A Tree Full of Stars Quotes

“Three windows, three faces. And the first face: the moon-face of Toby Dance. The first window, the parlor window of that solid frame house and the Christmas-dreaming, bright-eye gleaming face of five year old Toby Dance who, no more than a twinkling instant before, has sent a tissue paper letter up the roaring red throat of the parlor chimney; a prayerful inventory of certain wonders he should like to find beneath the enchanted tree next morning. And now he watches from the window all the capricious white wizardry of snow and the swathed, candied hills beyond the river and the Chinese Elm in the backyard now lofty and up-thrust against the pearled sky like a black, ermined dancer, and Toby sighs and sees his breath suddenly being upon the icy window pane and that printed breath is a faith that already ancient, faery legions of the Ice King are bearing his letter high and away for the right eyes to read.”
― Davis Grubb, A Tree Full of Stars

“Three windows. And in the third, high in the top storey of the solid, snow-hushed house on this hill at the edge of Christmas the most extraordinary face of all: a visage of curious alloy: earthly wisdom and heavenly innocence, grief like a stone and humor like flame; a face of age and yet of ageless youth. Marya Alexander, mother of Nell Dance, sits in her flowered rocker by the glass and sees through it the soft, white onslaught of the snow and read within each intricately. Jeweled flake the timelessness of Time itself and of loss and of love and of love’s ending. Upon her old spectacles perches a small gold parakeet and she puffs now pensively upon a cigarette and blows the ghost of smoke against the enchanted window pane and witnesses there, for an instant, the misted image of faces long lost beneath so many snows, and smiles to herself at the knowing that Christmastide and a good heart’s breath against a cold pane are enough to bring lost faces back in evergreen eternity.”
― Davis Grubb, A Tree Full of Stars

“Hate, my gentle lady, said Captain Anschutz, is only Love that has lost its way home in the dark.”
― Davis Grubb, A Tree Full of Stars

“And the funny thing is this, Mrs. Alexander - there's not another looking glass in the whole entire house that makes me look so good! - not the big one over the parlor hearth - nor the peer glass in the hallway - or even the mirror over Mrs. Dance's dresser. So you see! The mirror's magic - that mirror - the one he gave me - because it tells me the sweetest lies about myself! I've looked into it time and time again since then - by daylight - by lamplight - by moon and starshine - and each time that dear little mirror says: Jewel Luchak, you're the prettiest girl in twelve green counties!

Mayra smiled and thought silently to herself: Couldn't it be, my child, that the Magic's not in the mirror at all? Couldn't it be that it's having someone love you is making you prettier all the time?”
― Davis Grubb, A Tree Full of Stars

“It was as if, within that still winter night's vastness a strange soft-feathered bird of passage had come to beat its hopeless wings against the windows of her heart.”
― Davis Grubb, A Tree Full of Stars

“Is goodness just for Sundays and is love just for Christmas? Must the living fragrance of human love be packed away with the tree ornaments once Christmas day is past?”
― Davis Grubb, A Tree Full of Stars