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Sinful Folk QUOTES

Sinful Folk QUOTES

1 " I remember the fire, it burns bright, always around me. I close my eyes, and tears stream out. The tides of the past seize me, bear me out to sea. "

― Ned Hayes , Sinful Folk

2 " Under the sanctuary are the catacombs where the dead wait for resurrection. The living do not venture there. The caverns here underneath the Sanctuary are illuminated only by dim shafts of light from the sanctuary. The walls are etched with flowers of frost, but at least I am out of the wind. Dark bays line the hall in front of me, a vast rabbit warren, each hold filled to the brim with the scent of the past. "

― Ned Hayes , Sinful Folk

3 " Rooks have clustered on either side of the long road. It is as if they line a grand parade route for our passage. Their black feathers are stark as soot against the white road and the snow. They stab at the ground with their strange bare bills and gray unfeathered faces. The birds are like rough-edged black stones on a string around this stripped cold neck of road. The old books tell us rooks bring the virtuous dead to heaven’s gate. "

― Ned Hayes , Sinful Folk

4 " Stars flicker above, points of bright ice in a dark river. I pull a heavy sheepskin around my legs and stretch my feet toward the fire. Despite the cold, Liam plays his flute, the sound whistling through the night. Soon my eyes are heavy, my head nodding.I open my eyes at the deep melodious baritone of Salvius’s voice telling a tale. Liam’s flute is silent now. I have heard Salvius tell many tales on market days; he is known for his memory of wandering minstrels and mummers who visit us at Whitsunday and through Midsummer. Salvius is a mockingbird: he can give a fair charade of the rhythmic tones of any wandering bard or any noble of the Royal Court.In this darkness, his eyes catch the light like a cat in the night. "

― Ned Hayes , Sinful Folk

5 " I must learn to be as the bear in a cage with the stick that pokes it always, through the bars. The bear acts as if the stick is made of air, and takes no notice of it, even when it is sharpened and draws blood. I must do the same. "

― Ned Hayes , Sinful Folk

6 " April comes to us, with her showers sweet. I wake to the cries of little birds before the light comes across the heath. They wait all night with open eyes. Now, with the rain at dawn, their voices make melody.
I turn back the reveled cloth of gold on my bed and walk to gaze beyond my glazed casement window. In the plaintive voices of the wood fowl, I imagine my mother calling to me, her words echoing across the years. "

― Ned Hayes , Sinful Folk

7 " The good, the bad, the virgin, and the harlot: no one is spared, all go rose-spattered with plague lesions. I see no sense, no judgment before doom strikes. Death takes us all with the black malady or the sweating sickness, or the white blindness or the winter croup, or the crops failing or bitter water in our mouths. "

― Ned Hayes , Sinful Folk

8 " Time moves on, and with it all flesh. "

― Ned Hayes , Sinful Folk

9 " Speech does not always unravel matters. Words can betray you, their labyrinthine threads tangled in knots, for we were cursed at that great tower of Babel, to speak always in riddles and never yet to comprehend. "

― Ned Hayes , Sinful Folk

10 " In the end, I listen to my fear. It keeps me awake, resounding through the frantic beating in my breast. It is there in the dry terror in my throat, in the pricking of the rats’ nervous feet in the darkness. Christian has not come home all the night long. I know, for I have lain in this darkness for hours now with my eyes stretched wide, yearning for my son’s return. "

― Ned Hayes , Sinful Folk

11 " Any story is an ocean whose tide begins in a place I can't know, and my life is but a moment in that flood, my part in it only a mote in the flow. "

― Ned Hayes , Sinful Folk

12 " The wheel of Fortune turns one way and another, taking us to the heights or the depths. That is the great wheel on which we all turn, tied to destinies that move up or down at the whim of God above. "

― Ned Hayes , Sinful Folk

13 " Every moment with your child is precious, no matter how long they live, no matter the number of their days. "

― Ned Hayes , Sinful Folk

14 " We are but a tattered remnant, a small and bastard race who linger on the shoulders of that giant race, a memory that is always our better. We look backward always, scratching in the ruins, reclaiming scraps from their vast and long-abandoned table of knowledge. For we are misshapen offspring, stunted in our ways and our minds, reaching blindly after the treasures of knowledge lost to time. "

― Ned Hayes , Sinful Folk

15 " It is a kingship grand that all of us build, every day of our meager lives, and it is a castle made of sand. Every wrong righted seems to bring another misdeed tumbling down upon our heads. But I for one will keep building such a kingdom. "

― Ned Hayes , Sinful Folk

16 " Fog lifts in the valley, rising as mist through the bare-limbed trees. Far below lies the deeping combe with our village in the heart of it.My whole world for nearly a decade has been contained in that place—and now the village of Duns looks so small. I hold up my hand, form a circle with my fingers. The distant village, wreathed in mist, seems a child’s plaything that I can hold in my own hand. "

― Ned Hayes , Sinful Folk

17 " The road is covered by jagged serrations of ice hard as iron. I pull aside the boot soles that are strapped to my feet. Underneath, my feet are streaked with cuts and dark abrasions. Thorns, branches and sharp ice graved their signs on me unknown, leaving behind a medley of runes written in some strange tongue. "

― Ned Hayes , Sinful Folk

18 " London town is a great and stinking warren. The smokes of many fires creep around our ankles and our cart, and a stench rises from the open sewers in the lanes: a reek that rivals anything from our cart. The streets twist unevenly between leaning houses made of wood: only one cart may fit between the walls, with people rushing all around. Like all the world we live in, this is a fallen place. "

― Ned Hayes , Sinful Folk

19 " The road is a river of ice, slick and unforgiving. A harsh sweep of white iron, smooth as glass and cold enough to freeze any uncovered inch of flesh to the surface. Hillocks and haystacks rise up, isles in a smoking brume. Here and there snow has blown aside, revealing the line of the great white stone road that slices through the hills. "

― Ned Hayes , Sinful Folk