When the River Sleeps Quotes

“If I am going to start a new life, why should I take so much of the old life with me? It would only hinder me from beginning my new existence. It would only make me long for the old life again, and that would make me miserable. I must accept that my life here has ended, and I must focus on my new life if I want it to work.”
― Easterine Kire, When the River Sleeps

“We are sisters, we are twin-souled.”
― Easterine Kire, When the River Sleeps

“This is what comes after a spirit encounter. The flesh trembles even while the spirit is triumphant, because the flesh cannot understand that you have won the battle, and it struggles with its own memories of fear.”
― Easterine Kire, When the River Sleeps

“How long had he been away? A month? Six weeks? And so much had happened to him in that time. So many deaths too — as if there were some sort of sudden cosmic disequilibrium that needed to be rectified by claiming innocent lives.”
― Easterine Kire, When the River Sleeps

“Remember that kindness and cruelty cannot live together. One will always have to give way to the other.”
― Easterine Kire, When the River Sleeps

“How fragile human life was ... In spite of all its striving, when death came it spared no one.”
― Easterine Kire, When the River Sleeps

“[Vilie] didn't answer [Ate] but came out with a rusty spade. He began to dig the soil next to Pehu's blood. When he had dug a deep hole he scooped up the dried blood with the spade, put it in the earth and covered it up. Then he put some stones over it in such a way that a passer-by would know it was a memorial, and hesitate to disturb it. He felt the despondence lift from his spirit. Slowly he walked away from the shed, leading them back onto the small path by the fields.”
― Easterine Kire, When the River Sleeps

“No one is completely bad and even if they do bad things, there is still some vestige of goodness in them which can be brought out. But if you leave it too late, it gets so polluted that it feels like it's too much of an effort. That is what makes them remain where they are.”
― Easterine Kire, When the River Sleeps

“He felt oppressed — in a way weighed down — by the incessant atmosphere of grief. Could death be so unbearable? Why was this one death more sorrowful than the last death he had witnessed...? Why should one death be different from the other?”
― Easterine Kire, When the River Sleeps

“...the longing to return to the place where your umbilical cord was buried would become overwhelming as years went by, and that he would not be able to stay on in the new place.”
― Easterine Kire, When the River Sleeps

“This is our home, do you understand? We cannot abandon it and try to live in another place. Our umbilical cods are buried here, and we would always be restless if we tried to settle elsewhere.”
― Easterine Kire, When the River Sleeps

“The forest was his wife indeed: providing him with sanctuary when he most needed it; and food when his rations were inadequate. The forest also protected him from the evil in the heart of man. He felt truly wedded to her at this moment.”
― Easterine Kire, When the River Sleeps

“What are you going to do when he is old enough to go to school?"
"Saab, what do you mean? I am not a rich man. I don't have the means to send him to school. I will teach him my trade and he will grow up and earn an honest living. School is not for the likes of us, Saab."
Vilie paused and looked into the laughing face of the baby. Krishna was probably right. What could school probably teach him that his parents could not improve upon? They were rich in their knowledge of the ways of the forest, the herbs one could use for food, the animals and birds one could trap and the bitter herbs to counteract the sting of a poisonous snake.
"I guess he will go to the best school then," Vilie remarked.”
― Easterine Kire, When the River Sleeps

“Is it possible that only forest dwellers can understand such things exist in the places not frequented by man? Will the magic of the river work only for a believer? Would it work in spite of lack of faith?”
― Easterine Kire, When the River Sleeps

“Perhaps the answer lay not in striving but in being. In simply accepting that the loneliness would never be eliminated fully, but that one could deal with it by learning to treat it like a companion and no longer an adversary.”
― Easterine Kire, When the River Sleeps

“The spirits of those who die before their appointed time always carried such anguish with them, that it passed on to the people in their path.”
― Easterine Kire, When the River Sleeps

“Why should one death be different from the other?”
― Easterine Kire, When the River Sleeps

“Can you never have children?"

"How can anything live inside us? It is not our destiny to be mothers. In a way, it is right because our race will die out of entirely natural reasons. That is, unless some are born again in another generation of ordinary parents.”
― Easterine Kire, When the River Sleeps

“Knowledge is not for trading. The exchange of offerings for our knowledge is just a ritual without which the women here would feel completely isolated. So long as they feel they are useful for something, even if it is by way of helping the villages that had mistreated them, they are giving back, and in a strange way that gives meaning to their lives. If they felt they had nothing to live for they would die out here, and this village would collapse because we have no children to carry on our name.”
― Easterine Kire, When the River Sleeps

“Indeed the river is a spirit. Spirit responds to spirit. Your gun is useless against the things of the spirit for these are not flesh and blood.”
― Easterine Kire, When the River Sleeps

“The river is a spirit too, isn't it? ... It receded when I fought it with the words I was taught by the seer. It acceded to my authority. And it diminished in power when I asserted my identity.”
― Easterine Kire, When the River Sleeps

“What joy will wealth afford you when you do not know the secret of living with peace and faith in your fellow men? It is not wrong to have wealth but your relationship to your wealth defines everything else. If you are grasping at wealth, you are going to lose something that wealth cannot buy for you. You will lose knowledge of the spiritual. And you will lose the power it offers you. That is true power; that is the only power to aspire to because it gives you power over both the world of the senses and the world of the spirit.”
― Easterine Kire, When the River Sleeps

“Let your spirit be the bigger one. They are spirits, they will submit to the authority of the spirit that asserts itself.”
― Easterine Kire, When the River Sleeps