Famous Quotes & Sayings

Susan Cooper Quotes & Sayings

Enjoy the top 79 famous quotes, sayings and quotations by Susan Cooper.

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Famous Quotes By Susan Cooper

Susan Cooper Quotes 747547

including him in the words. — Susan Cooper

Susan Cooper Quotes 1807788

In the end, all it takes is one small action, by one person. One at a time. — Susan Cooper

Susan Cooper Quotes 1273702

Maybe because the Dark can only reach people at extremes; blinded by their own shining ideas, or locked up in the darkness of their own heads. — Susan Cooper

Susan Cooper Quotes 1294424

Then very faintly, he heard above his head the low familiar murmur of the sea outside. At once the comfortable noise made him cheerful, and he even remembered what they were supposed to be. — Susan Cooper

Susan Cooper Quotes 2092989

Great-Uncle Merry, coming back towards the car from the Grey House, had suddenly stopped in his tracks in the middle of the road. He was gazing down at the sea; and she realised that he had caught sight of the yacht. What startled her was the expression on his face. Standing there like a craggy towering statue, he was frowning, fierce and intense, almost as if he were looking and listening with senses other than his eyes and ears. He could never look frightened, she thought, but this was the nearest thing to it that she had ever seen. Cautious, startled, alarmed . . . what was the matter with him? Was there something strange about the yacht? Then — Susan Cooper

Susan Cooper Quotes 1809563

For half an hour they poked about in a happy dusty dream, through the junk and broken furniture and ornaments. It was like reading the story of somebody's life, Jane thought, as she gazed at the tiny matchstick masts of the ship sailing motionless forever in the green glass bottle. All these things had been used once, had been part of every day in the house below. Someone has slept on the bed, anxiously watched the minutes on the clock, pounced joyfully on each magazine as it arrived. But those people were long dead, or gone away, and now the oddments of their lives were piled up here, forgotten. She found herself feeling rather sad. — Susan Cooper

Susan Cooper Quotes 927250

You know how many there are. You can't convince them and you can't kill 'em. You can only do your best in the opposite direction ... — Susan Cooper

Susan Cooper Quotes 586758

I remember it was a damn funny thing for a stranger to say," Stephen said. "Old Ones, we Old Ones. With capital letters
you could *hear* them. — Susan Cooper

Susan Cooper Quotes 2073831

The wind on the headland whined softly round them, and although, as they watched, Great-Uncle Merry's expression did not change, they suddenly knew that some enormous emotion was flooding through him. Like an electric current it tingled the air, exciting and frightening at the same time; though they could not understand what it was. — Susan Cooper

Susan Cooper Quotes 404905

I do not believe any power can possess the mind of a man or woman ... I believe in God-given free will, you see. I think nothing is forced on us, except by other people like ourselves. I think our choices are our own. — Susan Cooper

Susan Cooper Quotes 1966710

Your father ... doesn't work late for you to pinch his dinner. — Susan Cooper

Susan Cooper Quotes 1059601

People seemed to me to fill life with shadows that should not be there. — Susan Cooper

Susan Cooper Quotes 583799

Still in the black hemisphere the stars blazed and slowly wheeled; beneath them, Will felt so infinitesimally small that it seemed impossible he should even exist. Immensity pressed in on him, terrifying, threatening
and then, in a swift flash of movement like a dance, like the glint of a leaping fish, came a flick of brightness in the sky from a shooting star ... He heard Bran give a small chirrup of delight, a spark struck from the same bright sudden joy that filled his own being. — Susan Cooper

Susan Cooper Quotes 849499

Jane clutched her mug like a talisman of reality; then suddenly jumped so hard that she spilt half the cocoa on the window-sill. — Susan Cooper

Susan Cooper Quotes 2220383

Open for sun, closed for rain, that's the poor man's weathervane. — Susan Cooper

Susan Cooper Quotes 853997

Expect nothing and fear nothing, here or anywhere. That's your first lesson. — Susan Cooper

