but not spoken kind; I've often thought what a marvelous thing it would be if I could only conduct relationships on paper. And I suppose, in a sense, that's what I do, for I've hundreds of the other sort, the friends contained within bindings, pages after glorious pages of ink, stories that unfold the same way every time but never lose their joy, that take me by the hand and lead me through doorways into worlds of great terror and rapturous delight. Exciting, worthy, reliable companions - full of wise counsel, some of them - but sadly ill-equipped to offer the use of a spare bedroom for a month or two. ~ Kate Morton

You make a life out of what you have, not what you're missing. ~ Kate Morton

She'd filled twelve notebooks and still she hadn't stopped. Indeed, the more she wrote, the louder the stories seemed to grow, swirling in her mind, pressing against her head, anxious for release. She didn't know whether they were any good and in truth she didn't care. They were hers, and writing made them real somehow. ~ Kate Morton

Then he led her to sit by him on a fallen gum trunk, smooth and white, and he leaned to whisper in her ear. Transferred the secret he and her mother had kept for seventeen years. Waited for the flicker of recognition, the minute shift in expression as she registered what he was telling her. Watched as the bottom fell out of her world and the person she had been vanished in an instant. ~ Kate Morton

I sometimes feel my entire life is a series of accidents and chances- not that I am complaining. One can be very happy having relinquished all expectation of control. ~ Kate Morton

The thing she valued high above the rest, was his strength of character. Stephen Nicolson had the courage of his convictions: he would never let his lover bend his will, and Dorothy liked that; there was a danger, she thought, in the sort of loving that made people act against type. ~ Kate Morton

Odd snatches of memory, more like dreams. ~ Kate Morton

And I thought -not for the first time- what a true and simple pleasure it was, to be inside and sated when the cold and the stalkless dark spread out across the world. ~ Kate Morton

True love, it's like an illness. I never understood it before. In books and plays. Poems. I never understood what drove otherwise intelligent, right-thinking people to do such extravagant, irrational things. Now I do. It's an illness. You can catch it when you least expect. There's no known cure. And sometimes, in its most extreme, it's fatal. ~ Kate Morton

Love makes people do cruel things ~ Kate Morton

Frailty begot frailty. Nothing caused lightheadedness so surely as day after day of stifling confinement. ~ Kate Morton

Place is a doorway through which one steps across time. ~ Kate Morton

There were moments in which a person reached a crossroads, when something happened, out of the blue, to change the course of life's events. ~ Kate Morton

The Princess was never heard to complain, for she was a true Princess with a pure heart. The happiest folk are those that are busy, for their minds are starved of time to seek out woe. Thus did the Princess grow up contented. ~ Kate Morton

It was a garden, a walled garden. Overgrown but with beautiful bones visible still. Someone had cared for this garden once. The remains of two paths snaked back and forth, intertwined like the lacing on an Irish dancing shoe. Fruit trees had been espaliered around the sides, and wires zigzagged from the top of one wall to the top of another. Hungry, wisteria branches had woven themselves around to form a sort of canopy.
Against the southern wall, an ancient and knobbled tree was growing. Cassandra went closer. It was the apple tree, she realized, the one whose bough had reached over the wall. She lifted her hand to touch one of the golden fruit. The tree was about sixteen feet high and shaped like the Japanese bonsai plant Nell had given Cassandra for her twelfth birthday. ~ Kate Morton

The happiest folk are those that are busy, for their minds are starved of time to seek out woe. ~ Kate Morton

life wasn't a fairy tale and there were instances when one couldn't have everything one wanted, not at the same time. As ~ Kate Morton

It's a cruel, ironical art, photography. The dragging of captured moments into the future; moments that should have been allowed to evaporate with the past, should exist only in memories glimpsed through the fog of events that came after. Photography forces us to see people before their future weighed down on them. Before they knew their endings. ~ Kate Morton

Rose sighed softly, in a way that seemed to signal a close to the conversation. "I love him, Mamma."
Adeline closed her eyes. Youth! What chance had the most reasonable arguments against the arrogant power of those three words? That her daughter, her precious prize, should utter them so easily, and about such a one as he!
"And he loves me, Mamma, he told me so."
Adeline's heart tightened with fear. Darling girl, blinded by foolish thoughts of love. How to tell her that the hearts of men were not so easily won. If won, rarely kept.
"You'll see," Rose said. "I shall live happily ever after. ~ Kate Morton

I can't imagine facing the end of the day without a story to drop into on my way towards sleep. ~ Kate Morton

You will know your job is done well when it goes unnoticed, that you have succeeded when you are unnoticed. ~ Kate Morton

