A Green and Ancient Light Quotes

“To live in this world, I realized, is to leave pieces of your heart in various places; and to move toward any place is to move away from another.”
― Frederic S. Durbin, A Green and Ancient Light

“The older I become, the more I understand Mr. Girandole's look of sadness and what he must have been thinking then. These games with tangerine peels... the times of little wide-eyed girls arriving on the terrace, and boys with notebooks... none of it lasted for more than a breath. Time never turned backward. Summer gave way to winter, and summer came again, and year by year, the vines lengthened, and the sharp detail faded from the statues- scales becoming ripples, passion becoming tranquility. Each time Mr. Girandole saw Grandmother, he looked at her like we all ought to look at one another, every time.”
― Frederic S. Durbin, A Green and Ancient Light

“One person, I’d come to understand, was actually many people—people of different ages, people who lived in different surroundings; these people all had the same name and knew something of each other, but they lived entirely separate lives.”
― Frederic S. Durbin, A Green and Ancient Light

“I had reached a way-marker on the path to adulthood-- the first dividing of my heart. To live in this world, I realized, is to leave pieces of your heart in various places; and to move toward any place is to move away from another.”
― Frederic S. Durbin, A Green and Ancient Light

“Do you read the Bible?"
. . . .
"Do you suppose that the Elder Folk don't know who makes the trees grow? We've known Him since the beginning." Climbing again, he added: "I would never disregard a book simply because it was so new and so concise.”
― Frederic S. Durbin, A Green and Ancient Light

“We can't avoid pain, but misery is always a choice.”
― Frederic S. Durbin, A Green and Ancient Light

“. . .the essence of Faery is all around us, written in every leaf.”
― Frederic S. Durbin, A Green and Ancient Light

“Ignorance multiplies itself better than yeast. If we could make bread out of rumors, no one in the world would go hungry.”
― Frederic S. Durbin, A Green and Ancient Light

“Moses?" I asked in surprise, crawling after him up the steep steps. "Do you read the Bible?"

He stopped, gazing down past his elbow at me with a serious face. "Do you suppose that the Elder Folk don't know who makes the trees grow? We've known Him since the beginning.”
― Frederic S. Durbin, A Green and Ancient Light

“I knew that humans have a gift that is not granted to us in Faery: this gift of giving the heart in devotion to one other soul, and walking together through days of a limited number. This love of which your people are capable. . . It's warmer than the warmest hearth in winter. It's like a meteor, lighting the sky before it passes beyond.”
― Frederic S. Durbin, A Green and Ancient Light

“When your mind's too restless to think," Grandmother said, "move your hands.”
― Frederic S. Durbin, A Green and Ancient Light

“I said, "Isn't lying a sin?"
"Yes," [Grandmother] answered soberly. "But that wasn't a lie. That was camouflage.”
― Frederic S. Durbin, A Green and Ancient Light

“They call it haunted; you call it sacred.” Grandmother chuckled, placing a cup of tea on a saucer beside me. “When your father took you to the Great Cathedral, how did you feel? Frightened, or full of holy awe?” I thought of the gargoyles, the soaring stained glass and colored light . . . the vast space and dim heights . . . the joyous and fiendish and suffering faces, carved in high places and in low, in brightness and shadow. “Both,” I answered. “There you are, then. Haunted and sacred. Maybe they want to mean the same thing, but neither word is big enough.” I”
― Frederic S. Durbin, A Green and Ancient Light