HYACINTH Quotes

“He shook his head. “We’re always in danger, Miss Blillick. We’ve chosen it—to live our lives in constant decision that the things we stand for are worth it. Who we are is dangerous.”
― Mereda Hart Farynyk, HYACINTH: the average girl

“Our province is the greatest of all of the provinces because we are safe and we are free,” Mrs. Golding said with an air of finality and thence resumed the study of her magazine.

Nothing—not anything that Fleck had told her or anything she had learned in the Burrow—had shown Hyacinth the truth of the world as plainly as Mrs. Golding’s statement.

They were free. Free, but trapped inside the province walls. Free, but kept in ignorance. Free, but had regulated for them what they could eat and drink and think and say. They were safe but only so long as they kept to society’s expectations.

All of these truths sank into Hyacinth’s soul in a single, horrible, breath, and she knew that it couldn’t be different with any of the other provinces. None of them were free. No one was.”
― Mereda Hart Farynyk, HYACINTH: the average girl

“She didn’t know if the feeling of Fleck holding her made her want to cry all the more or stifled the impulse entirely. He stunned and calmed and aggravated her feelings all at once, and all she could do was enjoy the dizzying effect of the music and the movement and him.”
― Mereda Hart Farynyk, HYACINTH: the average girl

“Hyacinth’s mind was a tangled mass of anxiety. No. It was worse than that. Her thoughts were too frayed to form the structure of a tangle—each one just as fleeting as the last, each fear and confusion only half realized, only half understood. To tangle Hyacinth’s mind would be like trying to tie knots with dandelion fluff.”
― Mereda Hart Farynyk, HYACINTH: the average girl

“It was this, the knowledge of her own ineptitude, that caused Hyacinth’s body to tremble, not the brisk autumn wind, not the icy menace of the dark building.”
― Mereda Hart Farynyk, HYACINTH: the average girl

“No matter how impossible her situation was, the truth was worth it. The pain of clarity was so much sweeter than the murky fog of ignorance, and she had no desire to go back.”
― Mereda Hart Farynyk, HYACINTH: the average girl

“Have you told your sisters?” was the blunt reply.
Hyacinth wanted to protest that she hadn’t had the right opportunity, but she couldn’t. She understood his meaning instantly. She also understood why Fleck had apologized so profusely earlier that day—the decision to live the life that they lived, the life that she was only beginning to comprehend, was not one you could make for another person.”
― Mereda Hart Farynyk, HYACINTH: the average girl

“The day passed like a dream—not in a pleasant way, but in the sense that her mind would not willingly regard it as reality.”
― Mereda Hart Farynyk, HYACINTH: the average girl

“Acknowledgment of the truth does not equate to acceptance of it,” she finally hissed, knowing that she should keep her mouth shut but oddly unable to do so. “And if you’re going to make any real change in the world, you have to begin by acknowledging what the world really is. You can’t change something you don’t understand.”
― Mereda Hart Farynyk, HYACINTH: the average girl