Susan Cooper Quotes 2178206

On the day of the dead, when the year too dies,
Must the youngest open the oldest hills
Through the door of the birds, where the breeze breaks.
There fire shall fly from the raven boy,
And the silver eyes that see the wind,
And the light shall have the harp of gold.
By the pleasant lake the Sleepers lie,
On Cadfan's Way where the kestrels call;
Though grim from the Grey King shadows fall,
Yet singing the golden harp shall guide
To break their sleep and bid them ride.
When light from the lost land shall return,
Six Sleepers shall ride, six Signs shall burn,
And where the midsummer tree grows tall
By Pendragon's sword the Dark shall fall.
Y maent yr mynyddoedd yn canu,
ac y mae'r arglwyddes yn dod. — Susan Cooper

Susan Cooper Quotes 1100500

Never dismiss anyone's value until you know him. — Susan Cooper

Susan Cooper Quotes 1947965

The strange white world lay stroked by silence. No birds sang. The garden was no longer there, in this forested land. Nor were the out-buildings nor the old crumbling walls. There lay only a narrow clearing round the house now, hummocked with unbroken snowdrifts, before the trees began, with a narrow path leading away. — Susan Cooper

Susan Cooper Quotes 1075934

Sometimes you must seem to hurt something in order to do good for it. — Susan Cooper

Susan Cooper Quotes 994904

Wish on a star, said a tiny voice in his head from some long-departed day of early childhood: Wish on a star
the cry of pleasure and faith as ancient as the eyes of man. — Susan Cooper

Susan Cooper Quotes 1593146

But if you work and care and are watchful, as we have tried to be for you, then in the long run the worse will never, ever, triumph over the better. — Susan Cooper

Susan Cooper Quotes 1446179

Honest. I know. But all the same ... woo!" It was a head-back, beaming, yelping shout of joyful excitement, spontaneous and startling, and every face turned; their apprehensiveness faded for a moment, and even Merriman, stern for the first instant, laughed aloud. "Yes!" he said. "We need that as much as the sword, Barney. — Susan Cooper

Susan Cooper Quotes 1388240

Writing is one of the loneliest professions in the world because it has to be practiced in this very separate private world, in _here_. Not in the mind; in the imagination. And I think it is possible that the writing of fantasy is the loneliest job of the lot, since you have to go further inside. You have to make so close a connection with the unconscious that the unbiddable door will open and the images fly out, like birds. — Susan Cooper

Susan Cooper Quotes 1368038

There was something about Christmas Eve, they both felt, that demanded company; one needed somebody to whisper to, during the warm beautiful dream-taut moments between hanging the empty stocking at the end of the bed, and dropping into the cosy oblivion that would flower into the marvel of Christmas morning. — Susan Cooper

Susan Cooper Quotes 1593547

Once upon a time ... a long time ago ... things that happened once perhaps but have been talked about for so long that nobody really knows. And underneath all the bits that people have added the magic swords and lamps they're all about one thing - the good hero fighting the giant or the witch or the wicked uncle. Good against bad. Good against evil. — Susan Cooper

Susan Cooper Quotes 2231565

For him, Halloween was not All Hallows Eve — Susan Cooper

Susan Cooper Quotes 1598108

Will picked a single blossom from a gorse bush beside him; it shone bright yellow on his grubby hand. "People are very complicated," he said sadly.
"So they are," John Rowlands said. His voice deepened a little, louder and clearer than it had been. "But when the battles between you and your adversaries are done, Will Stanton, in the end the fate of all the world will depend on just those people, and on how many of them are good or bad, stupid or wise. And indeed it is all so complicated that I would not dare foretell what they will do with their world. Our world. — Susan Cooper

Susan Cooper Quotes 1685770

Any great gift of power or talent is a burden ... But there is nothing to be done. If you were born with the gift, then you must serve it, and nothing in this world or out of it may stand in the way of that service, because that is why you were born and that is the Law. — Susan Cooper

Susan Cooper Quotes 119010

Great-Uncle Merry stopped reading; but the children sat as still and speechless as if his voice still rang on. The story seemed to fit so perfectly into the green land rolling below them that it was as if they sat in the middle of the past. — Susan Cooper

Susan Cooper Quotes 1757831

It says, loving doesn't change just because someone isn't there, or because time gets in the way, or even death. It's always with you, keeping you safe, it won't ever leave you. — Susan Cooper

Susan Cooper Quotes 1725021

Trance is fragile. — Susan Cooper

Susan Cooper Quotes 1727149

He was not for that moment a human being, but a frenzied creature possessed by rage, turned into an animal. All that could be seen in him was the urge to hurt, and it was, as it always will be, the most dreadful sight in the world. — Susan Cooper

