Eowyn Ivey Quotes & Sayings

You start seeing things that you're afraid of ... or things you've always wished for. — Eowyn Ivey

Why was it always the woman's fate to pace and fret and wait? — Eowyn Ivey

The December days had a certain luminosity and sparkle, like frost on bare branches, alight in the morning just before it melts. Mabel — Eowyn Ivey

There is a mythical element to our childhood, it seems, that stays with us always. When we are young, we consume the world in great gulps, and it consumes us, and everything is mysterious and alive and fills us with desire and wonder, fear, and guilt. With the passing of the years, however, those memories become distant and malleable, and we shape them into the stories of who we are. We are brave, or we are cowardly. We are loving, or we are cruel. — Eowyn Ivey

She told no one of the otter. Garrett would want to trap it; Faina would ask her to draw it. She refused to confine it by any means because, in some strange way, she knew it was her heart. Living, twisting muscle beneath bristly damp fur. Breaking through thin ice, splashing in cold creek water, sliding belly-down across snow. Joyful, though it should have known better. — Eowyn Ivey

She knew the snow and it carried her gently ... She knew the land by heart. — Eowyn Ivey

After all these years, still a spot within her fluttered at his touch, and his voice, throaty and hushed in her ear, tickled along her spine. Naked, they walked to the bedroom. Beneath the covers, they fumbled with each other's bodies, arms and legs, backbones and hip bones, until they found the familiar, tender lines like the creases in an old map that has been folded and refolded over the years. — Eowyn Ivey

She'd say the girl needed warmth and affection and someone to look after her, but Jack had to wonder if that didn't have more to do with a woman's own desires than the needs of a child. — Eowyn Ivey

He stood there a moment, listened to the creek, and let the mountain air blow against his face. Even with all this heartache, it was beautiful here. — Eowyn Ivey

He put one foot in front of the other and walked without seeing or feeling. — Eowyn Ivey

As Jack knelt in the bloody snow, he wondered if that was how a man held up his end of the bargain, by learning and taking into his heart this strange wilderness - guarded and naked, violent and meek, tremulous in its greatness. — Eowyn Ivey

If she couldn't convince anyone else, how could she go on believing? — Eowyn Ivey

November was here, and it frightened her because she knew what it brought - cold upon the valley like a coming death, glacial wind through the cracks between the cabin logs. But most of all, darkness. Darkness so complete — Eowyn Ivey

To believe, perhaps you had to cease looking for explanations and instead hold the little thing in your hands as long as your were able before it slipped like water between your fingers. — Eowyn Ivey

I can find no means to account for all that we have witnessed, except to say that I am no longer certain of the boundaries between man & beast, of the living & the dead. All that I have taken for granted, what I have known as real & true, has been called into question. — Eowyn Ivey

...this rubbed like a small pebble in a boot. At first it seems like nothing but a nuisance, but eventually it hobbles you.
p 317 — Eowyn Ivey

Following the pattern offered a kind of comfort, a quiet balance to working in the field during the day. The farmwork was coarse, exhausting, and largely a matter of faith - a farmer threw everything he had into the earth, but ultimately it wasn't up to him whether it rained or not. Sewing was different. Mabel knew if she was patient and meticulous, if she carefully followed the rules, that in the end when it was turned right-side out, it would be just how it was meant to be. A small miracle in itself, and one that life so rarely offered. — Eowyn Ivey

There is hope in our wanting to be something better, even if we never manage it. Maybe that is what I can hold to. The wanting. — Eowyn Ivey

I'll tell you one thing about history - we leave a lot of carnage in our wake. — Eowyn Ivey

It was beautiful, Mabel knew, but it was a beauty that ripped you open and scored you clean so that you were left helpless and exposed, if you lived at all. — Eowyn Ivey

She could not fathom the hexagonal miracle of snowflakes formed from clouds, crystallized fern and feather that tumble down to light on a coat sleeve, white stars melting even as they strike. How did such force and beauty come to be in something so small and fleeting and unknowable? You did not have to understand miracles to believe in them, and in fact Mabel had come to suspect the opposite. To believe, perhaps you had to cease looking for explanations and instead hold the little thing in your hands as long as you were able before it slipped like water between your fingers. (kindle location 2950) — Eowyn Ivey

