The Secret Book Of Flora Lea Quotes
"Not very long ago and not very far away, there once was and still is an invisible place right here with us."
"It’s our land. We’re always safe in Whisperwood."
"The river was—like the apple in the Bible—forbidden."
"You ask too many questions and think too many things."
"Don’t be. Sure, some woodlands are frightening. Ours is not. It’s magic and belongs to us."
"We just keep trying until we find what’s meant for us."
"Loss and gain. As nearly every myth told: birth, death, rebirth. One thing dying, another born."
"You are of earth and water. Both of you. Also of love."
"The river does not surrender its secrets easily. I am so sorry."
"You can go in, if you'd like. I sew in there now, and there's a desk, but I can feel both of you when I enter; I can feel your bright lights and beautiful energy. I can feel you both."
"The world is made of stories, not atoms."
"Flora, right now, we can only be us. And you can't disappear."
"Sometimes I'd add to the story and get to see my dad in Whisperwood, but eventually I turned it into a land for the adventures of the orphaned sisters."
"True, she could damn well be fooling herself to avoid the despair of acknowledging Flora’s death. But until there was proof, she was going to continue to live with the hope that Flora had survived."
"I am sorry about your sister, but this story is not yours."
"You must let go of such ideas, Hazel. Despair leads us to stories, of course. We invent them so we can live in a world with meaning."
"It seems best to let it stay in the past. Too much hurt to bring it all back for any of us. There was and is nothing I can do to fix it."
"Everyone in town was a suspect, Hazel. We weren’t singled out."
"They need meaning and reasons. Even if that reason turns an ordinary woman into one who can make people disappear into thin air."
"A heart can hold much joy and great sorrow at the same time. It’s a mystery and it’s also true."
"Do not go down that trail of mad thinking. Let’s just concentrate on what’s ahead today. Just for now… today."
"Gossip is something awful in a hamlet this small."
"You make life magical, Hazel Linden. Did you know that?"
"It’s such gorgeous countryside in the spring. The baby lambs, all wobbly on their feet, trying to keep up with the others. The thatch roofs with the whitewashed houses. Chapels with steeples reaching for something they’ll never reach."
"All the best love stories are doomed love stories. Romeo and Juliet. Tristan and Isolde. They all end in heartbreak."
"It was harmless but not without effect. In those awful times, Flora needed an escape, fairy tales and magical lands."
"I’d try to find different words for white and gray each time we approached the castle. It looked like a pearl in a shell. The wing of a dove. The edges of the sky before rain. The pure white of a summer cloud."
"The Devon witches were tried here, the last to be executed for being witches in England."
1680," Hazel said. "I read, and these little facts get stuck in my head.
"I wonder what Harry looks like now—that’s all."
"I remember him so well, and I knew him for what? A week? He was so full of—Adventure, I know."
"St. Ives curled like a lazy cat around the bay."
"The tide was low and a long stretch of sand glowed the color of buttered toast."
"We can ask around." Hazel turned off the ignition and they climbed out.
"Let’s check in, unpack, have a pint, then find Harry."
"Of course. Everything about you is lovable."
"I know you, my friend," Kelty said. "You are sitting here, fast forwarding through the day, wondering who what where—"
"I was actually thinking about how sublime the light is here, how this is definitely an artist’s light."
"It’s a small village, and the artist colony is both loved and hated."
"Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, if it isn’t the beauty and grace of Hazel Linden come to visit upon us?"
"It is an extraordinary place," Harry said. "The light here is sometimes otherworldly."
"No," Harry shook his head. "I left her alone."
"If you aren’t living your life, whose life are you living?"
"Where’s your twin…?" Hazel blanked on the name of Ethan’s brother, another thing lost in the dingy basement of those days.
"I can’t breathe." Hazel felt his arms around her and marveled how he’d become a man, this man.
"Harry’s art mirrored her unconscious. Her nightmares. Her hidden secrets. All was here, plain as day, with brass lights hung over them to illuminate the truth."
"But you saved them. Tell me, do you still love him?"
"Yes, and I always will. But not like that, not like us. It was childhood. And it was over the day Flora disappeared."
"Whisperwood. Whisperwood. Whisperwood," he chanted her incantation.
"You can barely tell the season is changing, but it is," Bridie said.
"As well as you are now, may you be seven times better this time next year."
"I consider that the finest of all compliments. A pagan," Bridie said, "is nothing more than someone who still believes in the very animation of nature and uses the old stories to build new ones."
"Don’t let others take away good stories so they can feel better about themselves."
"But stories we tell about ourselves, and even the harrowing ones told by others about us, can also be soul-destroying. We have to choose what is good and true, not what will destroy."
"Bridie’s face broke into the widest smile; her son had given the same answer she would have given."
"If you were born knowing, and to be honest we all are, you will know how to find your way through the woodlands to the shimmering doors that are meant for you."
"I can see why they want to live here," Kelty said. "It’s extraordinary. I can’t paint a straight line and this light and this place make me want to be an artist."
"He was never suspected of foul play," Hazel said, fire in her words.
"What are you doing down here? Where’s Bridie? Are you unattended?"
"I think so. I look for her everywhere; sometimes I don’t even know I’m looking for her."
"We don’t know, but Hazel, I do hope we find out."
"That is a lot of things you’re telling me I can’t do. And yes, I can."
"I will find her," Hazel promised with a voice cracking on every word.
"I’m cold," the River Child said, her body quivering so her teeth slammed on each other.
"Take me home," Flora begged, shivering, cold, needing Bridie and Hazel and Harry, and the warm fire in their kitchen.
"I am your home. I saved you, just like Jesus saved me. Now stay quiet and still and I will be back to get you."
"Whisperwood, Whisperwood, Whisperwood," she mumbled, hoping the magical words would make Imogene turn and take Flora to Bridie, to Hazel and Harry.
"I didn’t just fall in. Aunt Imogene called me."
"I can’t forgive your aunt for all the years I’ve missed of you. For the days and hours of my own life that I mourned you, for the pain she caused us."
"I can’t understand any of this. That book and drawings of childish imaginings and my whole life implodes?"
"I am both lost and found, Barnaby. I don’t know which way to turn or what to do next."
"The only words I want to hear from you are ‘This is my home.’ "