Susan Cooper Quotes 1738538

Real is a hard word", he said. "Almost as hard as true, or now... — Susan Cooper

Susan Cooper Quotes 2193681

Engage, Enlighten, Encourage and especially ... just be yourself! Social media is a community effort, everyone is an asset. — Susan Cooper

Susan Cooper Quotes 1777772

Words stretch the muscles of the imagination. Continual placid acceptance of ready-made visual images turns the imagination into a couch-potato. — Susan Cooper

Susan Cooper Quotes 2229113

Where did they go?"
"Where the leaves go in autumn," Will said.
Bran looked at him and seemed suddenly to relax; he grinned. "There's poetic, now."
Will laughed. "It's true. Of course, the trouble with leaves is, they grow again ... — Susan Cooper

Susan Cooper Quotes 2255360

Whatever happens, believe that the journey is worth taking, and then you will reach its end. — Susan Cooper

Susan Cooper Quotes 1939038

The night became silver again; looking up, it was as if they saw the moon sailing through the clouds instead of the other way around; racing smoothly across the sky, passing puffs and wisps of cloud on either side, and yet never moving from its place. — Susan Cooper

Susan Cooper Quotes 1967736

The surface of the iron was irregular, but though it showed no sign of having been polished it was completely smooth - smooth in a way that reminded him of a certain place in the rough stone floor of the kitchen, where all the roughness had been worn away by generations of feet turning to come round the corner from the door. — Susan Cooper

Susan Cooper Quotes 1981489

For ever and ever, we say when we are young, or in our prayers. Twice, we say it. Old One, do we not? For ever and ever ... so that a thing may be for ever, a life or a love or a quest, and yet begin again, and be for ever just as before. And any ending that may seem to come is not truly an ending, but an illusion. For Time does not die, Time has neither beginning nor end, and so nothing can end or die that has once had a place in Time. — Susan Cooper

Susan Cooper Quotes 2014775

Tonight will be bad, and tomorrow will be beyond imagining. — Susan Cooper

Susan Cooper Quotes 2026558

They walked as old friends walk, without often speaking, sharing the kind of silence that is not so much silence as a kind of still communication. — Susan Cooper

Susan Cooper Quotes 2198821

The Age of the Screen isn't going to go away; indeed it offers all kinds of wonderful possibilities, if it could just acquire a little more quality control. But there is one truth, one necessary dictum, that we must never forget: _Every child should be encouraged to read books, words on a page, for his or her own pleasure, in his own time, dreaming his own - and the author's - dream_. There is no substitute. None. — Susan Cooper

Susan Cooper Quotes 2110178

For this was Christmas, which had always been a time of magic, to him and to all the world. — Susan Cooper

Susan Cooper Quotes 2186478

He leaned forward suddenly, so that for an instant the strong, bearded face was clear; the voice softened, and there was an aching sadness in it. Only the creatures of the earth take from one another, boy. All creatures, but men more than any. Life they take, and liberty and all that another man may have - sometimes through greed, sometimes through stupidity, but never by any volition but their own. Beware your own race, Bran Davies - they are the only ones who will ever harm you, in the end. — Susan Cooper

Susan Cooper Quotes 290430

But once in a great while he remembered that he had felt pain, a terrible ache in his heart, and he swore he would never let himself feel love for a human again. — Susan Cooper

Susan Cooper Quotes 574892

Too many!' James shouted, and slammed the door behind him. — Susan Cooper

Susan Cooper Quotes 559558

When the Dark comes rising six shall turn it back;
Three from the circle, three from the track;
Wood, bronze, iron; Water, fire, stone;
Five will return and one go alone.
Iron for the birthday; bronze carried long;
Wood from the burning; stone out of song;
Fire in the candle ring; water from the thaw;
Six signs the circle and the grail gone before.
Fire on the mountain shall find the harp of gold
Played to wake the sleepers, oldest of old.
Power from the Green Witch, lost beneath the sea.
All shall find the Light at last, silver on the tree. — Susan Cooper

Susan Cooper Quotes 504645

For Drake is no longer in his hammock, children, nor is Arthur somewhere sleeping, and you may not lie idly expecting the second coming of anybody now, because the world is yours and it is up to you. — Susan Cooper

