Jo > Books: soul-sister-heroine (59) ×

“Are you listening?”
“Yes,” said Tiffany.
“Good. Now… if you trust in yourself…”
“Yes?”
“… and believe in you dreams…”
“Yes?”
“…and follow your star…” Miss Tick went on.
“Yes?”
“…you’ll still be beaten by people who spent their time working hard and learning things and weren’t so lazy. Goodbye.”

“…did the book have any adventures for people who had brown eyes and brown hair? No, no, no… it was blond people with blue eyes and the redheads with green eyes who got the stories. If you had brown hair you were probably just a servant or a woodcutter or something. Or a dairymaid. Well, that was not going to happen, even if she was good at cheese. She couldn’t be the prince, and she’d never be a princess, and she didn’t want to be a woodcutter, so she’d be the witch and know things…”

“I had a moment of looking at it, like Amona might have, seeing it for the first time and thinking how lovely it was, too. But then I retreated back into myself and could see only its faults.”

“I knew I’d never have another moment like this. Just a single place in time where everything had come together to breathe in harmony. Time slowed and I had gathered all her restless strands in my hands; where I had come from, where I was and where I was going was one long thread as I emerged to make my way into the world.”

“The only living example of a Romeo in the modern world.”

“Not being able to speak Bengali makes me feel like I’m trying to cross a bridge but can only get so far, because to reach the other side it’s not just the words you need to understand, but also the tones and colours; the way of thinking and seeing the world that are all locked inside the languages.”

“I think these stories about where you come from and the history of your own family help you to see where you stand in the world.”

~~~

“I nod at him and look down, down, down to the crater below, swirling with dust.
‘What is that?’ I ask him.
‘History…takes time to settle.”

“I thought that getting to this part was the challenge. In books and movies, the stories always end when the two people finally have their romantic kiss. The happily-ever-after part is just assumed.”

“In our house, and in our comfortable little village, despite how hilly it was, you could almost forget we lived in Yorkshire. But the Dales were different. Wild. Dangerous. As massive, craggy hills rose high before us and a rock chasm opened up beside the road.... a hawk soared over our carriage, letting out a high, piercing cry of defiance, and I wanted to jump out of the window and fly with it.”

“To everyone who loves a long-secret romance, revealed at last.”

“Listen, I’m not really supposed to be this far from home. I just happened to be out hiking when I saw your ship come down.”
“Out hiking?” Deryn said. “In all this barking snow? At night?”
“Yes. I often hike on the glacier at night.”
“With medicine?”

“In the triptych of mirrors was the image of him standing there, again and again, into infinity, reaching out forlornly into another world, a world in which Mam had gone and the living could not follow.”

“He wasn’t like the blacksmith in Mam’s old song. Unlike him, he’d never made any promises. He’d never written a letter. He was maybe a heart-breaking smooth operator… but he’d never pretended anything else.”

“They made me dizzy. But not as dizzy as you made me, Shell. I still remember.”