The Boatman's Daughter Quotes

“The girl sang with the voice of a child, but it was not hers. It was a rough voice, harsh with grief, and the words she sang were in Baba’s deep, guttural tongue, and the song she sang was long and terrible in its warp and weft, as if torn out of the peat-smelling earth itself.”
― Andy Davidson, The Boatman's Daughter

“A born witch carries power in her blood. Secrets, old and eternal. Nothing like a man’s secrets, which are petty. Fleeting. My father’s secrets were not even secrets at all. The men, they knew he was cruel. That his fists fell against Hana Krupin when he drank. They knew. But men, Myshka, look after men.”
― Andy Davidson, The Boatman's Daughter

“This,” she said, picking up the head, a runnel of blood and tissue and the candy-pink mouth yet open, “is the only way to deal with a snake.”
― Andy Davidson, The Boatman's Daughter

“Riddle put his hand over the man’s mouth and nose, almost gently, felt the sputter of his breath, the dampness of his face. “We should of been friends,” Riddle said. He pinched the nose and clamped the mouth shut, and when the man began to struggle, Riddle dropped to his knees and put his whole weight into the task, and he felt the man beneath him wanting not to die, the muscles tensing, the body pushing against him with everything it had, and it was almost a kind of miracle healing, like bringing a man back from the dead instead of sending him there, the way the biker’s broken body fought against the end. Finally, the fight went out, and the man lay still beneath the constable’s hand.”
― Andy Davidson, The Boatman's Daughter

“She died.”
― Andy Davidson, The Boatman's Daughter

“He prayed, as people long bereft of belief will pray, the belief having lain dormant, awaiting some moment of terror such as this to germinate it, to bring forth a shoot so delicate and small and dear.”
― Andy Davidson, The Boatman's Daughter

“They watched the rain pour from the eaves of their tin roofs to wear away the mud below and saw in this the promise of their own slow annihilation, their fates tied inextricably to the land they or some long-lost forebear had claimed.”
― Andy Davidson, The Boatman's Daughter