The Black Bird Oracle Quotes

“Before you embark on a journey of revenge, dig two graves.”
― Deborah Harkness, The Blackbird Oracle

“Everyone in the family knew that the quickest way to soothe my ruffled feathers was to put a book in one of my hands and a cup of tea in the other.”
― Deborah Harkness, The Black Bird Oracle

“Curiosity and wonder are often all it takes to keep Darkness at bay. They, too, reside in Shadow, where promise and potential disaster can be found in equal measure”
― Deborah Harkness, The Blackbird Oracle

“Never forget the feeling of being aligned with your purpose. It will steer you through Shadow and illuminate your path no matter where it leads.”
― Deborah Harkness, The Blackbird Oracle

“The Proctors relied on geometry and Jacobean literature, and I used the poems of Emily Dickinson, but it was Fleetwood Mac who inspired my mother’s gramarye. There wasn’t much to distinguish between William Shakespeare, Emily Dickinson, and Stevie Nicks. They were all bards, after all, with magic in their pens. I showed Gwyneth the annotated lyrics. “She hid it in plain sight—in the words of her favorite songs. This is what she used to refresh old spells and keep them sharp.” Gwyneth gasped. “Rebecca used music?” “Apparently,” I replied, running my fingers across the underlining in “I Don’t Want to Know.” She’d written A powerful method for uncovering old secrets next to Finally baby / The truth has come down now.”
― Deborah Harkness, The Black Bird Oracle

“You can bottle happiness?” This was contrary to every bit of advice I’d ever received. I handed the precious bottle back to my aunt. “No. Just the memory of it.” Gwyneth’s tone was tinged with regret. My aunt twisted the cork in the neck of the bottle, cracking its wax seal and releasing a scent of fallen leaves and apple cider. I felt a crisp breeze on my skin, and the warm sun on my face. Children could be heard playing in the distance, their voices raised as they scampered across the meadow where piles of golden grass had been cut and gathered. A cow lowed, a bell sounded. A ship under full sail passed by The Nestling. I shielded my eyes to see it better, but my hand was not my own. I was looking out at the world through different eyes, seeing what someone else had seen, a very long time ago.”
― Deborah Harkness, The Black Bird Oracle

“Ravens form mating pairs, just like vampires and wolves,” Matthew replied. “They grieve when their mate is gone, and their social group often participates in the mourning. In Norway, I witnessed wolves howling along to the ravens’ lament when a member of their group passed.” I frowned. “You make it sound like ravens and wolves have some kind of relationship.” “They work together in the wild,” Matthew said, nodding. “They play together, help each other locate prey, and even share kills. It’s an unusual example of cross-species cooperation.”
― Deborah Harkness, The Black Bird Oracle

“We are both caught in its tangles and knots, sometimes the hunter, sometimes the hunted. And sometimes, we are so lost in love's magic that we neither know nor care whether we are predator or prey.”
― Deborah Harkness, The Black Bird Oracle

“You will not bring your destiny closer by standing up to greet it.”
― Deborah Harkness, The Black Bird Oracle

“Politeness was important in the de Clermont family - even if you were stabbing someone in the back, or plotting the ruin of their family”
― Deborah Harkness, The Black Bird Oracle

“Light isn’t a weapon, Diana. It’s a resource.” Gwyneth cupped her palm as though she held a baby chick. “You want to hold it gently, not turn it into a missile.”
― Deborah Harkness, The Black Bird Oracle

“The bard’s poetry took on additional potency with the family’s alterations, which turned his words into pure magic. “And, as I am an honest witch,” Julie continued, “If we have released pitch, / Now to ’scape Midsummer’s light, / We will, ere long, make it right. / Give me your hands, if we be friends, / And Shadow shall restore amends.”
― Deborah Harkness, The Black Bird Oracle

“If we Shadows have offended,” Julie began, her eyes bright with belladonna and magic, “Think but this, and all is mended, / That you have but slumber’d here / While these visions did appear.”
― Deborah Harkness, The Black Bird Oracle

