Emilia Hart > Quotes

“Witch. The word slithers from the mouth like a serpent, drips from the tongue as thick and black as tar. We never thought of ourselves as witches, my mother and I. For this was a word invented by men, a word that brings power to those that speak it, not those that it describes. A word that builds gallows and pyres, turns breathing women into corpses.”
― Emilia Hart, Weyward

“Perhaps one day (...) there will be a safer time, when women could walk the Earth, shining bright with power, and yet live.”
― Emilia Hart, Weyward

“Fiction became a friend as well as a safe harbor, a cocoon to protect her from the outside world and its dangers.”
― Emilia Hart, Weyward

“Everything is made out of magic, leaves and trees, flowers and birds, badgers and foxes and squirrels and people. So it must be all around us.”
― Emilia Hart, Weyward

“Weyward, they called us, when we would not submit, would not bend to their will. But we learned to wear the name with pride.”
― Emilia Hart, Weyward

“A great many things look different from a distance. Truth is like ugliness: you need to be close to see it.”
― Emilia Hart, Weyward

“We never thought of ourselves as witches, my mother and I. For this was a word invented by men, a word that brings power to those who speak it, not those it describes.”
― Emilia Hart, Weyward

“I had nature in my heart, she said. Like she did, and her mother before her. There was something about us---the Weyward women---that bonded us more tightly with the natural world. We can feel it, she said, the same way we feel rage, sorrow, or joy. The animals, the birds, the plants---they let us in, recognizing us as one of their own. That is why roots and leaves yield so easily under our fingers, to form tonics that bring comfort and healing. That is why animals welcome our embrace. Why the crows---the ones who carry the sign---watch over us and do our bidding, why their touch brings our abilities into sharpest relief. Our ancestors---the women who walked these paths before us, before there were words for who they were---did not lie in the barren soil of the churchyard, encased in rotting wood. Instead, the Weyward bones rested in the woods, in the fells, where our flesh fed plants and flowers, where trees wrapped their roots around our skeletons. We did not need stonemasons to carve our names into rock as proof we had existed.
All we needed was to be returned to the wild.
This wildness inside gives us our name. It was men who marked us so, in the time when language was but a shoot curling from the earth. Weyward, they called us, when we would not submit, would not bend to their will. But we learned to wear the name with pride.”
― Emilia Hart, Weyward

“The physician spoke with confidence. He was a man, after all. He had no reason to think he would not be believed.”
― Emilia Hart, Weyward

“Perhaps one day, she said, there would be a safer time. When women could walk the earth, shining bright with power, and yet live.”
― Emilia Hart, Weyward

“The connections between and among women are the most feared, the most problematic, and the most potentially transforming force on the planet. —Adrienne Rich”
― Emilia Hart, Weyward

“Fiction became a friend as well as a safe harbor; a cocoon to protect her from the outside world and its dangers. She could read about Robin Redbreast but she must avoid at all costs the robins that tittered in the back garden.”
― Emilia Hart, Weyward

“He was a man, after all. He had no reason to think he would not be believed.”
― Emilia Hart, Weyward

“She hadn’t expected that love—if this was what she felt—to be so similar to fear.”
― Emilia Hart, Weyward

“I am trying to think of where the beginning is. Who decides where things begin and end? I do not know if time moves in a straight line, or a circle. Here, the years do not pass so much as loop back on themselves: winter becomes spring becomes summer becomes autumn becomes winter again. Sometimes I think that all of time is happening at once.”
― Emilia Hart, Weyward

“She had thought, for a while, that she’d lost the magic of it: the ability to immerse herself in another time, another place. It had felt like forgetting to breathe. But she needn’t have worried. Now, worlds, characters, even sentences linger—burning like beacons in her brain. Reminding her that she’s not alone.”
― Emilia Hart, Weyward

“The panic is rising. Except it isn’t panic, Kate knows now. It never was. The feeling of something trying to get out. Rage, hot and bright in her chest. Not panic. Power.”
― Emilia Hart, Weyward

“December.
The days begin white and glittering with snow---on the roof, the branches of the sycamore, where a robin has taken up residence. It reminds Kate of Robin Redbreast from The Secret Garden---for so many years, her only safe portal to the natural world. Only now does she truly understand her favorite passage, memorized since childhood:
"Everything is made out of magic, leaves and trees, flowers and birds, badgers and foxes and squirrels and people. So it must be all around us."
Often, before she leaves for work, she stand outside to watch the sun catch on the white-frosted plants, searching for the robin's red breast. A spot of color against the stark morning. Sometimes, while she watches it flutter, she feels a tugging inside her womb, as if her daughter is responding to its song, anxious to breach the membrane between her mother's body and the outside world.
The robin is not alone in the garden. Starlings skip over the snow, the winter sun varnishing their necks. At the front of the cottage, fieldfares---distinctive with their tawny feathers---chatter in the hedgerows. And of course, crows. So many that they form their own dark canopy of the sycamore, hooded figures watching.”
― Emilia Hart, Weyward

