Susan Fletcher Quotes & Sayings

No trains. No traffic noise. At night, my mother's old bedroom was so dark I couldn't tell if I'd shut my eyes or not. — Susan Fletcher

The north wind has both mended hearts and broken them. It has brought both beauty and misfortune, restlessness and sleep. It has carried in babies but it has also taken lives and so the islanders worry when they hear the north wind blowing. They fear death - actual, physical, permanent death, but also the non-literal, where the heart has kept beating but its wish to keep doing so is small, very small if there at all. — Susan Fletcher

Which people take the time to care for their souls, these days? I reckon not many. But ... hear this: I think that maybe in our lives
in our scrabbling for food, in the washing of our bodies and warming of them, in our small daily battles
we can forget our souls. We do not tend to them, as if they matter less. But I don't think they matter less. — Susan Fletcher

I believe the world is as we choose to view it. Simple as that. Our happiness is, in the end, up to us, and to no one else. — Susan Fletcher

Marjan. I have told him tales of good women and bad women, strong women and weak women, shy women and bold women, clever women and stupid women, honest women and women who betray. I'm hoping that, by living inside their skins while he hears their stories, he'll understand over time that women are not all this way or that way. I'm hoping he'll look at women as he does at men
that you must judge each of us on her own merits, and not condemn us or exalt us only because we belong to a particular sex. — Susan Fletcher

The only evil in the world is the one that lies in people - in their pride, and greed, and duty. Remember that. — Susan Fletcher

Stories are thick with meanings. You can fall in love with a story for what you think it says, but you can't know for certain where it will lead your listeners. If you're telling a tale to teach children to be generous, they may fix instead on the part where your hero hides in an olive jar, then spend the whole next day fighting about who gets to try it first.
People take what they need from the stories they hear. The tale is often wiser than the teller. — Susan Fletcher

Mr Phipps seemed to think criminality was passed down through the generations like a stutter, or a squint, or in my case red hair. — Susan Fletcher

I have learnt that nothing stays the same. Today might seem the same as yesterday but no day ever is; we may want no changes to ever come, but changes do, in time. They cannot be helped; it is how the world turns. — Susan Fletcher

I've heard fate talked of. It's not a word I use. I think we make our own choices. I think how we live our lives is our own doing, and we cannot fully hope on dreams and stars. But dreams and stars can guide us, perhaps. And the heart's voice is a strong one. Always is.
Your heart's voice is your true voice. It is easy to ignore it, for sometimes it says what we'd rather it did not - and it is so hard to risk the things we have. But what life are we living, if we don't live by our hearts? Not a true one. And the person living it is not the true you. — Susan Fletcher

I've done so many bad things in my life but the stars always forgave me. — Susan Fletcher

It takes so little ... to lose it; grief and disappointment can takes one's faith away so easily that you might wake one morning and have none left. — Susan Fletcher

He thinks he can see all her grief in her face, all her love and empty days. — Susan Fletcher

Perfection is a moving target — Susan Fletcher

Rona of the hurting heart. We've all had one of those. We have all picked at the seal of things that have been closed against us, and locked. — Susan Fletcher

Sometimes we have so much to say, we cannot say it. Sometimes it's best we do not say goodbyes. — Susan Fletcher

We have our stories, and we speak of them, and weave them into other people's stories - that's how it goes, does it not? — Susan Fletcher

We are the Magick
we are. The truest magick in this world is in us ... It is in our movements and in what we say and feel. — Susan Fletcher

Imagine it. Use all your strength and imagine it exactly. And it will happen that way. — Susan Fletcher

They are two brothers whose language to each other is mostly the farm, and the weather, or sport, but it is rarely a language that talks of the past or of what they think and feel. They sit, like stones. — Susan Fletcher

No war. Fight with your pen. Give your battle-cry in ink, and mark your dreams down on a page — Susan Fletcher

I told her that letting go is not a choice, in many ways. You try to move on, perhaps. But it comes of its own accord, in the end; it happens when it is ready to, and it mostly comes by without announcement or being noticed at all. I'll always miss my husband. I won't ever be the person I was before ... You don't mend fully, I tell her. But you mend enough, in time. — Susan Fletcher