Susan Cooper Quotes 468807

Go away," he said. "Go away. I wish you had never come here. I wish I had never heard of the Light and the Dark, and your damned old Merriman and his rhymes. If I had your golden harp now I would throw it in the sea. I am not a part of your stupid quest anymore, I don't care what happens to it. And Cafall was never a part of it either, or a part of your pretty pattern. He was my dog, and I loved him more than anything in the world, and now he is dead. Go away. — Susan Cooper

Susan Cooper Quotes 421108

Minds hold more than they know. — Susan Cooper

Susan Cooper Quotes 394174

The child I was is the only child I really know.' That's it. I can still feel what it was like to be that child of the 1940s from inside; I am still the same mixture of insecurity and determination, shyness and arrogance, curiosity and fear. I have the same talent she had; the same imagination. I write for her, for that child, and so it is true when I say I write for myself. — Susan Cooper

Susan Cooper Quotes 353064

She understood about the comfort you can get from a small separate world, whether it's a theatre or a basketball team or the inside of a book. — Susan Cooper

Susan Cooper Quotes 321027

They had nothing to eat but Ryan's food, and they ate little of that because it was so dry, but it seemed to sustain them. Their greatest worry was water. Though they drank only a little each day, Westerly's flask was empty and the bottle in Cally's pack now only half-full.
"I wish I was a camel," Cally said.
Westerly said, "I wouldn't want
to spend this much time with a girl who looked like a camel."
She tried to laugh, but her tongue felt thick in her mouth, and her mind full of hopelessness. "When this is gone, we shall just die of thirst."
"We'll be out of the dunes by then," Westerly said encouragingly. But he knew that the mountains, though nearer now on the hazy horizon, were far more than a day's walk away. — Susan Cooper

Susan Cooper Quotes 664057

The truth is that every book we read, like every person we meet, has the capacity to change our lives. And though we can be sure our children will meet people, we must, must create, these days, their chance to meet books. — Susan Cooper

Susan Cooper Quotes 260614

If you are concerned for the future of our civilization, there is no more cheering sight than a boy or girl who is lost in a book. It's an image I cling to, in moments of depression: the absorbed child, reading. — Susan Cooper

Susan Cooper Quotes 255460

But the slice-of-life novel is really not so much a world apart as an interlude - like the conference or the film set, the holiday hotel or the voyage by sea or air. You enter it, you live there for a while, you leave again. Perhaps it will alter you; usually it will not. I suspect that the book which takes you into a world apart must also _trouble_ you, at least a little. And the troubling stays with you, like the grit in the oyster, and afterwards you are changed. — Susan Cooper

Susan Cooper Quotes 181229

So the shortest day came, and the year died. — Susan Cooper

Susan Cooper Quotes 153616

They came generally from people writing theses on fantasy or on the Dark Is Rising books. They were full of questions I'd never thought about and false assumptions that I didn't want to think about. They would ask me in great detail for, say, the specific local and mythical derivations of my Greenwitch, a leaf-figure thrown over a Cornish cliff as a fertility sacrifice, and I would have to write back and say, "I'm terribly sorry; I made it all up." They told me I echoed Hassidic myth, which I hadn't read, and the Mormon suprastructure, which I'd never even heard of. They saw symbols and buried meanings and allegories everywhere. I'd thought I was making a clear soup, but for them it was a thick mysterious stew.

from "In Defense of the the Artist" in Signposts to Criticism of Children's Literature (1983) — Susan Cooper

Susan Cooper Quotes 149494

Every human being who loves another loves imperfection, for there is no perfect being on this earth
nothing is so simple as that. — Susan Cooper

Susan Cooper Quotes 135821

When we are children, we have a tranquil acceptance of mystery which is driven out of us later on, by curiosity and education and experience. But it is possible to find one's way back. With affection and respect, I disagree totally with Penelope Lively's conviction about the 'absolute impossibility of recovering a child's vision.' There _are_ ways, imperfect, partial, fleeting, of looking again at a mystery through the eyes we used to have. Children are not different animals. They are us, not yet wearing our heavy jacket of time. — Susan Cooper

Susan Cooper Quotes 119756

You remember the fairy tales you were told when you were very small - 'once upon a time ... ' Why do you think they always began like that?"
"Because they weren't true," Simon said promptly.
Jane said, caught up in the unreality of the high remote place, "Because perhaps they were true once, but nobody could remember them. — Susan Cooper

