Quotes from Robin Jarvis

Under the stars we are as one. Theirs is the power of countless years. They see our grief and know our pain, yet still they shine and their light gives us hope. From acorn to oak, but even the mightiest of oaks shall fall. Thus do we recognize the great wheel of life and death and life once more. We surrender our departed souls under the stars and may the Green gather them to him.

I come to call down my destiny - and it is tall and dangerous!

Many grim tales stem from your green lands, and still deeds both noble and evil shall yet unfold there.

The abbey had dominated Whitby for centuries and waves of invisible force flowed down from it. The ruin was a guardian, watching and waiting, caring for the little town that huddled beneath the cliff. It was a worshipful thing.

Long, long ago, when the mountains were but hills and the ungirdled oceans were pools and meres, a vast darkness lay over eastern lands. Whilst on western shores the foundations of the three thrones were still part of the living rock and the Raith Sidhe had not grown to an eighth of their later strength, in the East a foulness reigned.

It is never a question of what we desire," she said sensitively. "The path we all follow is already woven for us.

Remember us, Belle, Cyllinus wept, when the dangers are past and you sit upon the throne in Greenreach. Think of us. Do not forget me, little one.

Is the Starwife a witch? asked Firgil. Is any wise female a witch? Just because they have been blessed by the Green and given strange and beautiful gifts, does not mean they use them for evil purposes.

Now is the time! Ysabelle cried. Now do I accede to the throne and claim my place as Handmaiden to Orion!

Woodget glanced into the dim shadows behind the trees. What you be hiding fer? he called. On such a night as this even the greatest may hide and not be ashamed, came the response.

Nine bright stars from out the void shining up on high whose banished soul do they call back and augur in the sky? Despoiler of the ancient lands, who baked the deserts dry. Scarophion, Scarophion - the demon is close by.

I shall not waste any more words on you," she said coldly. "Your mind is too closed to hear them.

There is no evil in the darkness, it's just an absence of light.

Have no fear," the voice told her, "for in thee lies the hope of all. Only thou can deliver the land from darkness." "How can I?" she asked. "I am just one against so many." The eyes gleamed behind the dappling leaves. "Yet the smallest acorn may become the tallest oak," came the answer.

The path of life is strewn with many perils and the folly of knowledge is one of the greatest dangers. Wisdom is a treacherous weapon, little master, for it is sundered from compassion. All too often the end of the journey gains more import than it should and the wise become blind to the road and the method of their passing.

It was then that he discovered he had no more tears to cry.

The most harmful lies and the most hurtful, always contain a grain of truth," he said. "But nevertheless, lies they do remain.

Curious how even a little time can alter so much.

Yours is a true heart, Vespertilio. Beware of it, for it is surely too large for thy chest to contain.

I hope that the examples I have given have gone some way towards demonstrating that pedestrian touring in the later 1780s and the 1790s was not a matter of a few 'isolated affairs', but was a practice of rapidly growing popularity among the professional, educated classes, with the texts it generated being consumed and reviewed in the same way as other travel literature: compared, criticised for inaccuracies, assessed for topographical or antiquarian interest, and so on.

Raise thy head, Handmaiden of Orion, thou has borne thyself well thus far.

She could weep no tears, for all hers had been spent.

The time had finally come when she would have to accept the full power of the Starwife. No longer could she be just Ysabelle. Now she had a land to govern and all the daunting responsibilities that that entailed. The liberty she had experienced since the night she had escaped from the Ring of Banbha seemed to vanish. She was left stripped of her freedom, and only long years of a lonely reign stretched out before her.

Travel became distinguishable from pain and began to be regarded as an intellectual pleasur...These factors--the voluntariness of departure, the freedom implicit in the indeterminancies of mobility, the pleasure of travel free from necessity, the notion that travel signifies autonomy and is a means for demonstrating what one 'really' is independent of one context or set of defining associations--remain the characteristics of the modern conception of travel. Eric Leed