To The Bright Edge of the World Quotes

“There is a mythical element to our childhood, it seems, that stays with us always. When we are young, we consume the world in great gulps, and it consumes us, and everything is mysterious and alive and fills us with desire and wonder, fear, and guilt. With the passing of the years, however, those memories become distant and malleable, and we shape them into the stories of who we are. We are brave, or we are cowardly. We are loving, or we are cruel.”
― Eowyn Ivey, To the Bright Edge of the World

“That is excitement. We catch only glimpses, a burst of movement, a flap of wings, yet it is life itself beating at shadow's edge. It is the unfolding of potential; all of what we might experience and see and learn awaits us.”
― Eowyn Ivey, To The Bright Edge of the World

“They are only bats, nothing more," Mother said.
Father whispered to me alone, "These are no ordinary bats. These are mice who swim with the stars.”
― Eowyn Ivey, To The Bright Edge of the World

“It takes a kind of arrogance to think everything in the world can be measured and weighed with our scientific instruments.”
― Eowyn Ivey, To The Bright Edge of the World

“What is it that causes us to fall in love? We are met with those first, initial glimpses-- a kind of curiosity, a longing for that which is both familiar and unknown in the other. And then comes the surprise of discovery; we share certain aspirations, certain appreciations, and that which is different excites us. Before each other, we are moved to bravery and we come to reveal more and more of ourselves, and when we do, those very traits that caused us some embarrassment or shame become beautiful in ways we did not understand before, and the entire world becomes more beautiful for it. There are, too, those intimate and nearly primitive stirrings, the scent of the neck, the delicious tremble of skin and breath. Yet for all their pleasures, they are as tenuous as light and air, and demand no fidelity.
And then there is this: Does not love depend on some belief in the future, some expectation beyond the delight of the moment? We fall in love because we imagine a certain life together. We will marry. We will laugh and dance together. We will have children.
When expectation falls to ruins, what is there left for love?”
― Eowyn Ivey, To The Bright Edge of the World

“I would believe again if I could. In goodness. In magnificence. In simple benevolence. Yet even in these far and icy valleys, mankind is no different, just more poorly armed. Strip away psychrometer and sextant, carbines and glass plates, skin shifts and quills and painted faces, and we are the same. Quivering maws. Gluttonous. Covetous. Fearful. We say we worship. A word. A man-god. A fiery mountain. But we worship only ourselves. And we are jealous gods.”
― Eowyn Ivey, To The Bright Edge of the World

“It’s humanity. We’re complicated and messy and beautiful.”
― Eowyn Ivey, To the Bright Edge of the World

“There are so many other labels people like to assign. Where am I an insider, and where am I an outsider? It all depends on where I’m standing and who is trying to put me into which box.”
― Eowyn Ivey, To the Bright Edge of the World

“nothing is impossible. Take one step, and then another, and see where the path leads. Don’t think of the obstacles, only the way around them.”
― Eowyn Ivey, To the Bright Edge of the World

“Ah, and this is the trouble with a diary. We are allowed to stand too long before its mirror and gaze at ourselves, where we unavoidably find vanity and fault.”
― Eowyn Ivey, To the Bright Edge of the World

“Carry me on and on to the edge of the earth, with children's laughter like a wind - full sail, then carry me beyond”
― Eowyn Ivey, To The Bright Edge of the World

“Yet what of love? That is another, more solid thing; it is not tricked by fine lights or spirits. It is more of earth and time, like a river-turned stone.”
― Eowyn Ivey, To the Bright Edge of the World

“Everywhere, even in the blackest abyss, he believed one might witness the divine. The shadows and contrast―absence itself―as important as the light and marble, for one cannot exist without the other.”
― Eowyn Ivey, To The Bright Edge of the World

“Now that I have been brought home by carriage and climbed into my bed, my fury has burned out, and I am left cold and tired. Why do we insist on inflicting more suffering on a world that is already fraught with it? It is here that I must part ways with Father's romantic spirit, for I suspect that it is a curse of nature, some original instinct that we have failed to shed. And I am no better than others, for in the face of it, I would keep quiet and retreat.”
― Eowyn Ivey, To The Bright Edge of the World