I cannot talk of the power of want, of how much desire can do. I don't think it can be measured. I think want is forgotten too quickly or dismissed as being worth far less than the other feelings -love, hate, envy. But to want something ... To wish for it so much that you think you cannot last, your heart and body cannot continue to hunger for something as much as this. It comes from loss. We want what we do not have. We want what we had, but don't now. — Susan Fletcher

God works as he chooses - we have our tests and He has His revelations — Susan Fletcher

So I say this. Speak of them. Speak of those that died. Speak of all those who ever died
in all the world's history, in its wars, and long-lost days. Speak of those who met their deaths in Glencoe, in snow
not of their deaths, but of their lives before them. Not of how they died, but of how they bent to pat a dog's head, or what ballads they could sing, or what their skin was like by their eyes when they smiled, or which weather was their weather
for it keeps them living. It stops them being dead.
To do this
to speak or write of them
puts breath back in their mouths. It lifts them up from their earthy beds ... brings them forth, and they stand by the side of the one who speaks of them; they walk out of the pages of those who write them down. From the realm, they smile upon us. All the dead people
only, they are not dead. — Susan Fletcher

This is the place. I was certain. For the heart knows its home when it finds it, and on finding it, stays there. — Susan Fletcher

I know this: there is no sense to grief. There is no pattern or shape or texture, and there are no books or stories which can lessen the pain at losing a person you have loved, and will always love. There are no rules, with loss. — Susan Fletcher

But maybe the best thing I learnt was this: that we cannot know a person's soul and nature until we've sat beside them, and talked. — Susan Fletcher

They all try to see more of her, but she hides herself away.
It is not how Kitty would grieve. She, if she had to, would grieve wildly - with noise, mucus, paint on the canvas, blustery walks on beaches, curse words and exhausted sleep. But everyone grieves differently just as everyone loves in different ways. — Susan Fletcher

But they fly. It is what fledged birds must do, and she's always known that. The nest can't always be full. — Susan Fletcher

What creatures we are. What powers are in us
in all of us. What we already know, if we choose to spend time with ourselves. What a deep love we can feel. — Susan Fletcher

Mostly, she sees the good in the world, the light where there is dark ... She sees beauty where we mostly pass it by. But tonight, she was heavy-hearted. I think sometimes she unfolds all her losses and stares at them, in the dark. — Susan Fletcher

It is an extraordinary world - full of love, grief, coincidence - and we shall never understand it. We should never try to. We should only be grateful for it. I reckon we should love, breathe, and say all will be well and believe it. And we should share our best stories, as often as we can. — Susan Fletcher

Kisses open doors, I've noticed. That one gesture can unlock secrets, ease open feelings. It can't be prevented
these kisses just are. It's how they work. They break into basements you never knew you had. — Susan Fletcher

Oh there is always sadness. Always grief. I have heard folks say this life could be all hardship and sorrow, if we let it be. If we let our hearts seal over. — Susan Fletcher

A man can be beautiful, I see that now. It's not just a woman's term, not a word reserved for romantic, virtuous, elegant things. I don't think beauty is neat anymore. It's unordered. It's unbrushed hair and a torn back pocket. It's bright and strange and lovely, and if I were to paint him, I'd use all the warm colours - ochre, gold, plum, terracotta, scarlet, burnt orange. I want him to see me as I saw him then, I want him to find me alone at the end of the day with the sun in my hair. I want his heart to buckle, too. I want him to stop someone out in the square and say, who's that? Do you know her? Where is she from?"

- from Eve Green's mother's account.
"It is written on a piece of thin, yellow paper, and is folded in half. I like this account. I like it because it's true, she's right. We all want out lovers to see us that way - unaware, natural, serene. We want to change their world with one glance, to stop their breath at the sight of us. — Susan Fletcher

She never choose anything except her husband, her motherhood and her trust in God. The rest of it was put upon her and she bears it and does her best. — Susan Fletcher

There are some stories that you don't tell aloud, that you make up and tell silently to yourself. — Susan Fletcher

There are moments.
You will know them. — Susan Fletcher

What was dark will always be dark, I know that. Death is still death. Hatred will never be far, in this life.
But also, there is light. It is everywhere. It floods this world
the world brims with it. Once, I sat by the Coe and watched a shaft of light come down through the trees, through leaves, and wondered if there was a greater beauty, or a simpler one. There are many great beauties. but all of them
from the snow, to his fern-red hair, to my mare's eye reflecting the sky as she smelt the air of Rannoch Moor
have light in them, and are worth it. They are worth the darker parts. — Susan Fletcher

