The Call Quotes

“She says, "I'm going to live. And nobody's going to stop me." She believes every word of it.”
― Peadar Ó Guilín, The Call

“They drink from streams whose waters taste like tears, and indeed each swallow fills them with a few heartbeats of deep sadness.”
― Peadar Ó Guilín, The Call

“The redhead shrugs. She doesn't care. And neither should Nessa. Not if she wants to live.”
― Peadar Ó Guilín, The Call

“Your blood flowed out of you
And I didn't try to clean it
But drank it from my palms”
― Peadar Ó Guilín, The Call

“We always keep our word,' the Sídhe replies. 'The power of a promise is all that keeps our two worlds together.”
― Peadar Ó Guilín, The Call

“It looks a little cruel,' says Conor. 'I don't like cruelty.'

'Oh, I think you do. I think you like it very much. But where you live, amid such constant beauty, those who appreciate suffering must pretend otherwise even to themselves.”
― Peadar Ó Guilín, The Call

“His losses of the past few weeks are suddenly irrelevant, because this is the only test that anybody in the country cares about. And he is ready to face it.”
― Peadar Ó Guilín, The Call

“As a survivor, she doesn't need to speak that language anymore. But many like her are more comfortable in it than English, and since they have no choice but to marry each other, the primary schools of the country are filling with tiny tots whose innocent mouths spout the long-dead language of their distant ancestors, which also happens to be the living, never-changing tongue of the enemy. Some day, she thinks, we will be them, a greater victory for the Sídhe than if they kill us all.”
― Peadar Ó Guilín, The Call

“But although she is terrified by what she thinks he will do to her - what he must do, to avoid losing the last of his authority - Nessa is a girl who imagines a great destiny for herself: survival. She will fight anyone who threatens to steal it from her. Most especially, she will fight her weaker self. The self that copies other people's poetry and pines for boy who doesn't care. The self that wants her to run like a startled rabbit for the pleasure of the wolves.”
― Peadar Ó Guilín, The Call

“Listen, we don't need the Sídhe to teach us evil. We were the ones who put them in the Grey Land, remember? And not for just a day or however long the Call lasts. We Irish...we trapped an entire race of people in hell for all eternity just so we could take their homes for ourselves.”
― Peadar Ó Guilín, The Call