“that day I was filled with more love than I ever could have imagined. And when my hands grew cold, you didn’t say we should leave the beach, but instead took them in your own and kissed each of my fingertips, and I was warmed by your breath.”
― Eowyn Ivey, To the Bright Edge of the World

“I am left to wonder, will anyone else see it?
That day in the forest when I looked upon the marble bear, alive with the setting sun, what did I witness? Was it only sunlight on stone, or Father's spirit, or a reflection of my own?
It seems to me now that such a moment requires a kind of trinity: you and I and the thing itself.”
― Eowyn Ivey, To The Bright Edge of the World

“When we are young, we consume the world in great gulps, and it consumes us, and everything is mysterious and alive and fills us with desire and wonder, fear and guilt.”
― Eowyn Ivey, To The Bright Edge of the World

“I have only ever been truly frightened of boredom and loneliness,” she says. It”
― Eowyn Ivey, To the Bright Edge of the World

“Don’t you think evil itself must exist already inside of a man for him to commit such acts? I could not give him an answer except to say that for all creation men have done such things, the strong misusing the weak. Every civilization has its own versions of cruelty.”
― Eowyn Ivey, To the Bright Edge of the World

“And when I seek a finer grace in the day, som essence of love and life, the light fades beneath my eyes.

I will not abandon the quest before it has truly begun, however. I will let this grief sharpen my gaze, polish and shape it until it becomes a magnifying lens through which I might yet see.”
― Eowyn Ivey, To The Bright Edge of the World

“SONG FOR MY MOTHER

You say go to the river it is time for the salmon
& I go to the mountains to hunt for nothing.

You say to never let anger chisel me
& I chisel my words on a wet stone.

You say come home at night
But I sleep where I fall

So what is this mother’s love
But a steady hold against the boar tide of a young man

You say I did not give birth to you
But you belong to my heart

I say what is birth but death in reverse
And what is love but the beat of a mother’s heart against her son’s ear.”
― Eowyn Ivey, To The Bright Edge of the World

“And if it is true...that we are each inhabited by some bit of divine light, then upon death, how long before those particles dissipate entirely, becoming unrecognizable except as a part of some great whole?”
― Eowyn Ivey, To The Bright Edge of the World

“Why do we insist on inflicting more suffering on a world that is already fraught with it?”
― Eowyn Ivey, To The Bright Edge of the World

“...each of us is alive only by a small thread.”
― Eowyn Ivey, To The Bright Edge of the World

“I think there’s this tendency to lump people together, to think that all people who look like this or come from this background must think the same.”
― Eowyn Ivey, To The Bright Edge of the World

“But what makes the question of cultural loss the most uncomfortable, and difficult for me to address, are the inherent definitions built into it. If a group of people is described as existing in a state of loss, it is necessarily therefore lesser, and those that took greater. It’s such a limiting and two-dimensional idea. Who defines wealth and success? How can we say this person is valued less or more, is better or worse, because they are a part of one culture or another, and why would we want to?”
― Eowyn Ivey, To The Bright Edge of the World

“There is the feeling here that civilization is still just a speck, and it makes me feel small in a good way. Seattle made me feel small in a bad way, if that makes any sense.”
― Eowyn Ivey, To the Bright Edge of the World

“Through the night, the black canyon groaned & heaved & gurgled, as if we slept in the belly of a coldblooded beast. I slept little, & when I dozed I dreamt that I drowned or was shoved beneath the ice of a clawing glacier.”
― Eowyn Ivey, To the Bright Edge of the World

“We say we worship. A word. A man-god. A fiery mountain. But we worship only ourselves. And we are jealous gods.”
― Eowyn Ivey, To the Bright Edge of the World

“So I guess I wonder, where is the line separating me into this culture or that culture, saying I have less or more? I'm just me, and like most people, I've had my heart broken a few times, but for the most part I have been Happy.”
― Eowyn Ivey, To The Bright Edge of the World