“I’d encountered a few household inventories in my travels through seventeenth-century archives, and I was familiar with the meticulous accounts that had been made at a time when raw materials and manufactured objects were precious and scarce.”
― Deborah Harkness, The Black Bird Oracle

“Why don’t you make a set of oracle cards for Tamsy to use?” Gwyneth suggested, steering our family ship out of troubled waters. “You can put your special pictures on one side, and write their meaning on the other.” She set a pile of index cards on the table, along with a pot of colored pencils and crayons. “Like what?” Becca said, clambering onto a nearby stool. “Things that hold meaning,” Gwyneth said. “Colors, books, food, songs. Anything you like. There’s no right or wrong.” I wondered if all the Proctor decks had started this way, with a child drawing out their inner hopes and fears and refining them over a lifetime until they sang with power and insight.”
― Deborah Harkness, The Black Bird Oracle

“The Ipswich coven gathering was turning into a nightmare version of the monthly PTA meetings held at the twins’ progressive school, complete with officiousness masked in deference, and unresolved resentments cloaked in virtue.”
― Deborah Harkness, The Black Bird Oracle

“What lies between us, vampire and witch, man and woman, is a love of terrifying complexity.”
― Deborah Harkness, The Black Bird Oracle

“Tis the Darkening time,” Bridget crooned. “The Darkening time. From death new beginnings, from old spells, new rhymes. ’Tis the Darkening, Darkening, Darkening time.”
― Deborah Harkness, The Black Bird Oracle

“Your purpose is to use your full power—Light”
― Deborah Harkness, The Black Bird Oracle

“Light isn’t a weapon, Diana. It’s a resource.”
― Deborah Harkness, The Black Bird Oracle

“You gave in to fear,” Gwyneth said. “Fear has no place in higher magic. It’s the crack through which Darkness enters a witch’s soul.”
― Deborah Harkness, The Black Bird Oracle

“As the shadows lengthened, I was aware that the longest day of the year was nearing its end. Light was giving way to Darkness in the eternal cycle of death and rebirth that carried all creatures into the future.”
― Deborah Harkness, The Blackbird Oracle

“This is a lesson best learned sooner in this family, rather than later. Look after your own desires and needs. All de Clermont women must do so. If we left it to the men, we’d be ruined.”
― Deborah Harkness, The Blackbird Oracle

“The idea of him inside her, looking out at the world through her eyes, hearing her innermost wishes and fears, was repulsive. He was stalking her through her memories, amassing information to use as a weapon against her, against Stephen—against Diana.”
― Deborah Harkness, The Black Bird Oracle

“It was then that I knew Matthew’s true nature was not the wildness I’d seen in the wood, when he’d played with Becca and the ravens. He was this wounded creature, who needed so desperately to be loved that he couldn’t bear the suffering that might accompany that joy. He could withstand the Darkness, and rejoice in the Light, but could not survive the liminal kingdom of uncertainty that lay in between.”
― Deborah Harkness, The Black Bird Oracle

“Rebecca told me so when I was fourteen and she wanted to get back at me because I borrowed her book of herbal cures. She was the bastard of goddess knows who. Some soldier my sainted mother had a fling with during the war.”
― Deborah Harkness, The Black Bird Oracle

“Without fear, you can do the impossible, Tally replied. That’s what Shadow teaches us.”
― Deborah Harkness, The Black Bird Oracle

“Where do the cards fit into the practice of higher magic?” I whispered. My witch’s third eye flew open. “They’re the key to greater knowledge, as well as greater mysteries. The cards open the doors to new possibilities and provide fresh solutions to old problems. They will grant me freedom but carry with them the weight of responsibility.”
― Deborah Harkness, The Black Bird Oracle

“You cannot prevent Darkness from touching the lives of others. Everyone must find a way to do that for themselves, no matter what type of creature they are,”
― Deborah Harkness, The Black Bird Oracle

“Curiosity and wonder are often all it takes to keep Darkness at bay. They, too, reside in Shadow, where promise and potential disaster can be found in equal measure. It was that ambiguity that really terrified your father.”
― Deborah Harkness, The Black Bird Oracle