Starve Acre Quotes

“What you go searching for and what you find aren't always the same.”
― Andrew Michael Hurley, Starve Acre

“The will of Richard's father had been to ensure that his son was in no doubt that a church was merely a meeting place for the mentally ill, and that all who gathered there--priest and parishioners--were like fearful, asinine schizophrenics. There was no God, no devil, no heaven or hell, no posthumous judgment for wickedness or reward for piety; there was no resurrection, no transfiguration, no illimitable bliss, no life everlasting. The sum of human existence was collagen and calcium phosphate. And then nothing.”
― Andrew Michael Hurley, Starve Acre

“The four erratic boulders were balanced on an outcrop of limestone, and though Richard had explained to Ewan how they’d got there—how they’d been inched down from Ribblehead by the glaciers thirteen thousand years ago—the boy preferred the story that Gordon had told him. That these mossy Silurian blocks were really the sons and daughters of a widower who, terrified of losing them as he had his wife, had found some means to turn them into stone and preserve them for eternity. The logic was untidy, but that didn’t matter. If you put your ear to the rock you could hear them talking. If you left a flower in one of the cracks it would be gone the next day. No, not eaten by sheep or whipped away by the wind but taken as a gift from one living child to another.”
― Andrew Michael Hurley, Starve Acre

“For a few minutes more, he looked to catch a last glimpse of the animal, but it had become one of the itinerant shadows that moved as the wind caught the trees. It had returned to patterns of living that were impossible to understand: where every movement and every sound meant something and nothing could be ignored; not the twitch of a leaf or the odor of earth or the sound of birds conversing across the wood. But Richard wondered if the hare in some way felt as he did that spring was always bestowed. That it was an invitation to come and watch the world moving and be among its tremors. Here in the field, those first shocks of the season were starting now. He could feel them and hear them. Beneath the trills and whistles of the blackbirds he became aware of a rushing sound. It was the beck flowing again, released from its rictus of ice.”
― Andrew Michael Hurley, Starve Acre

“But it was the birds, thought Richard. The astonishment of them. Down in the wood, they were loud with delight but also shock, as if after the long winter they had found their songs too big for their mouths and could not prevent them from spilling out across the field.”
― Andrew Michael Hurley, Starve Acre

“The hare had not been reborn in a pristine state of health but at the age it must have been when it died. Around the muzzle there was a grayness to the fur and it had the lean face of an animal hardened by the northern seasons. And by loneliness too. A buck hare never had a tribe to rule, he had no dark warren full of family. He lived by his own wits and in doing so acquired a deep wisdom of the world. He knew what men were, what men did.”
― Andrew Michael Hurley, Starve Acre

“Seeking an explanation for it all seemed ungrateful. A great kindness was at work here and he felt that by questioning the restoration he might jeopardize its fulfillment. He didn’t feel confused. He had witnessed what had happened and there it was. He wasn’t being asked to wonder, only observe and be awake to what he was being shown. The spring was coming. Soon, there would be only newness.”
― Andrew Michael Hurley, Starve Acre

“The gist was often no different to those mawkish Victorian pamphlets that testified to heartbroken parents that all suffering was ordained. That no death was chance. That a child was always handpicked to be with God. It was hard, Richard thought, for people to accept that an event could be utterly devoid of goodness. No one wanted to admit that cruelty really existed. Which is why the letters that came to Starve Acre from second cousins and old school friends insisted that the experience of Ewan’s death would send the Willoughbys out into the rest of their lives with the sort of inner strength that was only ever forged in grief. Meaning that they were privileged in some abhorrent way.”
― Andrew Michael Hurley, Starve Acre

“From the base of the skull, the bones arched and thickened through the lumbar region before narrowing toward the tail, which curved like the crack end of a whip. The shoulder blades were sharp and translucent. The ribs made a strong coop. But it was the hind legs that fascinated him most—the way that speed and spring still seemed ready to burst from the joints. In life, it would have been a magnificent animal.”
― Andrew Michael Hurley, Starve Acre

“Time had inevitably fattened the myths about Starve Acre, and yet it was undeniably sterile—most noticeably in the summertime, when all along the dale the fields belonging to the Burnsalls and Drewitts and Westburys were verdant and the Willoughbys’ plot was nothing but dry mud. In all the digging he’d done, Richard had never once turned up a single worm or spider. Only bones.”
― Andrew Michael Hurley, Starve Acre

“That at least would have given weight to Gordon’s yarn about the tree’s ruin being a punishment for putting one of God’s creations to such brutal purpose. “You do know they used the tree for hangings, don’t you, Richard?” “Yes, Gordon.” “That’s the reason nothing grows there in your field.” “Yes, Gordon.” “There’s not an inch of soil that’s still alive.”
― Andrew Michael Hurley, Starve Acre

“On the other side of the valley, beyond the Westburys’ hayfield, the limestone terraces of Outrake Fell looked even more severe than usual with their fringes of icicles, and the Burnsalls’ sheep, which were normally left to look after themselves on the high pastures during the winter, were down in the farm. The sound of their bleating rose with the slow smoke from the cottage chimney. It was the kind of scene that Juliette had imagined before they’d come to live here. A simplicity of movements and sounds.”
― Andrew Michael Hurley, Starve Acre

“There was something about being able to say that it was March. Something in the name that suggested energetic purpose and the onward movement of things. A time to work. A time to shoulder the yoke.”
― Andrew Michael Hurley, Starve Acre

“The storm had lasted for hours and the extent of its fury was marked by icy cornices blown over the dry-stone walls. They were wild jagged crests, like those of a sea surge breaking on inadequate defenses. So the winter went on. Adding to itself day by day.”
― Andrew Michael Hurley, Starve Acre

“The Raker-of-Mud The Hot-Footed-One. Jolly-Night-Drunk. Earth-on-the-Run. Piece-o-the-Dark. Lugs-in-the-Hay The Owd Duke-o-March. The Jester-o-May Twitch-in-the-Bracken Dandelion Jack Eyes-all-a-startle Marker-of-Tracks Earth-Thumper. Witch-Puppet. Lurker-at-Dusk ’Tis part of his game To vary his name.”
― Andrew Michael Hurley, Starve Acre

“Outside, the first true warmth of the year was starting to melt the snow in the front garden. The ash trees dripped and the roofs of the cars on the driveway gave off wisps of evaporating moisture. In the sunlight, wood and stone were polished. It was almost blinding to look along the lane. But it was the birds, thought Richard. The astonishment of them. Down in the wood, they were loud with delight but also shock, as if after the long winter they had found their songs too big for their mouths and could not prevent them from spilling out across the field.”
― Andrew Michael Hurley, Starve Acre