“She is a Weyward. And she carries another Weyward inside her. She gathers herself together, every cell blazing, and thinks: Now.
The window breaks, a waterfall of sharp sounds. The room grows dark with feathered bodies, shooting through the broken window, the fireplace.
Beaks, claws, and eyes flashing. Feathers brushing her skin. Simon yells, his hand loosening on her throat.
She sucks in the air, falling to her knees, one hand cradling her stomach. Something touches her foot, and she sees a dark tide of spiders spreading across the floor. Birds continue to stream through the window. Insects, too: the azure flicker of damselflies, moths with orange eyes on their wings. Tiny, gossamer mayflies. Bees in a ferocious golden swarm.
She feels something sharp on her shoulder, its claws digging into her flesh. She looks up at blue-black feathers, streaked with white. A crow. The same crow that has watched over her since she arrived. Tears fill her eyes, and she knows in that moment that she is not alone in the cottage. Altha is there, in the spiders that dance across the floor. Violet is there, in the mayflies that glisten and undulate like some great silver snake. And all the other Weyward women, from the first of the line, are there, too.
They have always been with her, and always will be.”
― Emilia Hart, Weyward

“But the sun shone, bright as gold, through my window. I could smell spring on the air: the garden is crowded with daffodils and bluebells now. Even as I write, lambs are being born wet and bewildered, nuzzling at their mothers to get back to that dark, warm place where nothing can hurt them.”
― Emilia Hart, Weyward

“There were bees somewhere---calling out to her, beckoning. She had wandered over to the tree and found the hive, hanging from a branch like a nugget of gold. The bees glimmering, circling. She drew closer, stretched out her arms and grinned as she felt them land, the tickle of their tiny legs against her skin.”
― Emilia Hart, Weyward

“I thought he loved me for myself. But you were right. To him I am but an animal, like those he hunts and puts on display”
― Emilia Hart, Weyward

“I am sure you understand," Father began, looking past Violet at the wall, "that I cannot allow you back into my house after what you have done. I have arranged for you to be taken to a finishing school in Scotland. You will stay there for two years, and after that I will decide what is to be done with you."
Violet heard Graham clear his throat.
"No," she said, before her brother could open his mouth to speak. "That won't be acceptable, I'm afraid, Father."
His jowls slackened with shock. He looked as if she had slapped him.
"I beg your pardon?"
"I won't be going to Scotland. In fact, I won't be going anywhere. I'm staying right here." As she spoke, Violet became aware of a strange simmering sensation, as though electricity was humming beneath her skin. Images flashed in her mind---a crow cutting through the air, wings glittered with snow; the spokes of a wheel spinning. Briefly, she closed her eyes, focusing on the feeling until she could almost see it, glinting gold inside her.
"That is not for you to decide," said Father. The window was open, and a bee flitted about the room, wings a silver blur. It flew near Father's cheek and he jerked away from it.
"It's been decided." She stood up straight, her dark eyes boring into Father's watery ones. He blinked. The bee hovered about his face, dancing away from his hands, and she saw sweat break out on his nose. Soon it was joined by another, and then another and another, until it seemed like Father---shouting and swearing---had been engulfed in a cloud of tawny, glistening bodies.
"I think it would be best if you left now, Father," said Violet softly. "After all, as you said, I'm my mother's daughter.”
― Emilia Hart, Weyward

“Sight is a funny thing. Sometimes it shows us what is before our eyes. But sometimes it shows us what has already happened, or will yet come to pass.”
― Emilia Hart, Weyward

“she just went to the library to read, to escape into other people's imaginations. Often, she reread books she'd loved as a child, their familiarity a balm--- Grimms' Fairy Tales, The Chronicles of Narnia, and her favorite, The Secret Garden. Sometimes, she would close her eyes and find herself not in bed with Simon, but amongst the tangled plants at Misselthwaite Manor, watching roses nod in the breeze.”
― Emilia Hart, Weyward

“Only then did I allow myself to think of home: my little rooms, neat and bright with jars and vials; the moths that danced round my candles at night. And outside, my garden. My heart ached at the thought of my plants and flowers, my dear nanny goat who kept me in milk and comfort, the sycamore that sheltered me with its boughs.”
― Emilia Hart, Weyward

“My breath was like crystals in front of me. The valley was always at its most beautiful in the morning. I remember thinking that it was as if it had been made so on purpose, to remind us to keep living.”
― Emilia Hart, Weyward

“She named me Altha, after all. Not Alice, meaning noble woman, nor Agnes, lamb of God. Altha. Healer.”
― Emilia Hart, Weyward

“They were halfway across the road when a birdcall tugged her back, pulling at some strange, secret part of her. A crow, she thought, from its husky caw---she had already learned to recognize most of the birds that sang in her parents' garden, and crows were her favorite. There was something intelligent---almost human---about their sly voices and dark, luminous eyes.
Kate turned, scanning the trees that lined the road behind them. And there it was: a velvet flash of black, shocking against the lurid green and blue of the June day. A crow, just as she'd thought.”
― Emilia Hart, Weyward

“Might it be possible to have both things? Love and insects?”
― Emilia Hart, Weyward