The Radiant Road Quotes

“You don't drown because you can't breathe. You drown because you try to breathe what is not breathable.”
― Katherine Catmull, The Radiant Road

“Seeing is 'making,' whether you see with your mind or your true self. Try to see with your self, your self and your beast together, and not your busy, frightened mind.”
― Katherine Catmull, The Radiant Road

“There is no safety, and so we must touch and be touched, and we must fall and fly.”
― Katherine Catmull, The Radiant Road

“Finn said, “You feel the wind is a bully, beating you. But that is your seeing. That is your story, not the wind’s. To a bird who rides it, that wind is only a kind hand. Because the bird rides the wind’s power. Do you understand?” Clare, bitter, cold, and wind-battered, frowned stubbornly. “But a bird can fly. I can’t fly.” He turned to look at her, and his face was troubled. “If you cling to the safety of the rock, indeed you can’t. To fly, you open your arms and fall, heart first, trusting the wind to bear you up. That’s what the birds do.”
― Katherine Catmull, The Radiant Road

“She knew what it meant to want to return to safety and seed-husk again. But you cannot get back into your seed-husk, once it is cracked open and no longer yours.”
― Katherine Catmull, The Radiant Road

“That is what I love best about dreams, and about makings, good makings. They are folded-up buds of complications and mysteries, and if you stay with them patiently, they will unfold and unfold, and never stop unfolding. Dreams are flowers that never stop blooming.”
― Katherine Catmull, The Radiant Road

“We have friends in every woods we walk through, though we walk through them not knowing.”
― Katherine Catmull, The Radiant Road

“...in dreams and in making, you choose what you are. But you do not choose only once. Over and over, at every turning you must choose. This felt like a turning, a time to choose what she was.”
― Katherine Catmull, The Radiant Road

“her grief was like the evening sun behind the trees when you ride your bicycle west: sometimes you get a glimpse between the branches, or you hit a bump in the road, and the sudden blaze of sun in your eyes hurts so much, it blinds you. But mostly you’re just riding quietly along in the dusk. She”
― Katherine Catmull, The Radiant Road

“Her voice was warm and husky as a clarinet, but not so sad as a clarinet: friendlier. When she laughed, it was like a clarinet blowing bubbles.”
― Katherine Catmull, The Radiant Road

“...said Finn...“Only remember, Clare. In a dream, what you want will come out, one way or the other. ”

“So . . . So I should be careful about what I want, then, right?”

“No, you can’t be careful with what you want. Wanting isn’t a pet who stays at your heels; it’s a wild animal. You must become friendly with it. It will make an offer, and you will respond. Converse with what you want that way.”

“So what should I try to want? What should I look for?”

“Never look for what you should want and desire, but what you do want and desire. You should know that from your poetry. It is the only way to 'make' true. What you desire will appear, no matter how you try to erase or recolor it.”

“All right,” said Clare. She turned her back on the ocean and the fire, and began to walk toward the dunes.”
― Katherine Catmull, The Radiant Road

“On one of the right-side-up pages show wrote, with some difficulty, Know what roots know: there is only one tree.”
― Katherine Catmull, The Radiant Road

“The poetry of the earth is never dead.”
― Katherine Catmull, The Radiant Road

“The secret makings of trees: pulling air and light from the world into their laboratories below the ground, creating food and breath and color for the world.”
― Katherine Catmull, The Radiant Road

“On water and light she runs.”
― Katherine Catmull, The Radiant Road