The Knight and the Butcherbird Quotes

“She knew me then, at the beginning of ourselves, and she knew me now, here at the end, when she did not even know herself.”
― Alix E. Harrow, The Knight and the Butcherbird

“So the knight and the demon walked the world, never together, never apart, waiting for the day one of them would cease to be what they were.”
― Alix E. Harrow, The Knight and the Butcherbird

“She came to us as any apocalypse does: slowly at first, and then all at once.”
― Alix E. Harrow, The Knight and the Butcherbird

“Nothing grows on a grave while you’re standing on it.”
― Alix E. Harrow, The Knight and the Butcherbird

“They lived happily ever after, until they didn't, because nothing does.”
― Alix E. Harrow, The Knight and the Butcherbird

“I stood among them like a tumor at a birthday party: silent, uninvited. Likely fatal.”
― Alix E. Harrow, The Knight and the Butcherbird

“We learned, after the old world died, not to put our faith in wood pulp or motherboards; the only archive that survives is the one we carry with us.”
― Alix E. Harrow, The Knight and the Butcherbird

“I still keep a pack beneath my bed, just in case: cornmeal, dried venison, a good knife, a jar of mead. Everything I need to survive.
May knew what I was; she’d found my pack when we were kids. But she hadn’t pitied me or mocked me. She’d only asked if I would take her with me when I ran. And I said yes—easily, honestly—because by then she had become one of the things I needed to survive.”
― Alix E. Harrow, The Knight and the Butcherbird

“But she’d been willing to kill for me, and so she must have loved me, after all. As I loved May, as Sir John loved his wife, as God loved the world: with blood on our hands.”
― Alix E. Harrow, The Knight and the Butcherbird

“At six, I’d thought love was a full belly; at sixteen, I’d thought it was wildflowers and gooseberries and Mayapple’s mouth on mine. At seventeen, I knew better: love is whatever you’re willing to kill for.”
― Alix E. Harrow, The Knight and the Butcherbird

“Finch always said there were certain places where it was easier to tell stories, and to hear them: around a fire at night, in the mist at dawn, on a porch at dusk. In-between places, balanced on the border between familiar and strange.”
― Alix E. Harrow, The Knight and the Butcherbird

“Why do people change, Sir John? Because they are cursed, pursued, poisoned, trapped, under siege. Because they have to.”
― Alix E. Harrow, The Knight and the Butcherbird

“I couldn’t stop smiling—the euphoric, hysteric smile of a woman who has been lying on her lover’s grave and has just felt the earth move beneath her.”
― Alix E. Harrow, The Knight and the Butcherbird

“They spoke a dead language and worshipped a dead god, a man suspended gruesomely on two sticks. They gave themselves antiquated names (Ashley, Charlemagne, John) and obscure titles (president, chief operating officer, knight). Finch had tsked her tongue: Nothing grows on a grave while you’re standing on it.”
― Alix E. Harrow, The Knight and the Butcherbird

“Still, they say demons are spirits freed from hell by the fifth trumpet, along with cancer and microplastics, which slink into people’s souls and change them into monsters.”
― Alix E. Harrow, The Knight and the Butcherbird

“...they say demons are spirits freed from hell by the fifth trumpet, along with cancer and microplastics, which slink into people’s souls and change them into monsters.”
― Alix E. Harrow, The Knight and the Butcherbird

“Come forward, Lady Shrike. I shan’t bite. Now tell me: Where did thou last see the demon?”
― Alix E. Harrow, The Knight and the Butcherbird

“Nothing grows on a grave while you're standing on it.”
― Alix E. Harrow, The Knight and the Butcherbird

“I force her to be one thing instead of everything, and she hates me.”
― Alix E. Harrow, The Knight and the Butcherbird

“The Bible and the gun—an old formula, well proved.”
― Alix E. Harrow, The Knight and the Butcherbird