The Chilbury Ladies' Choir Quotes

“If we don't think about our death until we die, how can we decide how we want to live?”
― Jennifer Ryan, The Chilbury Ladies' Choir

“Human nature defeats me sometimes, how greed and spite can lurk so divisively around the utmost courage and sacrifice.”
― Jennifer Ryan, The Chilbury Ladies' Choir

“Then I looked out onto the horizon myself and realized that loss is the same wherever you go: overwhelming, inexorable, deafening. How resilient human beings are that we can learn slowly to carry on when we are left all alone, left to fill the void as best we can. Or disappear into it.”
― Jennifer Ryan, The Chilbury Ladies' Choir

“Music takes us out of ourselves, away from our worries and tragedies, helps us look into a different world, a bigger picture. All those cadences and beautiful chord changes, every one of them makes you feel a different splendor of life.”
― Jennifer Ryan, The Chilbury Ladies' Choir

“I took a deep breath of the syrupy sweetness of summer, suffused with bees and birds, and I thought to myself how beautiful this world can be. How lucky we are to be here, to be part of it, for however long we have.”
― Jennifer Ryan, The Chilbury Ladies' Choir

“And I realized that this is what it's like to be an adult, learning to pick from a lot of bad choices and do the best you can with that dreadful compromise. Learning to smile, to put your best foot forward, when the world around you seems to have collapsed in its entirety, become a place of isolation, a sepia photograph of its former illusion.”
― Jennifer Ryan, The Chilbury Ladies' Choir

“You need to find where you fit in this world, where you are happiest, where you can make a difference. And don’t be afraid of change.”
― Jennifer Ryan, The Chilbury Ladies' Choir

“And isn't love between two people better than hatred, in this world of violence and mourning? There seemed to me a fragile kindness in their love that survived through this poisonous war. Even though one of them hadn't.”
― Jennifer Ryan, The Chilbury Ladies' Choir

“Sometimes the magic of life is beyond thought. It's the sparkle of intuition, of bringing your own personal energy into your music.”
― Jennifer Ryan, The Chilbury Ladies' Choir

“A sense of responsibility— or was it guilt?— hung over me, that I was in some way at fault because of cowering to all these pompous men all these years, when I should have had the bravery to reclaim my own mind. That if we women had done this years ago, before the last war, before this one, we’d be in a very different world.”
― Jennifer Ryan, The Chilbury Ladies' Choir

“Sometimes the magic of life is beyond thought. It’s the sparkle of intuition, of bringing your own personal energy into your music.”
― Jennifer Ryan, The Chilbury Ladies' Choir

“We have prayer enough to light up the whole universe, like a thousand stars breathing life into our deepest fears.”
― Jennifer Ryan, The Chilbury Ladies' Choir

“...we spoke about dying. [Prim] told me how she'd nearly died of malaria. She said that she didn't mind the thought of death. That realizing you're going to die actually makes life better as it's only then that you decide to live the life you really want to live.”
― Jennifer Ryan, The Chilbury Ladies' Choir

“Perhaps there is something good that had come from this war: everything has been turned around, all the unfairness made grimly plain. It has given us everyday women a voice - dared us to stand up for ourselves, and to stand up for others. We have less to lose in this world of chaos and death, after all.”
― Jennifer Ryan, The Chilbury Ladies' Choir

“loss is the same wherever you go: overwhelming, inexorable, deafening.”
― Jennifer Ryan, The Chilbury Ladies' Choir

“The volume swelled with passion and deliberation as we poured our emotions into every darkened corner of the church. Every dusty cloister and crevice reverberated, reaching a crescendo in the final chorus, a vocal unison of thirteen villagers that cold, still night, pouring out our longings, our anxieties, our deepest fears.”
― Jennifer Ryan, The Chilbury Ladies' Choir

“He got into the van and opened the window to wave, and then, as it revved up and pulled away, his lips touched the palm of his hand and he blew me a kiss, something he hasn't done since he was a child. It was as if on the edge of manhood he, too, remembered everything we had shared, that he was the man who was still, in his heart, my little boy, late for school.”
― Jennifer Ryan, The Chilbury Ladies' Choir

“She said that she didn’t mind the thought of death. That realizing you’re going to die actually makes life better as it’s only then that you decide to live the life you really want to live, not the one everyone else wants you to live. And to thoroughly enjoy every minute.”
― Jennifer Ryan, The Chilbury Ladies' Choir

