A Time To Keep and Other Stories Quotes

“And presently in the door stands the carpenter of Nazareth, and his mother and twelve more forby that have a smell of fish and seaweed and limpets on them from their trade, all known faces. Yet none guessed that here was the Incarnate Word (had they not bargained with him for cradles and chairs and roofbeams?).
(A Treading of Grapes)”
― George Mackay Brown, A Time To Keep and Other Stories

“Yes, and what widows would stand on the shore at Rackwick this night and every night till all the bodies were found? Bella of The Harp and Jess of Topmast and Margaret-Ann of Sheepsay and Willa of Two-Waters and Mary of Hawkfell and Sara of Malthouse and Amos's Rachel with the unborn child in her, dark shrouded figures among the round red rocks of the beach. Night would come down from the hills on them, still their eyes would stare at this moving thing and that small glimmer out in the bay, bits of driftwood only, fleeting phosphorescence. They would shake their heads to one another. Then it would be too dark to know sea from land. They would walk home separately across the steep fields. Then in the lamplight an unfolding of shrouds, an opening of black bibles, a stony intentness of grief.”
― George Mackay Brown, A Time To Keep and Other Stories

“I set a line and looked back at the valley. It was like a green open hand among the hills. The cliffs stood near and far, red, gray, black. In the valley chimneys began to smoke, one of them mine. Ingi was up. A green offering hand, our valley, corn-giver, fire-giver, water-giver, keeper of men and beasts. The other hand that fed us was this blue hand of the sea, which was treacherous, which had claws to it, which took more than ever it gave. Today it was peaceable enough. Blue hand and green hand lay together, like praying, in the summer dawn.”
― George Mackay Brown, A Time To Keep and Other Stories