She is Here Quotes

“You were magnificent, I think, but hidden: a black hole at the heart of history. We can trace you only by gravitational pull. We know, for example, that the very first piece of English literature was forged in the fire of your influence; that in the so-called Dark Ages you built and ran Whitby Abbey, the foundation at the centre of what became Northumbria’s Golden Age. There you hosted and facilitated the meeting of kings, princes, and bishops that changed Britain, the Synod of Whitby. But we have no account of you beyond a five-page sketch in a 1,300-year-old history, most of which recits the standard hagiographic miracles and visions of time. We have no gossipy Life, no scholarly monograph, no racy romance cycle. There isn’t even a grave.”
― Nicola Griffith, She is Here

“You are remembered as a woman so revered everyone called you Mother, but we don’t know if you had children of your own. the colour of your hair, or the names of anyone you kissed. You have two legends: that the ammonite that are found in such plenty in Whitby are the snakes you turned to stone, and the seagulls dip their wings over the cliffs in your memory. The rest is a mystery.”
― Nicola Griffith, She is Here

“When I immerse a reader, they live inside a character for a while; they not only see what my character sees but smell the rain-wet hair, hear the suck of mud under her horse’s hoof, and feel the catch in her mount’s gait. They think her thoughts, and learn her lessons; dream her dreams, just for a little while.”
― Nicola Griffith, She is Here

“I will give you tastes and textures, torments and terrain you might find in your real life. I will take you, sweep you off your feet, own you. For a while. For a while when you’re lost in my book you will be somewhere else, somewhen else, someone else.”
― Nicola Griffith, She is Here