Quotes from Cynthia Voigt

She stood to drink in the darkness and the air fallen still after a snowfall. The clouds had all blown away. Faint moonlight silvered the fresh snow. Stars shone in a black sky, like jewels on a Lady's cloak. The garden lay shrouded in silver white silence, all its roughness made smooth. Such snow, Gwyn thought, had a way of turning the world into what it was not and making it seem safe. Such snow masked the true face of the world.

Evil would be done, that was the nature of the world; that was bearable if good could also be done.

When this map was made, there was only empty forest in the south, Gran told Birle. Not empty, Granda corrected her. The forest is never empty.

curled up, closed his eyes, and marched himself off, as if sleep were an actual place, like home, like the kitchen—a place a mouse could go to.

Having someplace in mind that you were traveling to was different from not having any place.

It all depended on what their grandmother was really like, inside herself where she was who she really was. Not outside. Dicey knew about the difference between outside and inside.

He took his time getting to her, as if he was sure she'd wait, sure of his own strength to hold her, even at that distance. He moved like he thought she was afraid of him, too afraid to run.

Throughout the meal, Windy's voice blew over them, smooth and steady. It didn't matter what he was saying.

There could be no home for the Tillermans. Home free — Dicey would settle for a place to stay. Stay free.

He was studying his grandmother, as if he was hungry too, but for something not food, hungry in a way that food could never fill.

All she knew was that his smile lit up the morning as the rising sun does. For a moment, looking at his face, it was as if her ribs were empty, hollow, as if the world had stopped forever while she looked into his eyes as blue as the bellflowers that grew wild across the meadows. For a moment, just until her beating heart had returned to her chest, Birle had thought she understood everything about herself she had never understood before.

Little bright-topped waves rocked the boat gently on the way to pattering up against the seawalls. A salty wind blew from the land out over the water. The town of Crisfield lay in the sunlight before them, bleached white as the oyster shells scattered around the ground.

He guessed he wouldn't mind being a book. Books just did what they were made to do, like stars just shining out in case anyone cared to look.

It took another time, more waves rolling up, to understand that he had no idea what it would be like to live without fear at his elbow, warning him, keeping him safe, keeping him frightened.

Maybeth always did that, brought her good news to the table and held it out, like a little kid holding out her hand, then unwrapping her fingers to show some treasure, some stone or flower. She held her good news out to them all, giving it to them.

He was wrong, somehow, and he wanted to be all right, but it was almost as if there was some secret nobody would tell him, so he was always going to be stuck outside.

He fell into sleep then, as a body weighted with stones and wrapped in winding sheets falls into deep water.

She was too often too close to off balance, she knew that.

I enjoy almost everything I do, perhaps because when I don't enjoy something, I don't do it. I enjoy writing; I enjoy teaching; I enjoy having a family to live among. I am neither a feminist nor an antifeminist, because it seems to me that we are first human beings and after that men and women. Human beings have, so far, proved interesting enough to keep me busy just trying to figure out what might be right and true about them.

Miss Koala, the Eastern Star, and the Simón Bolívar.

He would have to be as clever as a river, he thought, to do well. But he could twist and turn like water, and go his own way, however hard the world tried to drive him along another -- or, the thought he could do that.

Griff had the guarded face of a man who had much to lose by the wrong choice, although he had never had anything to lose. Griff's smile visited his face like a stranger who was only asking directions on his way through to another town.

You were going to fall, you always did, but you had to get up fast and keep going.

Night's darkness cloaked Elske, covering her as the winter snows cover mountains, from peak to foot. Elske moved with the weight of darkness on her shoulders, on her head; and she tasted it in her mouth like the flavorless rills that ran so fast in spring melts.