Hester Quotes
"Salem was meant to be a new beginning, a place where the sharp scent of cinnamon and tea perfumed the air with hope; a place where the colors could be safe and alive in me."
"Some people will tell you that Nat spent the better part of a decade after Bowdoin College alone in his room learning how to write. But that is a fabrication meant for the ages."
"LIKE ALL THE women in my family, I was born in a stone cottage in the town of Abington beside the River Clyde."
"In summer I ran barefoot through the valleys with my cousins and kin and saw their voices rise up in vibrant wisps of yellow and gold."
"Every year at the summer solstice we burned a bonfire and danced around the maypole, and in winter we hung mistletoe in the cottage."
"I didn’t know my colors were unusual and so I never thought to speak of them, just as I never remarked on the air, or the feel of a blanket at night, or the bark of my father’s laugh that I loved so well."
"But even as I kept silent, the colors became more vivid and my dreams wilder."
"I’d heard it whispered that one of Mam’s aunts had been locked away in a madhouse and never seen again."
"One day you’ll learn to read." Mam squinted at a line of letters she’d made and the rougher ones I’d traced out beneath them.
"She grew tight-lipped when Pap spoke of magical creatures and mysteries beyond God, but I knew by the gentle way my mother trimmed his beard, and by the way Pap held her at the waist when they danced round the bonfire, that theirs was a love bond and that it would protect me."
"I waited for her to say more, but she did not."
"I’ve tried praying and wishing them away, and once I left an offering of sugar for the faeries beneath the May trees, but nothing banished them."
"Letters were simply black, just as she’d taught me. Words were sounds and nothing more."
"Muslin white on white is your work, Isobel. Your mam gave it to you before she went to her grave."
"I wanted to be a dressmaker, to live in a city and have a shop and embroider dresses with flowers and birds."
"A strong hand reaches through the dark and drags Isobel Gowdie into the hard autumn light."
"I felt terribly afraid, for I thought she would tell me the Queen of Witches had given her soul to the Devil."
"My mother picked up her work and pulled a blue thread through the cloth before she spoke."
"I saw that I had taxed her as my little brother taxed her and the storm was taxing her, and so I made myself quiet and put my head against her bosom and listened to the blue beating of her heart as we fell asleep."
"I experimented with a thimble made of seal bone, then settled on a plain tin thimble that fit my small finger."
"Berries and plants in every color is the best way to grow a garden that makes you strong against sickness and bad spirits."
"Dry the seeds before you put them in the ground."
"Whether the colors are a curse or a gift I still can’t say, but soon I’ll be a woman alone and I must make use of what’s mine."
"A tincture of hawthorn may be useful in healing a broken heart."
"Secrets aren’t easily kept in Salem, and I don’t want the whole town knowing my husband is a thief."
"I’ve learned to anticipate her abrupt mood changes when one of the city’s wealthier wives enters."
"You got a quick hand. Quick is good. Just as important as pretty, if you want to make a living on it."
"But truth and triumph aren’t what I’m after. What’s true is often hidden from sight."
"I’ll use his gold to make something of myself, and then I will tell him."
"If you want courage, stitch courage. If you want love, stitch love."
"History isn’t what’s written or told. History is hidden away in dark corners and shadows."
"You learn how to move through places so folks don’t see you, then you can do things folks don’t want you to do."
"If you're nobody and you got nothing, then they don’t feel your threat, and they hardly see you at all."
"A dark soul can cast a long shadow over the living and the dead."
"Bad men can do good things, and good men can do bad things."
"I am not a witch, and if you kill me, God will give you blood to drink."
"The victims believed Satan was here and I still believe it."
"Sometimes you got to act like you are nothing—so long as you remember that it’s a lie."
"The past is here now: I see it in the way Felicity looks at him through the corner of an eye and the way he shifts his gaze away—as if she is remembering his great-great-grandfather’s cruelty and the death he brought to this city."
"A leopard is a solitary hunter. But who is the hunter, and who is the prey here?"
"Even the curse—God will give you blood to drink—that follows Nat."
"Remember what I told you about the faeries beneath the May trees."
"The rain roars like the Falls of Clyde, and the knocking on my door is like the sound of footsteps crossing rocks."
"You’ve been drinking," I say to his upturned face. His eyes are luminous."
"In every man’s heart there is a coffin and a grave, that is what I know."
"I wrap my arms around him and touch the place where his shoulder is scratched and raw. He cries out and my eyes fly open."
"You shouldn’t waste your needle on beautiful work that will never be seen."
"But writing is suspect activity for a strong and able man."
"I’m sorry, Isobel. I’ve thought of you and longed to come, but my family has been much upon me."
"I wipe my face and hack the young pennyroyal in my garden."
"I’m in such a state I cannot distinguish what I fear from what he said."
"Women came to Edward in Glasgow for such remedies."
"The bed in daylight is different from the bed where I have been with Nat in the night."
"The great-aunt who lost her mind calls to me in bright red letters."
"Isobel?" It’s dawn or dusk, I can’t tell by the light.
"Mercy puts her face against the window glass."
"Please help me, Mercy, you know what to do."
"Folks are weak or blind or just have no sense."
"That’s what they say when they want to get free of you or when they’re afraid," she says.
"Isobel, you listen. Folks fail you even when you love them—leave you when you need them. But you’ve got to be strong even with all that—you hear me?"
"I’m not strong yet, but when the captain comes to my door wearing the jacket I embroidered with knotted rope and seashells on the sleeves, I smooth down my hair and step into the yard."
"You’re thinner than ever, Mrs. Gamble. Just as pretty, but too thin."
"Captain Darling looks younger than I remember."
"I should like to taste it—just as you describe it, right from the trees," I say.
"Then you will," he says. "If I can make it happen, you will."
"I’m very sorry for it, Captain Darling."
"I have my work. I’m making gloves and other things, you needn’t worry."
"Your work is surely worth a pretty penny, but thread and gloves cost money, too. Don’t be proud, Mrs. Gamble."
"I’m getting along." I feel a stubborn pride at the doubt on his face.
"I saw the leopard in the East India Marine Society Hall—you sent me there, do you remember?"
"I do," Darling says. "And I told you the custodian is a trusted friend."
"We sail in two days," Darling says before he goes.
"I listen for my mother in the darkness, for I am in the doorway at the brink of many things—past and present, awake and asleep, hope and despair."
"Time has tangled around me and I’m unsure of anything but the brittle silence of the November forest and the rusty smell of Edward’s blood on my hands."
"Green is Nell’s color. Green is goodness, something wholesome that can be lost or taken away or kept alive in the dark winter."
"I’ve seen how justice and the law work for some and not for others."
"Keep your powers hidden and use them when it’s your time."
"All that matters to me now are the children: Abraham and Ivy, my unborn baby, and all those who live in chains and fear."
"It’s not that we are witches or faeries or that we deny God. It is that we are more beautiful and strong together than apart."
"The sounds of her cries are the colors of hope, truth, and home."
"I’ve been in Salem a little more than a year. I’ve spent five months in the sugar house, long enough to make four dresses plus gloves, petticoats, white on white, and more—enough to start a shop of my own."
"The sea rocks the boat, but I am steady. I have learned to trust my own eye and my own hand."
"On and on he reads, dropping the pages onto the floor one by one until at last he reaches that final passage when Hester and Arthur Dimmesdale are reunited in the graveyard and the evidence of their twinned souls appears in the embroidered lettering on their tombstones."