Was it as Ada suggested, that we can choose our own endings, joy over sorrow? Or does the cruel world just give and take, give and take, while we flounder through the wilderness? — Eowyn Ivey

There are so man other labels people like to assign. Where am I an insider, and where am I an outsider? It all depends on where I'm standing and who is trying to put me into which box. — Eowyn Ivey

Mabel was no longer sure of the child's age. She seemed both newly born and as old as the mountains, her eyes animated with unspoken thoughts, her face impassive. Here with the child in the trees, all things seemed possible and true. — Eowyn Ivey

She had watched other women with infants and eventually understood what she craved: the boundless permission-no, the absolute necessity- to hold and kiss and stroke this tiny person. Cradling a swaddled infant in their arms, mothers would distractedly touch their lips to their babies' foreheads. Passing their toddlers in a hall, mothers would tousle their hair even sweep them up in their arms and kiss them hard along their chins and necks until the children squealed with glee. Where else in life, Mabel wondered, could a woman love so openly and with such abandon? — Eowyn Ivey

She and Jack had formed her of snow and birch boughs and frosty wild grass. — Eowyn Ivey

They are only bats, nothing more," Mother said.
Father whispered to me alone, "These are no ordinary bats. These are mice who swim with the stars. — Eowyn Ivey

You'll drive yourself crazy looking for something that's not there. — Eowyn Ivey

I guess maybe I don't want to be warm and safe. I want to live. — Eowyn Ivey

remembered but not quite. I only hope by some — Eowyn Ivey

Like a rainbow trout in a stream, the girl sometimes flashed her true self to him. — Eowyn Ivey

When we are young, we consume the world in great gulps, and it consumes us, and everything is mysterious and alive and fills us with desire and wonder, fear and guilt. — Eowyn Ivey

Then he returned to Mabel and put his mouth to her ear. I'd never let anything happen to you. You know that, don't you? — Eowyn Ivey

She seemed to him both powerful and delicate, like a wild thing that thrives in its place but withers when stolen away. — Eowyn Ivey

When she first fell in love with Jack, she dreamed she could fly ... — Eowyn Ivey

She looked directly up into the northern lights and she wondered if those cold-burning spectres might not draw her breath, her very soul, out of her chest and into the stars. — Eowyn Ivey

The days diminished. Light lasted just six hours, and it was a feeble light. Mabel organized her hours into patterns - wash, mend, cook, wash, mend, cook - and tried not to imagine floating beneath the ice like a yellow leaf. — Eowyn Ivey

She watched Mabel mix bread dough, and it was as if a songbird had landed on a bedroom windowsill. — Eowyn Ivey

She had thought often of Ada's words about inventing new endings to stories and choosing joy over sorrow. In recent years she had decided her sister had been in part wrong. Suffering and death and loss were inescapable. And yet, what Ada had written about joy was entirely true. When she stands before you with her long, naked limbs and her mysterious smile, you must embrace her while you can. — Eowyn Ivey

The exact science of one molecule transformed into another
that Mabel could not explain, but then again she couldn't explain how a fetus formed in the womb, cells becoming beating heart and hoping soul. She could not fathom the hexagonal miracle of snowflakes formed from clouds, crystallized fern and feather that tumble down to light on a coat sleeve, white stars melting even as they strike. How did such force and beauty come to be in something so small and fleeting and unknowable? — Eowyn Ivey

Now he sat laughing with strangers, when he hadn't smiled at her in years. — Eowyn Ivey

Don't you see? This was to be ours together, the successes and the failures ... All of this? he said, and couldn't help a smile. Yes, all of this. Then she too smiled. — Eowyn Ivey

What happened in that cold dark, when frost formed a halo in the child's straw hair and snowflake turned to flesh and bone? Was it the way the children's book showed, warmth spreading down through the cold, brow then cheeks, throat then lungs, warm flesh separating from snow and frozen earth? The exact science of one molecule transformed into another-that Mabel could not explain, but then again she couldn't explain how a fetus formed in the womb, cells becoming beating heart and hoping soul. — Eowyn Ivey

No. Sometimes these things happen. Life doesn't go the way we plan or hope, but we don't have to be so angry, do we?" He — Eowyn Ivey

She stared that color, trying to imagine a father who could name his child for such beauty and then abandon her. — Eowyn Ivey

