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Karen Maitland QUOTES

Karen Maitland QUOTES

21 " The skin on his palm was thicker than the hide on a man's heel, but across it and between the fingers were deep raw cracks from the cold and the salt which would never heal, not until he settled ashore. And that was not likely to be anytime soon, for when a man's got salt water in his blood and a sea wind in his lungs, neither wife nor land can keep him from the waves. "

― Karen Maitland , The Gallows Curse

22 " The bushes parted and a man stepped out. Gytha could see at once this was no charcoal burner. His fine red leather gloves and boots were not fashioned by any cordwainer in these parts. Nor was he a man who needed to hunt to fill his family's hungry bellies, for the flash from the gold thread on the trim of his tunic was enough to alert any quarry for miles around. "

― Karen Maitland , The Gallows Curse

23 " You have already excommunicated half the village because they will not pay their tithes. So why wouldn't they come to us? Can you excommunicate them twice over? As for the sick, most are here because the Mother Church in her great charity has already damned them and driven them out. The churches are emptier than a pauper's purse and little wonder, for men get more solace from the alewives than from their priests. More stand now outside your church than within it. What difference does it make if you forbid them burial in your churchyard, since they cannot afford the soul-scot you charge them to be buried there? Those who still look to God make their prayers far away from the church, where the air is sweeter and their voices are not smothered beneath your hypocrisy and greed. "

― Karen Maitland , The Owl Killers

24 " Gytha knew that affair was as doomed as a salmon and the swallow who fell in love "

― Karen Maitland , The Gallows Curse

25 " Part of him had dreaded seeing Elena again and yet he couldn't keep away. He hadn't been able to bring himself to look at her at first, because he knew that Raoul had had the pleasure of her. He had wanted to punish her, make her the whore she was, but now that it had happened, he was terrified of seeing that look of hardness in her eyes, that loss of innocence that had still remained even after Athan had bedded her. He wanted to seize her and shake her until she told him every single filthy thing that she and Raoul had done together. He wanted to know in each minute detail how she had looked when Raoul had touched her, what she had said, what she'd thought, what she felt. "

― Karen Maitland , The Gallows Curse

26 " They all wait impatiently for the blessed cloak of darkness to cover their wretched little deeds, but the sun will not be hurried by the whims of men. "

― Karen Maitland , The Gallows Curse

27 " You've heard tales of beauty and the beast. How a fair maid falls in love with a monster and sees the beauty of his soul beneath the hideous visage. But you've never heard the tale of the handsome man falling for the monstrous woman and finding joy in her love, because it doesn't happen, not even in a story-teller's tale. "

― Karen Maitland , Company of Liars

28 " Home is the place you return to when you have finally lost your soul. Home is the place where life is born, not the place of your birth, but the place where you seek rebirth. When you no longer have to remember which tale of your own past is true and which is an invention, when you know that you are an invention, then is the time to seek out your home. Perhaps only when you have come to understand that can you finally reach home. "

― Karen Maitland , Company of Liars

29 " Reckon it's best if you don't have anyone you care about; then it can't hurt you. Don't have to be afraid of losing someone if you no one to lose. "

― Karen Maitland , Company of Liars

30 " But then, the flames of a fire are not made less painful by the knowledge that others are burning with you. "

― Karen Maitland , Company of Liars

31 " We had taken her for granted until she was no longer there, like an ancient tree you don't truly see until it is felled, and then only from the empty space in the sky do you suddenly grasp its stature. "

― Karen Maitland , Company of Liars

32 " Are you finally admitting that you can sell a man hope? Have I at last succeeded in teaching you that?”

He laughed and flicked his whip again, harder. He was in a better mood than I had seen for months.

“No, Camelot, not hope. Hope is for the weak; have I not succeeded in teaching you that? To hope is to put your faith in others and in things outside yourself; that way lies betrayal and disappointment. They didn't want hope, Camelot; they wanted certainty. What a man needs is the certainty that he is right, no self-doubt, no fleeting thought that he might be wrong or misled. Absolute certainty that he is right—that's what gives a man the confidence and power to do whatever he wants and to take whatever he wants from this world and the next. "

― Karen Maitland , Company of Liars

33 " Sometimes mercy is not a kindness and pity is not love. "

― Karen Maitland , The Falcons of Fire and Ice

34 " There was a new king and his name was pestilence. And he had created a new law - thou shalt do anything to survive. "

― Karen Maitland , Company of Liars

35 " Mortals are strange creatures; they cling to life even when that life is nothing but pain and misery, yet they will throw away their lives for a word, an idea, even a flag. Wolves piss to mark their territory. Smell the stench of another pack and wolves will quietly slink away. Why risk a fight when it might maim or kill you? But humans will slash and slaughter in their thousands to plant their little piece of cloth on a hill or hang it from a battlement. "

― Karen Maitland , The Gallows Curse

36 " God's hand can be seen in any occurrence for those who are determined to find it there, but then again, so can the devil's "

― Karen Maitland , Company of Liars

37 " She’s one of the fay folk; half of her is a woman, but she has the legs of a goat, except no one ever sees those for she hides them under her robes. She sleeps deep in the black pool while it’s day, but at witch-light she rises in robes green as pond weed, glowing in the dark with her silver hair trailing behind her. She’s so beautiful any man who glimpses her can’t take his eyes off her. but that’s just her witchery for inside she’s really a withered old crone with a heart as black as a marsh pool. "

― Karen Maitland , The Owl Killers

38 " Why do mortals think that suffering is a coin with which they can buy justice or salvation? ... life is a steal if you are a talented thief, and if you are not, then you may suffer all you please but if will buy you nothing but pain. "

― Karen Maitland , The Gallows Curse

39 " King John won't need any persuading that the French have a hand in this. From what I've heard, if a bean gives him a bellyache he swears it was a French one. "

― Karen Maitland , The Gallows Curse

40 " For the fact is when men are hand, innocent or guilty, their semen, that salty white milk, falls onto the Earth and there are on that very spot we spring up... Why men should ejaculate in the throes of death is a mystery even to me. Perhaps death really is the consummation of life, or maybe it's the last act of the body desperate to bequeath a life that will go on even as its own is obliterated. But I like to believe it is a final one-fingered gesture of defiance at their executioners, the only obscene gesture they can make since their hands are tightly bound behind them. Whatever the reason, felons with their dying gasp impregnate our mother and so we, the mandrakes, are conceived. "

― Karen Maitland , The Gallows Curse