The Green Lady Quotes

“Poetry never tells you exactly what's going on. Never speaks the whole truth. You have to find the rest. There are always faint lines, something half seen or heard, like the words you hum under your breath.”
― Sally Bayley, The Green Lady: A Spirit, A Story, A Place

“History is like this: it jigs, and it spins and turns on a reel, and the things you remember move from pillar to post; from promenade and pier to harbour wall and bridge. They jump, they flicker, they spin and reel from one place to another. Time is unreliable; it moves fast and slow. So the painter who is out today - the weather would be fine, they said - must follow a steadier line. 'I follow a slow line,' says the painter. Three lines, two people and a bridge until they form a triangle: the girls in white on the other side of the harbour and the white tower. I see the people, but they are small and insignificant. What matters is the sky and the sea, that pillar, tall and proud, the lighthouse. There is my picture. And I stand beneath the shadow of the bridge, and I see the sun crossing the sky, the gulls flying over. I see people moving around the white column looking up. We are all looking up at the sky.
And the painter watches the moving shapes, and he will remember them: they are seabirds and soon they will fly off, back to their mother, the woman who waits for them along the pier.”
― Sally Bayley, The Green Lady: A Spirit, A Story, A Place

“People wander. They travel from room to room, from place to place, and you cannot follow. No matter how many maps you consult, how many lines you draw up and say, 'there, there they were', you cannot know.”
― Sally Bayley, The Green Lady: A Spirit, A Story, A Place

“Adults are always saying that, reading leads to higher things: that book, this wall, higher and higher I climb.”
― Sally Bayley, The Green Lady: A Spirit, A Story, A Place

“I run, back to the beginning, towards the green, the first colour I saw lying on the grass.”
― Sally Bayley, The Green Lady: A Spirit, A Story, A Place

“Some people never make it into life: they remain stuck and frozen behind glass. Waxworks. Butterflies pinned to velvet cushions. Stuffed birds, their heads cut off. Somewhere between life and death, they hover, where there is no living thing. Preserved behind glass for someone else's fancy. Someone else's life.”
― Sally Bayley, The Green Lady: A Spirit, A Story, A Place

“Patience is a quiet sort of word, but grief is never so. It screams.”
― Sally Bayley, The Green Lady: A Spirit, A Story, A Place

“For it was the queen she thought of before she thought of God; Queen Eleanor in her mantilla veil as she prayed to God to free her from wicked men.”
― Sally Bayley, The Green Lady: A Spirit, A Story, A Place

“Do not fear what you cannot see. There is always the light of the sun overhead, the glitter of the moon and stars, the shape of the trees.”
― Sally Bayley, The Green Lady: A Spirit, A Story, A Place

“Writers are haunted, which is why we keep notebooks; to store up our ghosts, to let them dance and sing. Writers collect ghost: return to the same old spots, leave gifts and flowers, say prayers to their relics. Writers are haunted; look at our dreams; this is where it all beginsm the second life. Write down your dreams, I say, they will tell you what you are missing. The woman, the girl.”
― Sally Bayley, The Green Lady: A Spirit, A Story, A Place

“Memory work is treacherous. History is the same. And what you once recalled may now stand against you. So preserve your lines, grip your pencil, and press down hard. Restore those faint lines.”
― Sally Bayley, The Green Lady: A Spirit, A Story, A Place