In my old age, I see that life itself is often more fantastic and terrible than the stories we believed as children, and that perhaps there is no harm in finding magic among the trees. — Eowyn Ivey

No warm blood in me doth glow
Water in my veins doth flow
Yet I'll laugh and sing and play
By frosty night and frosty day
Little daughter of the snow
But whenever I do know
That you love me little, then
I shall melt away again
Back into the sky I'll go
Little daughter of the snow — Eowyn Ivey

She wanted to look presentable, but not like an overdressed outsider. — Eowyn Ivey

was coarse, exhausting, and largely a matter of faith - a farmer threw everything he had into the earth, but ultimately it wasn't up to him whether it rained or not. Sewing was different. Mabel knew if she was patient and meticulous, if she carefully followed the lines, took each step as it came, and obeyed the rules, that in the end when it was turned right-side out, it would be just how it was meant to be. A small miracle in — Eowyn Ivey

The child's arms around her, hugging her as a daughter hugs her mother. Joyfully. Spontaneously. The most beautiful of all. The most beautiful of all. — Eowyn Ivey

It would be a hard life, but it would be theirs alone. Here at the world's edge, far from everything familiar and safe, they would build a new home in the wilderness and do it as partners. — Eowyn Ivey

Even as a boy Jack had loved the smell of the ground softening in the thaw and coming back to life. Not this spring. A damp, moldy dreariness, something like loneliness, had settled over the homestead. At first Jack did not know its source. Maybe it was only his own mood. Perhaps it was the spring weather, with overcast skies and freezing rain that soaked through the cabin walls. Mabel, too, seemed beset by a morose restlessness. — Eowyn Ivey

He expected to drown before she reached it. — Eowyn Ivey

All her life she had believed in something more, in the mystery that shape-shifted at the edge of her senses. It was the flutter of moth wings on glass and the promise of river nymphs in the dappled creek beds. It was the smell of oak trees on the summer evening she fell in love, and the way dawn threw itself across the cow pond and turned the water to light. — Eowyn Ivey

I would believe again if I could. In goodness. In magnificence. In simple benevolence. Yet even in these far and icy valleys, mankind is no different, just more poorly armed. Strip away psychrometer and sextant, carbines and glass plates, skin shifts and quills and painted faces, and we are the same. Quivering maws. Gluttonous. Covetous. Fearful. We say we worship. A word. A man-god. A fiery mountain. But we worship only ourselves. And we are jealous gods. — Eowyn Ivey

He thought Mabel would cry, and he wanted to be anywhere else. It was wrong and cowardly, and he'd done it before
when Mabel lost the baby and shook with grief ... But it was like the need to take a breath. The urge was too strong, and without saying another word, Jack left the cabin. — Eowyn Ivey

That is excitement. We catch only glimpses, a burst of movement, a flap of wings, yet it is life itself beating at shadow's edge. It is the unfolding of potential; all of what we might experience and see and learn awaits us. — Eowyn Ivey

I am left to wonder, will anyone else see it?
That day in the forest when I looked upon the marble bear, alive with the setting sun, what did I witness? Was it only sunlight on stone, or Father's spirit, or a reflection of my own?
It seems to me now that such a moment requires a kind of trinity: you and I and the thing itself. — Eowyn Ivey

I have only ever been truly frightened of boredom and loneliness," she says. It — Eowyn Ivey

Did fear drive her? Fear of the gray, not just in the strands of her hair and her wilting cheeks, but the gray that ran deeper, to the bone, so that she thought she might turn into a fine dust and simply sift away in the wind ... She cooked and cleaned, and cooked and cleaned, and found herself further consumed by the gray, until even her vision was muted and the world around her drained of color. — Eowyn Ivey

Mabel looked up and saw his windburned hands and frayed cuffs, the crow's feet that spread at the corners of his downturned eyes. She couldn't remember the last time she had touched that skin, and the thought ached like loneliness in her chest. Then she spotted a few strands of silver in his reddish-brown beard. When had they appeared? So he, too, was graying. Each of them fading away without the other's notice. She — Eowyn Ivey

Who am I to claim such boundless sorrow? This heartache, acute and true as it may be, is slight compared to all of this world. Five miscarriages, two stillborn, three live births, and Mrs. Connor is one of our fortunate. She is not disemboweled in the snow. Her hands have committed no atrocities. She believes in God.
It is remarkable how we go on. All that we come to know and witness and endure, yet our hearts keep beating, our faith persists. — Eowyn Ivey