Susan Cooper Quotes 1246954

Poets find truth by writing about what they love. — Susan Cooper

Susan Cooper Quotes 700372

The future cannot blame the present, just as the present cannot blame the past. The hope is always here, always alive, but only your fierce caring can fan it into a fire to warm the world. — Susan Cooper

Susan Cooper Quotes 747676

No, he didn't win, Great-Uncle Merry said, and even in the clear afternoon sunshine he seemed with every word to become more remote, as ancient as the rock behind him and the old world of which he spoke. — Susan Cooper

Susan Cooper Quotes 755344

The children stared at him, awed and a little afraid. For a moment he was a stranger, someone they did not know. Jane had a sudden fantastic feeling that Great-Uncle Merry did not really exist at all, and would vanish away if they breathed or spoke. — Susan Cooper

Susan Cooper Quotes 756983

In old days when the struggle between good and evil was more bitter and open than it is now. That struggle goes on all around us all the time, like two armies fighting. And sometimes one of them seems to be winning and sometimes the other, but neither has ever triumphed altogether. No ever will for there is something of each in every man. — Susan Cooper

Susan Cooper Quotes 763087

All life is theatre,' he said. 'We are all actors, you and I, in a play which nobody wrote and which nobody will see. We have no audience but ourselves ... — Susan Cooper

Susan Cooper Quotes 775875

So it will go," Merriman said. "He will have a sweet picture of the Dark to attract him, as men so often do, and beside it he will set all the demands of the Light, which are heavy and always will be. — Susan Cooper

Susan Cooper Quotes 845392

So the Dark did a simple thing. They showed the maker of the sword his own uncertainty and fear. Fear of having done the wrong thing
fear that having done this one great thing, he would never again be able to accomplish anything of great worth
fear of age, of insufficiency, of unmet promise. All such great fears, that are the doom of people given the gift of making, and lie always somewhere in their minds. — Susan Cooper

Susan Cooper Quotes 863388

It is a burden ... (M)ake no mistake about that. Any great gift or power or talent is a burden and this more than any, and you will long to be free of it. But there is nothing to be done. If you were born with the gift, then you must serve it, and nothing in this world or out of it may stand in the way of that service, because that is why you were born and that is the Law."
- Susan Cooper ("Merriman" The Dark is Rising) — Susan Cooper

Susan Cooper Quotes 912427

Tommy looked blank. "What's a flashlight?"
"You don't have flashlights?" Jessup said. "Jeeze! A cylinder, like, with batteries inside it, and a light bulb behind glass at one end
"
Tommy's blue eyes glinted dangerously. "We have a thing in Scotland that's a cylinder too. Very thin, made of wood, with graphite in the center. We call it a pencil."
Jessup hooted. "You think we don't have pencils?"
"You think we don't have flashlights?" Tommy snapped. "That's just American dialect. In the English language they're called torches."
Emily said mildly, "Actually we're Canadians. — Susan Cooper

Susan Cooper Quotes 1023216

Every man has a last choice after the first, a chance of forgiveness. It is not too late. Turn. Come to the Light. — Susan Cooper

Susan Cooper Quotes 1071205

And at the last all shall be safe, and evil thrust out never to return. And so that the trust be kept, he said, I give it into your charge, and your sons', and your sons' sons, until the day come. — Susan Cooper

Susan Cooper Quotes 1124983

It's all right! Simon said hoarsely. Hastily he cleared his throat and put his shoulders back, though it was hard to recover dignity in pajamas. — Susan Cooper

Susan Cooper Quotes 1128240

He sat there all through a history lesson about the Roman Empire, which
having lived in the Roman Empire, for the four hundred years during which it had included the British Isles
he found inaccurate and boring. — Susan Cooper

Susan Cooper Quotes 1178165

Little Hawk, it is not for us to tell how great and terrible things come about. Only the Great Spirit can see all. — Susan Cooper

Susan Cooper Quotes 1225787

The snow lay thin and apologetic over the world. That wide grey sweep was the lawn, with the straggling trees of the orchard still dark beyond; the white squares were the roofs of the garage, the old barn, the rabbit hutches, the chicken coops. Further back there were only the flat fields of Dawson's farm, dimly white-striped. All the broad sky was grey, full of more snow that refused to fall. There was no colour anywhere. — Susan Cooper