The Lost Flowers of Alice Hart Quotes

“Alice would always remember this day as the one that changed her life irrevocably, even though it would take her the next twenty years to understand: life is lived forward but only understood backward. You can't see the landscape you're in while you're in it”
― Holly Ringland, The Lost Flowers of Alice Hart

“life is lived forward but only understood backward. You can’t see the landscape you’re in while you’re in it.”
― Holly Ringland, The Lost Flowers of Alice Hart

“Each flower is a secret language. When I wear a combination of flowers together, it's like I'm writing my own secret code that no one else can understand unless they know my language.”
― Holly Ringland, The Lost Flowers of Alice Hart

“The more she cried, the more Alice believed she really did have some of the sea inside her.”
― Holly Ringland, The Lost Flowers of Alice Hart

“The desert's an old dream of the sea.”
― Holly Ringland, The Lost Flowers of Alice Hart

“I knew you were still in there. Stay, please don't let the wind change.”
― Holly Ringland, The Lost Flowers of Alice Hart

“Life and other people's stories had always told her she was blue. Her father's eyes. The sea. Alice Blue. The color of orchids. Of her boots. Of fairytale queens. Of loss. But Alice's centre was red. It always was. The color of fire. Of earth. Of heart, and courage.”
― Holly Ringland, The Lost Flowers of Alice Hart

“And her light
stretches over salt sea
equally and flowerdeep fields.

Sappho”
― Holly Ringland, The Lost Flowers of Alice Hart

“Have courage, take heart.”
― Holly Ringland, The Lost Flowers of Alice Hart

“Alice came upon treasure after treasure: everlasting daisies in pastel pinks and yellows, trails of grey and white feathers, boughs heavy with blossom buds on the gum trees. She breathed in the warm earth and appreciated the sky, a blend of soldier-crab blue and every shade of purple in a pipi shell. The desert's an old dream of the sea.”
― Holly Ringland, The Lost Flowers of Alice Hart

“Alice recalled one of the books Dylan had read to her, a collection of Japanese fairytales. In one, a woman artist practiced kintsugi, repairing broken pottery with lacquer mixed with powdered gold. There'd been an illustration of a woman bent over a pile of broken pottery pieces, laid out to fit together, with a fine paintbrush in her hand, its bristles dipped in gold. It had enchanted Alice, the idea that breakage and repair were part of the story, not something to be disdained or disguised.”
― Holly Ringland, The Lost Flowers of Alice Hart

“Life is lived forward but only understood backwards.
You can't see the landscape you are in while you are in it.”
― Holly Ringland, The Lost Flowers of Alice Hart

“The flowers are waiting to meet you.”
― Holly Ringland, The Lost Flowers of Alice Hart

“Alice wished on feathers and dandelions to be a bird and fly far away into the golden seam of the horizon where the sea was sewn to the sky.”
― Holly Ringland, The Lost Flowers of Alice Hart

“Your instincts will always guide you, like the stars.”
― Holly Ringland, The Lost Flowers of Alice Hart

“Trust yourself. Trust your story. All you can do is tell it true.”
― Holly Ringland, The Lost Flowers of Alice Hart

“pain on the outside softened the sharp feelings inside she couldn’t reach.”
― Holly Ringland, The Lost Flowers of Alice Hart

“Sturt's desert pea

Meaning: Have courage, take heart
Swainsona formosa | Inland Australia

Malukuru (Pit.) are famous for distinctive blood-red, leaf-like flowers, each with a bulbous black centre, similar to a kangaroo's eye. A striking sight in the wild: a blazing sea of red. Bird-pollinated and thrives in arid areas, but very sensitive to any root disturbance, which makes it difficult to propagate.”
― Holly Ringland, The Lost Flowers of Alice Hart

“Blue pincushion

Meaning: I mourn your absence
Brunonia australis | All states and territories

A perennial found in woodlands, open forests and sand plains. Medium to deep blue flowers usually in spring, in hemispherical clusters on a tall stem. Can be difficult to establish. May die after a few years.”
― Holly Ringland, The Lost Flowers of Alice Hart

