The Witch's Daughter Quotes

“Better foolish and honest than clever and false.”
― Paula Brackston, The Witch's Daughter

“To learn, you must be humble. You must be prepared to admit your ignorance. You must allow yourselves to be filled with the vital information presented to you via the skills and dedication of those who have gone before you down the long path to enlightenment.”
― Paula Brackston, The Witch's Daughter

“there is no courage in being fearless. Do you not know that? A person who knows fear and yet can still think of others, well, he be a brave man.”
― Paula Brackston, The Witch's Daughter

“Reputation is for those who can afford it.”
― Paula Brackston, The Witch's Daughter

“And secrets are dangerous. They start small but grow with every evasive answer or outright lie that protects them. Nevertheless, I confess to finding the closeness such conspiracy breeds irresistibly delicious.”
― Paula Brackston, The Witch's Daughter

“There is comfort to be had in the company of wild things and delight to be found in their trust.”
― Paula Brackston, The Witch's Daughter

“Nevertheless, disease and misfortune knew no social bounds. Nor did the immensely dangerous business of childbirth.”
― Paula Brackston, The Witch's Daughter

“I further prescribe some of Madame Henri’s excellent cassoulet, followed by a cup or two of the finest coffee outside Paris.”
― Paula Brackston, The Witch's Daughter

“Many in Batchcombe have suffered greatly, William. They look for someone to blame. It was my mother who made me see that.” She hesitated, then added, “People fear what they cannot explain.”
― Paula Brackston, The Witch's Daughter

“If you will listen," I said "I will tell you a tale of witches. A tale of magic and love and loss. A story of how simple ignorance breeds fear, and how deadly that fear can be. Will you listen?”
― Paula Brackston, The Witch's Daughter

“It’s a brilliant example of a writer in total control of her material, apparently effortlessly inhabiting the minds of her characters and giving them wonderfully individual voices.”
― Paula Brackston, The Witch's Daughter

“Life at any cost? I wished I shared her passion, but I did not. Was it because I considered some suffering to be intolerable, or was it because I had, at times, come to see life as a curse? I, who had shuffled about on this planet for centuries observing the ceaseless fighting and battling and struggling that people endured. Could death be such a terrible thing? Were there not times when it was the right thing? Or did I wonder that because it had been denied me? I could not be certain.”
― Paula Brackston, The Witch's Daughter

“Was that what it meant to be a true soldier, I wondered. Not only to be able to fight on the battlefield, but to be able to conquer one's own personal demons, again and again, over and over, in any way that was asked of them?”
― Paula Brackston, The Witch's Daughter

“Bess wanted to test her strength, to take her revenge, to feel for the first time in her life what it truly meant to be the one with the power.”
― Paula Brackston, The Witch's Daughter

“Bess thought he looked so much younger than she remembered. Still a boy. Whereas she was no longer a girl. Her youth had been buried along with her family.”
― Paula Brackston, The Witch's Daughter

“For whatever time we might have, my love. For whatever time we might have.”
― Paula Brackston, The Witch's Daughter

“Alas my love you do me wrong
To cast me off discourteously;
And I have loved you oh so longer
Delighting in your company.
Greensleeves was my delight,
Greensleeves was my heart of gold,
Greensleeves was my heart of joy,
And who but my Lady Greensleeves.”
― Paula Brackston, The Witch's Daughter

“Slowly Tegan looked up and I saw wonderment on her face. It was of the variety only ever found in those young enough to yet have minds as open as the oceans and hearts longing to have proof of magic.”
― Paula Brackston, The Witch's Daughter

“There is a dark energy that surrounds the battlefield, that feeds off the violence and cruelty of war. It is a frightening force. A potent one. And one in which those who practice the dark arts thrive.”
― Paula Brackston, The Witch's Daughter

“No, please, try to understand. I love you for who and what you are. I accept the gulf that lies between us. I know you love me. But me, Bess. Lowly, mortal me. And that is how I want you to love me. As I am. Not as a … creation of yours. Not altered so that even I might not recognize myself. If I have learned nothing else in this wretched, filthy war, it is that we must be true to ourselves. Our raw, basic, imperfect selves.”
― Paula Brackston, The Witch's Daughter

“It is no small step to accept that we are not alone on this earth. And that we are not the all-powerful creatures most people believe themselves to be.”
― Paula Brackston, The Witch's Daughter

“Bess did not cry. Indeed, she could not. It was as if over these past dreadful months she had cried the tears of a lifetime, and there were no more left.”
― Paula Brackston, The Witch's Daughter

“Have I instructed you so poorly? Do you not know that no woman is free, Bess? Indeed, the only freedom she possesses lies in her choice of master.”
― Paula Brackston, The Witch's Daughter

“The cusp of adulthood shifts from one decade to the next, backward and forward, so that I am unable to guess accurately anymore.”
― Paula Brackston, The Witch's Daughter

“Was that what it meant to be a true soldier, I wondered. Not only to be able to fight on the battlefield, but to be able to conquer one’s own personal demons, again and again, over and over, in any way that was asked of them?”
― Paula Brackston, The Witch's Daughter

“no courage in being fearless. Do you not know that? A person who knows fear and yet can still think of others, well, he be a brave man.”
― Paula Brackston, The Witch's Daughter

“It is the cruelest of the torments of my great age that grief does not abate, not beyond a certain level. It merely continues, my only companion across oceans of time.”
― Paula Brackston, The Witch's Daughter

“She saw now that her mother's hair was not the only thing to have altered so dramatically. She seemed to move differently, to inhabit the room in an entirely new way. A way that was strange and unsettling. Something profound had changed in her mother while Bess had lain on her sickbed. Some transformation had occurred at the root of her being, Bess believed, something had changed forever in her very soul.”
― Paula Brackston, The Witch's Daughter