Winter Rose Quotes

“I did not want to think about people. I wanted the trees, the scents and colors, the shifting shadows of the wood, which spoke a language I understood. I wished I could simply disappear in it, live like a bird or a fox through the winter, and leave the things I had glimpsed to resolve themselves without me.”
― Patricia A. McKillip, Winter Rose

“But you must stop playing among his ghosts -- it's stupid and dangerous and completely pointless. He's trying to lay them to rest here, not stir them up, and you seem eager to drag out all the sad old bones of his history and make them dance again. It's not nice, and it's not fair.”
― Patricia A. McKillip, Winter Rose

“It's so hard to think in winter. The world seems confined in the space of your heart; you can't see beyond yourself.”
― Patricia A. McKillip, Winter Rose

“Watching the day slowly bloom into night. That’s how it always seemed to me: not the fading of a withered flower, but the opening of some dark, rich blossom, with unexpected hues and heavy scents.”
― Patricia A. McKillip, Winter Rose

“Winds shook me apart piecemeal, flung a bone here, a bone there. My eyes became snow, my hair turned to ice; I heard it chime against my shoulders like wind-blown glass. If I spoke, words would fall from me like snow, pour out of me like black wind.”
― Patricia A. McKillip, Winter Rose

“In that place things begin to wear away even as they are built; the living die a little more each day. The sun is too far away; light slides endlessly into night; fire and love consume themselves; the heart tries to warm itself with ashes.”
― Patricia A. McKillip, Winter Rose

“He could pick my heart like a rose and watch it wither in his hand. Sometimes I think he is like that. At other times I think he is as simple and golden and generous as our father's fields. And then I see things in his eyes - things that I have never looked at, and I know that I have walked a short and easy road out of my past, while he has walked a thousand roads to meet me. I know Perrin's past; the same road runs into his future. I don't know Corbet.”
― Patricia A. McKillip, Winter Rose

“Something - a flick of color, the faint beat of the earth under my feet, or maybe my name in someone's thoughts - made me lift my eyes.”
― Patricia A. McKillip, Winter Rose

“I did not know, until then, that you could disappear into someone's gaze, that bone and heart and breath could melt like shadow into light, until only light was left.”
― Patricia A. McKillip, Winter Rose

“She didn't bother taking off her snow-crusted cloak; she came to us quickly, dripping and shivering, her eyes luminous and strained from trying to see beyond the world.”
― Patricia A. McKillip, Winter Rose

“Above us hung a tapestry of silver and gold and palest green that in my world had faded into white: a great oak so entwined with ivy it had died, its bare branches pushing through the leaves like bone. I stared at the roses, wanting to hold my hands to such red, but like the light, they burned cold.”
― Patricia A. McKillip, Winter Rose

“even I could not guess what misgivings lay behind Perrin's clear eyes. Perhaps none; perhaps he trusted Laurel without question. Perhaps he was right. All I knew is what Laurel's hands said when she spoke Corbet's name. And how often she said it, until it seemed, like the falling of autumn leaves, or the long ribbons of migrating birds, one of the season's changes.”
― Patricia A. McKillip, Winter Rose

“Water has its moods, flowing or still; it can lure you like a lover, or look as bleak as a broken heart.”
― Patricia A. McKillip, Winter Rose

“The rains began. Hard, constant, they battered the fields, turned the roads to mud, crushed the gold leaves into the ground and turned them black. In the wood, the sodden trees and brambles bowed beneath the torrents.”
― Patricia A. McKillip, Winter Rose

“A wind came up and snatched the roses from my hair, then pulled my hair loose as I ran. I did not care… I was running from my own thoughts as much as anything… I did not want to think about people. I wanted the trees, the scents and colors, the shifting shadows of the wood, which spoke a language I understood…the trees were bending like great fans in the wood. Clouds of gold and red and brown sailed along the wind. I slowed as I reached the privacy of the trees. A woman running across the cornfield in her mother’s best dress is subject to human speculation; in the wood, the trees did not care.”
― Patricia A. McKillip, Winter Rose

“Why do you trust her?" he demanded recklessly. "You saw her heart—it's a howling desert of ice. She lies like the moon lies, a different face every night, all but one of them false, and the one true face as barren and hard as stone. Why do you believe her?”
― Patricia A. McKillip, Winter Rose

“... and I don't know anymore what I am except a woman who sees too much.”
― Patricia A. McKillip, Winter Rose

“You fought for your freedom and won a different kind of prison.”
― Patricia A. McKillip, Winter Rose

“It's what you came for," he reminded me.

"I know."

"You came for truth, but you are too afraid to touch it.”
― Patricia A. McKillip, Winter Rose

“I did not want to think about people. I wanted the trees, the scents and colors, the shifting shadows of the wood, which spoke a language I understood.”
― Patricia A. McKillip, Winter Rose

“People see what they expect to see. Except for you. You simply see.”
― Patricia A. McKillip, Winter Rose

“But I had seen him before he had a face.”
― Patricia A. McKillip, Winter Rose

“You come to me," he whispered. "Into every dark place. Into every memory. Into the empty eyes of winter. I go alone and find you with me. Why do you care for me?"

I did not know until I spoke. "Because you are making me human.”
― Patricia A. McKillip, Winter Rose

“She made so little noise now; she used so little air. She willed herself smaller, smaller; soon she would take nothing from life, neither air nor space nor time, and life would have no claim on her. I felt a wild grief rise in me at the thought that my eyes would look for her, since I had looked at her every day of my life, and she would leave me nothing to see.”
― Patricia A. McKillip, Winter Rose

“He had a beautiful smile, and a smooth easy voice that made you forget the time it wasted.”
― Patricia A. McKillip, Winter Rose

“Light does not always reveal, light can conceal”
― Patricia McKillip, Winter Rose

“I need you.”
“You must be careful,” he whispered. “You must be so careful. Every need is a path to her.”
― Patricia A. McKillip, Winter Rose

“You can’t fight me.” Tearle reminded him harshly.
“I know.” In the placid light, his face looked chilled and very weary. “But I can die.”
― Patricia A. McKillip, Winter Rose

“The human world is a cold and bitter place: nothing lasts in it. You must know that by now…. What did you imagine you were doing in those two rooms? Trying to turn yourself human?”
“Yes,” Corbet said, so simply that for a breath he rendered his father incapable of moving.”
― Patricia A. McKillip, Winter Rose

“They rode horses as white as hoarfrost. Snow and star and dark whipped around one another to etch a fine-boned face, eyes of night and crystal fire. Their mantles were of dark wind and snow; their wild hair caught snow and falling stars. The boy watched them, too, longing for their beauty, their mastery over cold and storm. Come to us. This is not your true home. You belong elsewhere. You belong with us.”
― Patricia A. McKillip, Winter Rose