The Wind Through The Keyhole Quotes
"There’s nothing like stories on a windy night when folks have found a warm place in a cold world."
"Time was a face on the water, and like the great river before them, it did nothing but flow."
"We’ll be fine there. I’ve been inside, and there’s a lovely big fireplace."
"The temperature can fall to as much as forty limbits below freezing in less than an hour."
"Birds turn to ice-statues in the sky and fall like rocks. Grass turns to glass."
"Be grateful for warmth, shelter, and companionship against the storm."
"Part of me knew this was true. Part of me refused to believe it."
"The world would move on, but Gilead would not move on with it."
"He regarded them with a half-smile. It looked strange on his face, which was usually so still and grave."
"In the dark beyond the firelight, the wind rose to a howl."
"Gilead was now behind us. I was dismayed by how quickly the allegiance of these people, once taken for granted, had thinned."
"You can be at the place o’ the females in less than an hour, but don’t bother asking nothing o’ those bitches, because you won’t get it."
"They eat men, is what I’ve heard. Not just a way o’ speakin, boys: they . . . eat . . . the mens."
"Horror’s a worm that needs to be coughed out before it breeds."
"Never mind them, the stories we hear in childhood are the ones we remember all our lives."
"The stories we hear in childhood are the ones we remember all our lives."
"It’s a thing that has never changed in this long life of mine. I’m not good at solving them; my mind has never run that way."
"Sometimes—if you’re careful not to break it—you can pull on a small thread and unravel a whole garment."
"You’re safe—that’s the world we grew up in, young men, the one that’s almost gone now."
"The salt ye take is the salt ye must pay for, as anyone from these parts will tell you."
"A person's never too old for stories, Bill. Man and boy, girl and woman, never too old. We live for them."
"Those were good years, but as we know—from stories and from life—the good years never last long."
"The worst thing about wishes is that sometimes they come true."
"The smell of the forest when the wind's out of the north brings visions, the old folken said."
"Sometimes when she slept, she dreamed of its deep tilts and secret corridors, and of sunshine so diffuse that it glowed like old green brass."
"Although the afternoon Kells came to her in the garden was hot, he was wearing a broadcloth jacket. From the pocket he took a loosely knotted length of silk rope, as she knew he would. A woman knows. Even if she's long married, a woman knows, and Kells's heart had never changed."
"I cannot, as thee knows," said she. "I need to think about it."
"Either’ee do and we go on in Tree as we always have—I’ll find the boy something to work at that’ll bring in a little, although he’s far too wee for the woods—or ye and he’ll go on the land. I can share, but I can’t give, much as I might like to. I have only one place to sell, kennit."
"One to watch and one to work, the oldtimers said. Pull together and never apart."
"Look not long at what’s offered, for every precious thing has wings and may fly away."
"Listen to me, Bern, and with both ears. You’ve been my friend since I could toddle, and my pard since we were old enough to go past the blossie and into the ironwood on our own. You’ve watched my back and I’ve watched yours. There’s not a man I trust more, when you’re sober. But once you pour the redeye down your throat, you’re no more reliable than quickmud."
"A rope that’s slipped in church can’t be unslipped."
"All I own stowed in one trunk. As for the house, did Baldy pay the price I should have had?"
"Ye’ve had enough of books and numbers and that weirdy Smack woman. She with her veils and shakes—how she manages to wipe her arse after she shits is more than I’ll ever know."
"Kissin don’t last, cookin do. So say the Manni-folk."
"In the proper hand, any object can be magic."
"Pray for rain all you like, but dig a well as you do it."
"He’s made of lies from boots to crown, and his gospels bring nothing but tears."
"If there were no Gilead, there would be no taxes. Then they would be truly free."
"He saw a bright light in the darkness of this forgotten backwater, that’s all, and nothing will do for him but to put it out."
"She’s right, you know. Yon chary man hasn’t aged a day. And tax collecting’s not his job. I think it’s his hobby. He’s a man with hobbies, aye. He has his little pastimes."
"Trees will do that from time to time, especially ironwood. I believe that ironwood trees actually think, which is where the tradition of crying their pardon before each day’s chopping comes from."
"Guns have eager hearts. Or perhaps he said evil hearts? After all these years, I no longer remember."
"The only stupid question, my cullies, is the one you don’t ask."
"Is it possible...These people of the Fagonard believed he was a gunslinger."
"I’ll come back this way and return it as I’d return any borrowed dish or tool, back in the village."
"Battery power is eighty-eight percent. Projected life is seventy years, plus or minus two."
"Rise, bondsmen...if that’s what you think you are. Rise in love and thanks."
"What he felt was full and content, although he missed the Fagonarders and worried about them."
"If he had paid attention to well-meaning advice, he wouldn’t be here."
"He supposed all of life was full of similar trades."
"The only magic about them was the plain magic of living things."
"Time is a keyhole, we sometimes bend and peer through it."
"When ka comes, it comes like the wind—like the starkblast."
"We sometimes bend and peer through it. And the wind we feel on our cheeks when we do—the wind that blows through the keyhole—is the breath of all the living universe."
"Magic’s full of tricks, even for an old fellow like me."
"For now, hold tight to the feather! The dibbin won’t spill thee, so just hold tight to the feather and think of home!"
"Above the Ironwood Trail, the dibbin began to descend."
"In a matter of seconds it once more appeared to be nothing but a cotton napkin lying on the path."
"And, when he reached the blossie groves, he began to run."
"The man who gave me the drops told me to give it to you. That's all I know."
"Cool as a blessing. Put some in the other, will ya please."
"Oh, Tim, oh my dear, I see thy face, I see it very well!"
"It's a beautiful morning, and we're alive to see it."
"And so it happened, once upon a bye, long before your grandfather's grandfather was born."
"Perhaps one: I've always had the sky to look at, and for that I tell Gan, the Man Jesus, and all the other gods that may be, thankya."
"I thought it was. I motioned Kellin Frye to me and dropped two gold knucks into his hand."