Where Late the Sweet Birds Sang Quotes

“He looked at the sky once more. Men had gone out there, he thought in wonder, and couldn't think why. Singly and in small groups they had gone into strange lands, across wide seas, had climbed mountains where no human foot had ever trod. And he couldn't think why they had done these things. What impulse had driven them from their own kind to perish alone, or among strangers.”
― Kate Wilhelm, Where Late the Sweet Birds Sang

“Molly watched the pale water, changing, always changing, and always the same, and she could feel him near, not touching, not speaking. Thin clouds chased across the face of the swelling moon. Soon it would be full, the harvest moon, the end of Indian summer. The moon was so cleanly outlined, so unambiguous, she thought. A misshapen bowl, like an artifact made by inexpert hands that would improve with practice.”
― Kate Wilhelm, Where Late The Sweet Birds Sang

“They were happy because they didn't have enough imagination to look ahead, he thought, and anyone who tried to tell them there were dangers was by definition an enemy of the community.”
― Kate Wilhelm, Where Late the Sweet Birds Sang

“The winters were getting colder, starting earlier, lasting longer, with more snows than he could remember from childhood. As soon as man stopped adding his megatons of filth to the atmosphere each day, he thought, the atmosphere had reverted to what it must have been long ago, moister weather summer and winter, more stars than he had ever seen before, and more, it seemed, each night than the night before: the sky a clear, endless blue by day, velvet blue-black at night with blazing stars that modern man had never seen.”
― Kate Wilhelm, Where Late the Sweet Birds Sang

“Why are you saying this?” she whispered, her face ashen. “So you won’t have any illusions about your little nest here! We can use you, do you understand? As long as you are useful to the community, you’ll be allowed to live here like a princess. Just as long as you’re useful.” “Useful, how? No one wants to look at my paintings. I’ve finished the maps and drawings of the trip.” “I’m going to dissect your every thought, your every wish, every dream. I’m going to find out what happened to you, what made you separate yourself from your sisters, what made you decide to become an individual, and when I find out we’ll know how never to allow it to happen again.”
― Kate Wilhelm, Where Late The Sweet Birds Sang

“Five thousand years of savagery, Barry had believed. But that was time measured on the steps of the pyramids, not by those who lived any part of it. Mark had led his people into a timeless period where the recurring seasons and the cycles of the heavens and of life, birth, and death marked their days. Now the joys of men and women, and their agonies, were private affairs that would come and go without a trace. In the timeless period, life became the goal, not the recreation of the past or the elaborate structuring of the future.”
― Kate Wilhelm, Where Late the Sweet Birds Sang

“He looked down at the floor, at the shambles of the pieces he had made, and wiped his face with his arm. "Mother," he said, and stopped. Now Molly moved. Somehow, she reached him before he could speak again, and she held him tightly, and he held her, and they both wept.
"Sorry I busted everything."
"You'll make more."
"I wanted to show you."
"I looked at them all. They were very good--the hands especially."
"They were hard. The fingers were funny, but I couldn't make them not funny."
"Hands are the hardest of all.”
― Kate Wilhelm, Where Late the Sweet Birds Sang

“They don't like the way the pictures make them feel. They think it's dangerous. Miriam thinks so. The others will too.'
Ben looked at the tiny boat in the endless ocean. 'But...you don't have to paint this one, do you? Can't you do something else?'
She shook her head. Her eyes were still closed. 'If someone had a bad heart, would you treat his ear because it was easier?' Now she looked at him and there was no mockery at all in her face.”
― Kate Wilhelm, Where Late the Sweet Birds Sang

“They would have a ceremony of the lost for her, she thought distantly. The sisters would be comforted by the others, and the party would last until dawn as they all demonstrated their solidarity in the face of grievous loss. In the light of the rising sun, the remaining sisters would join hands, forming a circle, and after that she would cease to exist for them. No longer would she torment them with her new strangeness, her apartness. No one had the right to bring unhappiness to the brothers or sisters, she thought. No one had the right to exist if such existence was a threat to the family--that was the law.”
― Kate Wilhelm, Where Late the Sweet Birds Sang

“You’re going to care! Because those babies are going to come busting out of those sacs, and those babies are the only hope we have, and you know it. Our genes, yours, mine, Celia’s, those genes are the only thing that stand between us and oblivion. And I won’t allow it, David! I refuse it!”
― Kate Wilhelm, Where Late the Sweet Birds Sang

“There’s more drought and more flooding than there’s ever been. England’s changing into a desert, the bogs and moors are drying up. Entire species of fish are gone, just damn gone, and only in a year or two…”
― Kate Wilhelm, Where Late the Sweet Birds Sang

“The Wistons were farmers, had always been Farmers. “Custodians of the soil,” Grandfather Wiston had once said “not its owners, just custodians.”
― Kate Wilhelm, Where Late the Sweet Birds Sang

“Wishful thinking, no more than wishful thinking.”
― Kate Wilhelm, Where Late the Sweet Birds Sang

“Sometimes the loneliness had been almost too much, he thought, and always at those times he had found comfort in the woods, where he said nothing. He wondered if the others were still gloomy; no one spoke of it any longer. He smiled as he thought of how the women had wet and screamed and straddle behind him, I want to run to catch up once more.”
― Kate Wilhelm, Where Late the Sweet Birds Sang