Quotes from Elizabeth Madox Roberts

What's devil to some is good to some others.

I never could have thought of it, To have a little bug all lit And made to go on wings.

how did she, Ellen Chesser, ever come to such a state of need that a person outside herself, some other being, not herself, some person free to go and come and risk accidents far from herself, should hold the very key to her life and breath in his hand?

The ground and the air were as nothing to her, for all her life had been plucked out and there was nothing left but the knowledge that it had been taken away.

The rocks fell where she laid them with a faint flat sound, and the afternoon seemed very still back of the dove calls and the cries of the plovers, back of a faint dying phrase, 'in the time of man'.

The year began to turn, a form moving lightly upon itself, but she minded nothing of the year, for her body had changed, and the hoe and the soil now cut each other sharply, visible and near. 'Jonas,' she said, over and over. It was a name, that was all, a name for something that was gone.

She lay there all the day, falling out of her deep sleep into a hurt dream now and then but gathering back into nothingness and numbness in the end.

Before autumn Ellen was fifteen. During the summer there had always been food and she had grown less thin. Her bones had withdrawn under the flesh and her eyes were no longer hollow. Signs of woman begun to appear on her meagre body; woman took possession of her although she was hard like spines and sharp like flint. She looked at herself in the mirror of the creek, for she dared not unrobe herself in the house before the eyes of her mother.

Ellen chopped the wood at the woodpile in the yard and she carried water from an old well in the rear of the pasture. She was afraid to pass beyond the ways allotted to her by her labours, and so the region beyond the pond stood off as a picture, unexplored

I recall how upset Josie was. Ready to gouge and fight that-there time over at Bethel Church.' 'A man's that got it in head to own a place… got get-up in his hide… Beyond that under their shirts they're all just alike. In the dark you couldn't know one from the next.

But often the storm raged, sleet or wind or heavy snow, and Jonas did not come for several weeks at a time. The coldest winter in years, men said, the coldest in the time of man.

No plough iron ever cut this-here hill afore, not in the whole time of man,' Henry said.

You could learn that too in books, it's said. I got a heap of books to read and ne'er a one have I read yet but two or maybe three. You could never read all the books in the world, I reckon, if you read all your days until you're old.' 'I don't aim to get old. I wouldn't. Grow up is all I aim.

The woman had been seen now a half-dozen times and had become a mass of characteristic motions and friendly staring eyes. Ellen longed to fix her into a thought, to know what she would say now that she knew how she would look saying it. She longed to find her out, to like her or to hate her.

The farm was beautiful and secure, running up over a hill and lapping into a ravine, spreading flat over the lower pasture. It was there, in place, reaching about into hollows and over uplands, theirs to live in and to know and to work.

this girl before and they told each other their names. The richness of the autumn came into the air, the throb of the engine, the abundance of the farm, the hickory nuts which she offered to the girl and which her thin hands took. She was Dorine Wheatley. 'We moved into MacMurtrie's tenant house a while back,' she said. 'Are there any parties around here? Any fellows to have a good time with?

Here's how Granny looks,' Melissy said, sucking in her lips to look toothless. 'Here's Granny.' 'Shame to you,' Ellen said. 'I'll whip you and whip hard if I hear you make fun of your granny. Don't let me hear e'er one of you make fun of your granny or your grandpap either. Granny, she's old. It's a shame to make fun of old folks. You'll be old yourself some day.

Hearing the high thin cries in the autumn Ellen would remember the one time when she had met Miss Amanda on a path. Her bright cotton dress had come flashing in the way and she had walked quickly by, without a greeting, her mouth lifted into a bent smile and her eyes slanting away as if she said, 'I don't care!' Even in her denial she added to the increasing richness of the farms.

No need for you to think about something pink to wear or something blue or yellow. No use to think about soft colours. You might as well wear one kind as another. Drab. Brown. Faded dark old shrunk-up anything is good enough. Why don't you just give up and be ugly? That's what you are. Ugly. That's all.

People knowing her, having her in their thoughts, saying things to her, coupling her acts with their acts – 'Take the calves in as soon as Ellen gets through.

I'm old. I'm so old I'm about done with liven. I can feel how old I am. I'm old and old and old. I've been in life a long, long time. Oh, how old I am.