But history is a faithless teller whose cruel recourse to hindsight makes fools of its actors. ~ Kate Morton

We are traveling each towards his sunset. ~ Kate Morton

And Juniper had understood, somehow, that in Tom she'd found the person who could balance her, and that more than anything, to fall in love was to be caught, to be saved ... ~ Kate Morton

I found myself wondering at the impermanence of things. One day, I thought, people will have forgotten any of this happened. This war, these deaths, this demolition. Oh, not for some time, but eventually it will fade. Take its place amongst the layers of the past. Its savagery and horrors replaced in popular imagination by others still to come. ~ Kate Morton

The simplest falsehoods are the strongest. ~ Kate Morton

Love is like that: insistent, sure, persuasive. It silences easily all whispers of misgiving. ~ Kate Morton

Oh, Grey, no one really likes keeping secrets. The only thing that makes a secret fun is knowing that you weren't supposed to tell it. ~ Kate Morton

It was true what people said, that when one became old (and how sneakily that happened, how sly time was), memories of the long-ago past, repressed for decades, were suddenly bright and clear. A ~ Kate Morton

ALL HOUSES have hearts; hearts that have loved, hearts that have billowed with contentment, hearts that have been broken. ~ Kate Morton

Dolly held the letter tightly and, with a final nod of resolution, started towards her new life, no idea what the future might bring, but determined, suddenly, to meet it. ~ Kate Morton

I was pulled back together by the arrival of my first visitor. And as my name, my life, my history was buried, I who had once dreamed of captured light found that I had become captured light itself. ~ Kate Morton

And then he was kissing her, and she was struck by his nearness, his solidity, his smell. It was of the garden and the earth and the sun. When Cassandra opened her eyes, she realized she was crying. She wasn't sad, though, these were the tears of being found, of having come home after a long time away. ~ Kate Morton

Memory is a cruel mistress with whom we all must learn to dance. ~ Kate Morton

Round and round the questions flew, until finally I found myself standing at the open door of a bookshop. It's natural in times of great perplexity, I think, to seek out the familiar, and the high shelves and long rows of neatly lined-up spines were immensely reassuring. Amid the smell of ink and binding, the dusty motes in beams of strained sunlight, the embrace of warm, tranquil air, I felt that I could breathe more easily. ~ Kate Morton

The woman in whose body I had grown, in whose house I'd been raised was, in some vital ways, a stranger to me. I'd gone thirty years without ascribing her any more dimension than the paper dollies I'd played with as a girl with the pasted on smiles and the folding tab dresses. ~ Kate Morton

On Radcliffe's headstone, in smaller text beneath his name, was written, Here lieth one who sought truth and light and saw beauty in all things, 1842-1882. Leonard [Gilbert] found himself staring as he often did at the dash between the dates. Within that lichen-laced mark there lay the entire life of a man: his childhood, his loves, his losses and fears, all reduced to a single chiseled line on a piece of stone in a quiet churchyard at the end of a country lane. Leonard wasn't sure whether the thought was comforting or distressing; his opinion changed, depending on the day. ~ Kate Morton

Those afternoons in the library, breathing the stale sun-warmed dust of a thousand stories (accented by the collective mildew of a hundred years of rising damp), had been enchanted. Two decades ago now, and yet here, on the No. 168 bus towards Hampstead Heath, Peter was beset with an almost bodily sense of being back there. His lips twitched with the memory of being nine years old and lanky as a foal. His mood lifted as he remembered how large, how filled with possibilities, and yet, at once, how safe and navigable the world had seemed when he was shut within those four walls . ~ Kate Morton

To abandon a child, she had once said to someone, when she thought Cassandra couldn't hear, was an act so cold, so careless, it refused forgiveness. ~ Kate Morton

In retrospect, it seems like everything in my life led to me becoming a writer. I just didn't realise it at the time. ~ Kate Morton

Mr. Llewellyn, on the other hand, said there were worse things in life than a temper, that it only proved one had an opinion. ~ Kate Morton

In the courtyard, jasmine sugared the air, great white sprays tumbling from the top of a wooden arbor at the side of the lawn. Huge goldfish swam slowly near the surface of the pool, listing their plump bodies backwards and forwards to court the afternoon sun. It was heavenly, but I didn't stick around; a distant band of trees was calling to me and I wove my way towards it, through the meadow dusted with buttercups, self-sown amid the long grass. Although it wasn't quite summer, the day was warm, the air dry, and by the time I reached the trees my hairline was laced with perspiration.
I spread the rug in a patch of dappled light and kicked off my shoes. Somewhere nearby a shallow brook chattered over stones and butterflies sailed the breeze. The blanket smelled reassuringly of laundry flakes and squashed leaves, and when I sat down the tall meadow grasses enclosed me so I felt utterly alone. ~ Kate Morton

