Quotes from Elizabeth Knox

You fainted and I caught you. It was the first time I'd supported a human. You had such heavy bones. I put myself between you and gravity. Impossible.

Happiness had never been like this before. Now it came like sun showers, the sun and the rain together. Happiness was happier than it had been - sharp, piercing, and snatched, like a breath while swimming in surf.

I have no particular plan in life - and that's something I rather like. Most things that people do seem to me to be rather dull and silly. In my ideal life I'd be left alone to read

She said to him, 'You might melt.' And he said, "If I melt, you can make me again.

Books can be the people we never get to meet, ancestors or far neighbors.

Sometimes I imagine a whole future made out of the moment after I've died and you are still sitting beside me.' 'You imagine I'll be there at your deathbed?' 'Yes.' 'And if I stayed away, would you live for ever?

Do you no longer believe in your luck?' 'You're not my luck, fallen angel, or even my dearest friend. You're my love. My true love.

What no one else sees, no one else cares about.

Why do you come here? I promised. I release you from your promise! It wasn't you I promised, the angel said quietly.

Children are uncivilized, so have a staggering power to harm, especially those people whose hearts need mending. In that house an unhappy child was too much rain on a high water table. I poured it on and the terrain liquefied.

The thought of flight has melted me, I am less solid than liquid, then I'm going up and going invisible like steam.

And what of those losses that seem unbearable? Separations from people we feel we can't live without?' 'Perhaps our ruin honours the strength of our love.

Don't take this the wrong way, but you seem like the strangest stranger I've ever met.

Odin is best left out of this. We're not sure what his intentions are. He's not himself these days. His head has been turned by many new worshippers. Of the wrong kind.' Jacob thought about that for a bit. The wrong worshippers for Odin. 'You mean white supremacists with valknuts tattooed on their man boobs?' 'I do,' she said. 'Your wits seem intact in some matters.

I don't know what God intends, or what qualifies Him to forgive me,' Sobran said

The geologist, six years ago now, hadn't defied anything to climb the hill. He'd had his own powerful magic--the ordinary magic that extraordinarily interested people always have.

Was it possible yet to be poor and live decently? Were young men still sent to die in wars made by old men?

Shakespeare had all these sonnets where what he said came down to this: Youth is fleeting and you'd better get married and have children and make a copy of the beauty you own because the world owns it too.

Xas reappeared and showed every sign of winding himself around Sobran permanently, like -Sobran complained - some parasitic vine.

So, did you need to hear that? Did you really need to know more?' Xas asked. 'Yes. It's always better to know more.' 'God help you,' Xas said with feeling.

I had to give myself up to you for your lifetime. What is faith when you feel you've lost something forever? I had to have you--someone I could lose forever.

Xas put his face close to Sobran's and said, soft and succinct, Listen, and take this in. The terms of the pact are this: 'Xas shall go freely. God shall have his pains and Lucifer his pleasures .' So, if you please yourself and me the way you want, Sobran, you will be pleasing the devil. And I will not give you to him.

The Great God of the Deserts, the God from the Void, sequestered himself many hundreds of years ago. His worshippers had too many competing views of his nature, and it unsettled his mind. That's a thing that can happen to gods. They're very impressionable.

I know that you're a virgin and as bodiless as any paralytic. I know I'm old and not as handsome as I once was. But I know you love me as I love you.' And he kissed the angel.