“It’s not about winning. It’s about finding humanity in the face of this war. It’s about finding hope when everything around us is collapsing. Including my own precious home.”
― Jennifer Ryan, The Chilbury Ladies' Choir

“We are as strong as the snakes, as fierce as the wolves, and as free as the stars.”
― Jennifer Ryan, The Chilbury Ladies' Choir

“She is so excruciatingly well-meaning it makes me want to plunge her long face into a barrel of ale to perk her up.”
― Jennifer Ryan, The Chilbury Ladies' Choir

“loss is the same wherever you go: overwhelming, inexorable, deafening. How resilient human beings are that we can learn slowly to carry on when we are left all alone, left to fill the void as best we can. Or”
― Jennifer Ryan, The Chilbury Ladies' Choir

“Journal de Kitty Winthrop
Samedi 30 mars 1940

Cette guerre dure depuis beaucoup trop longtemps – bien plus de six mois maintenant. La vie est devenue insupportable. Tout le monde s’active, il n’y a rien à manger, pas de nouveaux vêtements, pas de domestiques, pas de lumière après la tombée de a nuit et pas d'hommes. Il faut traîner partout son masque à gaz et filer aux abris antiaériens chaque fois qu’on entend les sirènes (bien qu’elles ne se soient pas déclenchées souvent jusqu’ici). Tous les soirs, on est obligés de tirer d’épais rideaux noirs pour occulter toutes les fenêtres afin qu’il ne filtre aucune lumière susceptible d’attirer l’œil des nazis sur l’endroit où nous habitons. On entend les nouvelles à la radio sur fond d’interminable friture, et tout le monde passe son temps à dire « chut » et à m’empêcher de jouer du piano.

Journal de Mrs. Tilling
Samedi 3 août 1940

Nous venons de vivre deux jours atroces. J’ai vraiment un mauvais pressentiment à propos de cette guerre, celui que nous allons être vaincus et perdre notre pays, notre culture, notre liberté. Que nous allons tout donner, toute notre énergie au combat, tous nos espoirs, nos rêves, tout donner de nous-mêmes. Et que les nazis arriveront et qu’il ne restera rien. Nous ne serons que des squelettes sans substance, nous les laisserons nous piétiner, diriger nos vies, notre quotidien, nos enfants – si tant est qu’il nous en reste.”
― Jennifer Ryan, The Chilbury Ladies' Choir

“No, I caught it from a nasty mosquito in India, but we don’t have mosquitoes here.”
― Jennifer Ryan, The Chilbury Ladies' Choir

“...and a picture of the solar system on the wall—we are a tiny, self-destructive dot in a mass of gray blackness.”
― Jennifer Ryan, The Chilbury Ladies' Choir

“loss is the same wherever you go: overwhelming, inexorable, deafening. How resilient human beings are that we can learn slowly to carry on when we are left all alone, left to fill the void as best we can. Or disappear into it.”
― Jennifer Ryan, The Chilbury Ladies' Choir

“There’s something called conventional wisdom, which means we have to carry on doing things the same way, even when it doesn’t make sense.”
― Jennifer Ryan, The Chilbury Ladies' Choir

“Funny how a bit of singing brings us together. There we were in our own little worlds, with our own problems, and then suddenly they seemed to dissolve, and we realized that it’s us here now, living through this, supporting each other. That’s what counts.”
― Jennifer Ryan, The Chilbury Ladies' Choir

“The most beautiful sound, the choir in full voice was singing softly, hesitantly to begin with, and then opening our voices straight from our very hearts. The Lord’s my Shepherd, I’ll not want; He makes me down to lie In pastures green; He leadeth me The quiet waters by. The volume swelled with passion and deliberation as we poured our emotions into every darkened corner of the church. Every dusty cloister and crevice reverberated, reaching a crescendo in the final chorus, a vocal unison of thirteen villagers that cold, still night, pouring out our longings, our anxieties, our deepest fears.”
― Jennifer Ryan, The Chilbury Ladies' Choir

“The sound of our voices filling the space, echoing through the little stone church, brought a burst of joy inside of me: the thrill of singing as a group again, the soft music of intertwining voices, for once staying in tune.”
― Jennifer Ryan, The Chilbury Ladies' Choir