As if I hadn't spent a lifetime pretending to forget. ~ Kate Morton

When reason sleeps, the monsters of repression will emerge. ~ Kate Morton

Once again she was struck by a sense of profound familiarity. She knew this place. In the story that her mother used to tell, the house had been a literal gateway to another world; for Elodie, though, curled up in her mother's arms, breathing in the exotic fragrance of narcissus that she wore, the story itself had been a gateway, an incantation that carried her away from the here and now and into the land of imagination. After her mother's death, the world of the story had become her secret place. Whether at lunchtime in her new school, or at home in the long, quiet afternoons, or at night when the darkness threatened suffocation, all she had to do was hide herself away and close her eyes and she could cross the river, brave the woods, and enter the enchanted house... ~ Kate Morton

I sound contemptuous, but I am not. I am interested
intrigued even
by the way time erases real lives, leaving only vague imprints. Blood and spirit fade away so that only names and dates remain. ~ Kate Morton

My thoughts swim. Back and forth, in and out, across the tides of history ~ Kate Morton

It is a beautiful March morning. The pink gillyflowers beneath my window are in bloom, filling the room with their sweet and heady scent. If I lean close to the windowsill and peer down at the garden bed, I can see the outermost petals, bright with sun. The peach blossom will be next, then the jasmine. Each year it is the same, will continue to be the same for years to come. Long after I am here to enjoy them. Eternally fresh, eternally hopeful, always ingenuous. ~ Kate Morton

The folk of Riverton have all been dead so long. While age has withered me, they remain eternally youthful, eternally beautiful. There now. I am becoming maudlin and romantic. For they are neither young nor beautiful. They are dead. Buried. Nothing. Mere figments that flit within the memories of those they once knew. But of course, those who live in memories are never really dead. The first time ~ Kate Morton

They had money, but don't you go talking about class. ~ Kate Morton

difference between tales and truth, ~ Kate Morton

Will history remember us, I wonder? I do hope so - to imagine that one might do something, touch an event somehow, & thereby transcend the bounds of a single human lifetime! ~ Kate Morton

Free as a bird' was the expression, and yet they weren't free at all, not as far as Saffy could tell: they were bound to one another by their habits, their seasonal needs, their biology, their nature, their birth. No freer than anyone else. Still, they knew the exhilaration of flight. ~ Kate Morton

Cassandra wondered at the mind's cruel ability to toss up flecks of the past. Why, as she neared her life's end, her grandmother's head should ring with the voices of people long since gone. Was it always this way? Did those with passage booked on death's silent ship always scan the dock for faces of the long-departed? ~ Kate Morton

And time thickened so that the seconds passed like years. ~ Kate Morton

I'm just titivating our dinner. ~ Kate Morton

I mean that some people have a light inside them, a facility for inquiry and interest and engagement, that cannot be fabricated and cannot be counterfeited by the artist, no matter his or her skill. ~ Kate Morton

There was a strong but not unpleasant smell- moist earth, decomposing leaf matter, new flowers beginning to catch the day's sun- and great fat bumblebees were busy already collecting pollen from a profusion of small pink and white blooms. Blackberries: Sadie surprised herself by dredging up the knowledge. They were blackberry flowers, and in a few months' time the bushes would be heavy with fruit. ~ Kate Morton

Nell was not one for friends and had never hidden her distaste for most other humans, their neurotic compulsion for the acquisition of allies. ~ Kate Morton

There was no going back. Time only moved in one direction. And it didn't stop. It never stopped moving, not even to let a person think. The only way back was in one's memories. ~ Kate Morton

Strange that in the day of tumult, it should be something so innocuous as a dribble of water that prompts a person to tears. ~ Kate Morton

A noise, and the past was chased away, dispersed into the shadows like smoke by the brighter, louder present. ~ Kate Morton

I want to be independent. To meet interesting people ... I just mean new people with clever things to say. Things I've never heard before. I want to be free. Open to whatever adventure comes along and sweeps me off my feet. ~ Kate Morton

she abhorred the expression Everything happens for a reason. Certainly there were consequences to everything that happened, but that was an entirely different prospect. ~ Kate Morton

Cassandra always hid when she read, though she never quite knew why. It was as if she couldn't shake the guilty suspicion that she was being lazy, that surrendering herself so completely to something so enjoyable must surely be wrong. But surrender she did. Let herself drop through the rabbit hole and into a tale of magic and mystery ... ~ Kate Morton

