Home > Work > Hiddensee: A Tale of the Once and Future Nutcracker
21 " The person who asks questions like yours always gets to choose the terms, "
― Gregory Maguire , Hiddensee: A Tale of the Once and Future Nutcracker
22 " I would leave me were I him. I would leave myself if I could. "
23 " I’m not good, I’m just quiet, "
24 " And so the feast-day of the nativity of the Christ Child approached with its usual panic, uproar, and greed. "
25 " Never underestimate the value of a mother in wartime. She has the most to fight for. "
26 " You’re in the finest hands. He’s a very capable soldier.” “He is an old man with a white beard.” “He is a young man inside, and strong. "
27 " The world was a set of alternations, resistance and persistence, writ up in lake and the distant Alpine peaks of eastern Switzerland. In fact, the world was no easier to understand than Bach. "
28 " I’m not slow.” “Well, you’re not hasty, "
29 " Lost is not an address, it’s not a permission to fail, it’s not an excuse. "
30 " How like a spoon with a razor edge is human need. "
31 " Whispering can disguise the shape of syllables, but not of mood. "
32 " By that token, you might forget an event, but you can never go back to living as you did before its hidden influence was applied upon you. "
33 " We are all migrants. We are exiled from the place where meaning meant something. "
34 " Mind your way forward and find your way back, "
35 " The toys can help in the battle.""Mother Ginger? I doubt it!""Never underestimate the value of a mother in wartime. She has the most to fight for. "
36 " Is it only in childhood that we are capable of taking in the whole world?What does it do to us that we briefly have that privilege? And, then, what harm , when the fund of novelty in human experience runs dry? "
37 " You only seem to read in yourself what you have not. "
38 " The vagabond human spirit requires a chart of possibilities in order to keep putting one foot in front of another, keep licensing the next heartbeat after the previous. "
39 " Without a memory, what does experience mean -- or matter? "
40 " The old-fashioned stories have always been with us, Dirkie. The cross was planted in the mouth of antiquity so modern faith could begin; but the old beliefs mumble from the ground. Those who halt their incessant prayers can hear the old stories telling themselves out loud. Indeed, I think that is what you do—that is your genius. "