“Her mother was peaceful. She was calm. The sight filled Alice with the kind of green hope she found at the bottom of rock pools at low tide but never managed to cup in her hands.
The more time she spent with her mother in the garden, the more deeply Alice understood- from the tilt of Agnes's wrist when she inspected a new bud, to the light that reached her eyes when she lifted her chin, and the thin rings of dirt that encircled her fingers as she coaxed new fern fronds from the soil- the truest parts of her mother bloomed among her plants. Especially when she talked to the flowers. Her eyes glazed over and she mumbled in a secret language, a word here, a phrase there as she snapped flowers off their stems and tucked into her pockets.
Sorrowful remembrance, she'd say as she plucked a bindweed flower from its vine. Love, returned. The citrusy scent of lemon myrtle would fill the air as she tore it from a branch. Pleasures of memory. Her mother pocketed a scarlet palm of kangaroo paw.”
― Holly Ringland, The Lost Flowers of Alice Hart

“For Alice, falling in love was noting else but feeling her insides set on fire. The feeling consumed her, as if she'd somehow always known him and had been searching for him just as long. Here he was.”
― Holly Ringland, The Lost Flowers of Alice Hart

“I hope you're well, Alice.
Here's to courage. And to heart, right?
How about, here's also to the future, and everything it holds.
Moss.

Alice shook the envelope; a packet of desert pea seeds fell into her palm.
'That looks like some kind of magic,' Sally said.
Alice gave her a small smile. 'It is.' She closed her hand around the packet of seeds, feeling their individual shapes and thinking of the color they would grow. To the future.”
― Holly Ringland, The Lost Flowers of Alice Hart

“What plant?'
'Sorry?'
"What plant did Mum leave, at the grave?'
Sally went to the open window and reached through to pick a peach-colored flower from a blooming bush. She offered it to Alice.
'Beach hibiscus,' Alice cried softly, remembering the flower crown her mother made when she was a child. Remembering its meaning in the Thornfield Dictionary. Love binds us in eternity.”
― Holly Ringland, The Lost Flowers of Alice Hart

“In my family monarch butterflies are daughters of fire. They come from the sun carrying the souls of warriors who fought and died in battle, and return to feed on the nectar of flowers.”
― Holly Ringland, The Lost Flowers of Alice Hart

“Cootamundra wattle

Meaning: I wound to heal
Acacia baileyana | New South Wales

Graceful tree with fern-like foliage and bright golden-yellow globe-shaped flower heads. Adaptable, hardy evergreen, easy to grow. Profuse flowering in winter. Heavily fragrant and sweetly scented. Produces abundant pollen, favored for feeding bees in the production of honey.”
― Holly Ringland, The Lost Flowers of Alice Hart

“there are always seeds that thread us and carried on the wind set us apart does the wind come from the origins or the mother or the father will my origins be blown away or remain in distance if I leave will the wind stand breathless shall I remain to die broken from home”
― Holly Ringland, The Lost Flowers of Alice Hart

“She pored over the books. Paused to name every sketched and pressed flower aloud, and speak its meaning; an incantation to end the burden of carrying an untold story inside her.”
― Holly Ringland, The Lost Flowers of Alice Hart

“ Beloved, thou hast brought me many
flowers...
... take them, as I used to do
Thy flowers, and keep them where they
shall not pine.
Instruct thine eyes to keep their
colors true,
And tell thy soul, their roots are left
in mine.

Elizabeth Barrett Browning”
― Holly Ringland, The Lost Flowers of Alice Hart

“She lay in bed watching the winter sky and naming the changing colors- soft navy and lilac to peach and champagne pink- before the sun rose and lit up the red earth.”
― Holly Ringland, The Lost Flowers of Alice Hart

“Around them, the willowy needles of desert oak trees swayed in the pale orange light. Wafts of yellow butterflies fluttered low over acacia and mulga bushes. The crater wall slowly changed color as the sun sank, from flat ochre to blazing red to chocolate-purple. The sun slipped under the dark line of the horizon, glowing like an ember as it threw its last light up into the sky.”
― Holly Ringland, The Lost Flowers of Alice Hart