Rejection is a cancer, Edie. It eats away at a person. ~ Kate Morton

I read a lot ... I love books. I work with books. Books are my life. ~ Kate Morton

Don't slide down the rabbit hole. The way down is a breeze, but climbing back's a battle. ~ Kate Morton

Life was like that, doors of possibility constantly opening and closing as one blindly made one's way through. ~ Kate Morton

All her life, Alice had been interested in people. She didn't always like them, she rarely sought their company for reasons of social fulfillment, but she did find them fascinating. And there was nowhere better for seeing people than in the rabbit warrens of the Underground. All of London passed through those tunnels, a steady flow of humanity in its many weird and wonderful forms, and among them Alice slipped like a ghost. ~ Kate Morton

Lil had always believed that a person's duty was to make the best of the hand they were dealt. No use wondering what might have been, she used to say, all that matters is what is. ~ Kate Morton

I understood somehow that certain images, certain sounds, could not be shared and could not be lost. ~ Kate Morton

It is up to you now to fill your mind with all of the knowledge that the world and its brightest scholars have acquired and published. There will come a time, I know, when women will have the same opportunity afforded men. How can it not come to pass when women are the smarter and more numerous? Until then, you must take control of your own destiny. Read, remember, think. ~ Kate Morton

They were young; time hadn't yet rubbed at them, polishing their differences and sharpening their opinions ... ~ Kate Morton

Sunlight was everywhere, glittering gold off the bright green leaves of the garden. A blackcap, concealed within the foliage of a nearby willow, sang a sweet fanfare and a pair of mallards fought over a particularly juicy snail. The orchestra was rehearsing a dance number and music skimmed across the surface of the lake. How lucky they were to get a day like this one! After weeks of agonizing, of their studying the dawn, of consulting Those Who Ought to Know, the sun had risen, burning off any lingering cloud, just as it should on Midsummer's Eve. The evening would be warm, the breeze light, the party as bewitching as ever. ~ Kate Morton

---All that matters to me are people and experience. Connections - that's the thing. That flicker of electricity between people, the invisible tie. ~ Kate Morton

There were so many aspects of Eleanor her daughters didn't know. She took them out sometimes, those hidden traits, and turned them over, inspecting and admiring from all sides, as if they were precious seed pearls. And then she wrapped them up again safely and tucked them away. She would never reveal them again because then she'd have to explain why she'd changed. ~ Kate Morton

But the night times have a way of encouraging extremes ~ Kate Morton

The Latter, I can tell, is added for my benefit. An assumption that the elderly cannot help but be impressed by the old fashioned. ~ Kate Morton

That was the nature of history, of course: notional, partial, unknowable, a record made by the victors. ~ Kate Morton

I've heard it said that children born to stressful times never shake the air of woe ... ~ Kate Morton

May your past be a pleasant memory, Your future filled with delight and mystery, Your now a glorious moment, That fills your life with deep contentment. ~ Kate Morton

I know what it meant. I worked it out myself. I've been reading about it. It was a metaphorical death. Sometimes the cards speak in metaphors. It's me. I'm dead on the inside, I've felt it for a long time. As if I died and everything that's happening is someone else's strange and awful dream. ~ Kate Morton

Better to lose oneself in action than to wither in despair. ~ Kate Morton

How was a boy who'd tasted poverty ever expected to choose the poorer road? ~ Kate Morton

...home is a magnet that lures back even its most abstracted children. But whether tomorrow or years from now, I cannot guess. ~ Kate Morton

They say everyone needs something to love. ~ Kate Morton

we'd meet at Lyons Corner House," she whispered, hurrying ~ Kate Morton

Always remember, with a strong enough will, even the weak can wield great power. ~ Kate Morton

Human beings had ever been captivated by the great burning sphere in the heavens, he said, 'for not only does it give us warmth, but also light. The foremost craving of our souls. ~ Kate Morton

Darling girl, blinded by foolish thoughts of love. How to tell her that the hearts of men were not so easily won. If won, rarely kept. ~ Kate Morton

Had any poet adequately described the wretched ugliness of a loved one turned inside out with grief? ~ Kate Morton

She was a bookish person who'd never been exposed to books: she was gifted with astute powers of observation, but her thoughts and feelings weren't filtered through those that she'd read, those that had been written before. She had a unique way of seeing the world and a manner of expressing herself that caught Juniper unawares and made her laugh and think and feel things anew. ~ Kate Morton