That is the excitement. We catch only glimpses, a burst of movement, a flap of wings, yet it is life itself beating at shadow's edge. It is the unfolding of potential; all of what we might experience and see and learn awaits us. January — Eowyn Ivey

Jack?"
"Hmmm?"
"We are going to be all right, aren't we? I mean, the two of us?"
He groaned as he eased his feet onto the bed. He rolled on his side to face Mabel, reached to her, and ran his hand down her unbraided hair, again and again, without speaking. Mabel saw tears in the corners of his eyes, and she propped herself on an elbow. She leaned to him and kissed him on his closed wet eyelids.
"We will, Jack. We will be all right," and she cradled his head in the crook of her arm and let him cry. — Eowyn Ivey

I don't know why, precisely. I believe we were in need of a change. We needed to do things for ourselves. Does that make any sense? To break your own ground and know it's yours, free and clear. Nothing taken for granted. — Eowyn Ivey

When she slowly straightened, the land was vast before her. The sun was setting down the river, casting a cold pink hue along the white-capped mountains that framed both sides of the valley. Upriver, the willow shrubs and gravel bars, the spruce forests and low-lying poplar stands, swelled to the mountains in steely blue. No fields or fences, homes or roads; not a single living soul as far as she could see in any direction. Only wilderness. — Eowyn Ivey

As Jack's eyes grew accustomed to the darkness, he saw the ground covered in white and, in the light of Garrett"s lantern, snowflakes spinning and falling.
He took hold of Mabel's hand, and when she turned to him, he saw in her eyes the joy and sorrow of a lifetime.
"It's snowing," she said. — Eowyn Ivey

The leaden sky seemed to hold its breath. — Eowyn Ivey

As the glow of the cabin windows turned to flickers through the trees and then to black, her eyes adjusted and the starlight alone on the pure white snow was enough to light her way. The cold scorched her cheeks and her lungs, but she was warm in her fox hat and wool. An owl swooped through the spruce boughs, a slow-flying shadow, but she was not frightened. She felt old and strong, like the mountains and the river. She would find her way home. — Eowyn Ivey

When she had the strength, she began to fold the tiny clothes and blankets and cloth diapers and put them into plain brown boxes. She didn't stop working, but the sobs came and distorted her face, bleared her eyes, made her nose run. She didn't hear Jack come to the door. When she looked up he was watching her silently, and then he turned away, uncomfortable, embarrassed by her unharnessed grief. He didn't put his hand on her shoulder. Didn't hold her. Didn't say a word. Even these many years later, she was unable to forgive him that. — Eowyn Ivey

A boy trying out a man's language. — Eowyn Ivey

All those sounds of her failure and regret would be left behind, and in their place there would be silence. — Eowyn Ivey

It was as if she had reached into her own pocket and discovered a small pebble, as hard as a diamond, that she had forgotten belonged to her. — Eowyn Ivey

Carry me on and on to the edge of the earth, with children's laughter like a wind - full sail, then carry me beyond — Eowyn Ivey

She slid her boot soles onto the surface and nearly laughed at her own absurdity - to be careful not to slip even as she prayed to fall through. — Eowyn Ivey

Doubt crouched over his shoulder, ready to take him by the throat, whispering in his ear, You are an old man. An old, old man. — Eowyn Ivey

So I guess I wonder, where is the line separating me into this culture or that culture, saying I have less or more? I'm just me, and like most people, I've had my heart broken a few times, but for the most part I have been Happy. — Eowyn Ivey

There's been a lot to get used to here." Esther laughed. "Isn't that the truth. I don't know if you ever get used to it really. It just gets in your blood so that you can't stand to be anywhere else. — Eowyn Ivey

We are allowed to do that, are we not Mabel? To invent our own endings and choose joy over sorrow? — Eowyn Ivey

He goes not in search of obstacles, only the paths around them. Anything seems possible. — Eowyn Ivey

We never know what is going to happen, do we? Life is always throwing us this way and that. That's where the adventure is. Not knowing where you'll end up or how you'll fare. It's all a mystery, and when we say any different, we're just lying to ourselves. Tell me, when have you felt most alive? — Eowyn Ivey

She might be curt and ungrateful, but by God she could bake. — Eowyn Ivey