I had thought the second sight was a dream, or a vision, a sudden rush of breath. I had thought that the truth might step into my hut, like a ghost, and say its name
that I might find it, if I sought it. But, I was wrong.
You will know it, in time ...
I knew it, now. And I knew it was a feeling
deep, in the chest, or in more than the chest. It was a feeling in the bones, in the womb, in the soul. — Susan Fletcher

Is that why we give flowers? To express admiration? Sometimes. But there are other reasons. A symbol of love or of commiseration. A way of saying thank you. A mark of respect. Proof we like someone and want them to smile. And we put flowers on graves to say Look, we still think of you. You've left a space behind. — Susan Fletcher

Hope. It is the frailest of words. — Susan Fletcher

We carry them with us ... We breathe for them, sing for them soak up stories that they cannot hear. We think they would have loved this ...
And we smile for them, on their behalf. — Susan Fletcher

Strange, what the heart can bear. It can carry grief beyond measure. It can bear a weight that is too great to speak of. But a heart can't bear the world. It has its limits ... — Susan Fletcher

That was Leah, before the fade came. Before the sea mist of depression rolled in without much warning and dampened her, softened her so that she had less strength. She had always been sensitive - that was the word he'd heard for her and it was the right word. She saddened at the lobsters that Tom hauled ashore; she bruised, as ripe fruits do ...
Still. There is something in Leah. A flash of metal. A piece of grit in the pearl. — Susan Fletcher

Carefully, she stands. And she runs her hand across the top of Thomasina's gravestone as she leaves, like how, as girls, they would let go of hands - gradually, moving their fingertips over each other's palms, as gently as raindrops. She has done this for sixty-eight years and there is a dip on the stone from this. She has worn the stone down with her loving goodbyes. — Susan Fletcher

Isn't it the rarest thing? Never mind the whale migrations, or total eclipses of suns and moons: love that lasts, and is returned in equal measure, is the rarest thing she knows of. — Susan Fletcher

We all have our demons to deal with, Little Pigeon. It's when we cherish them - cradle them to our breasts and feed them, day after day-that's when they curdle our souls. — Susan Fletcher

I sought the sea. There was a small comfort in it
in how it never ended, how there were other lands beyond it that I would never see. I tried to see the realm, like that. Like the dead people had only gone elsewhere, to a place I could not see
a place just over the sides of the earth, which is as real as the beach that I sat on. — Susan Fletcher

She had a theory that you should try to fill your life with people with wrinkles next to their eyes because it means they've got it right; they've lived and laughed ... — Susan Fletcher

We carry on. We have ourselves and we carry on- in spite of our losses and mistakes and women, I think, have more than most. We are good secret-keepers. We can tie weights to out guilt and passions, and hatred and deceitfulness, and let them sink down, so that you'd never know they existed at all. But we know. I can count all mine. — Susan Fletcher

What if...? A question we ask to hurt ourselves. — Susan Fletcher

Love is as varied and unpredictable as the rain is: it comes in constant summer drizzles, or sudden, unforseen storms that make rivers burst their banks and Cornish fishing boats rock and spill and lose their crew in the Atlantic. — Susan Fletcher

I trusted him like I trusted the sky to stay above my head — Susan Fletcher

But Cora said all people bury what it is they fear
so it cannot hurt them. So it is kept from them, locked up in the earth or in the sea.
Does it work? I asked her. Burying a feared thing?
She pursed her lips. Maybe. If it done justly, and with an honest, hopeful heart ... — Susan Fletcher

If you let words go buzzing out of your mouth like bees, she always told me, they will come back and sting you. — Susan Fletcher

The Highland way says it's who you say you love and who you serve, which is of worth. Not some title that is passed down upon you by tradition. That's the English way, and the Lowland way
but who can be born a nobleman? Nobility is earned ... 'Tis our choices that make us. — Susan Fletcher

Grief is such a lonely thing. There is no-one in it with you - others may grieve for the same soul, but they do not grieve exactly for what you also grieve. No-one has lost precisely what you have lost. Not exactly, never exactly. We are in it alone. — Susan Fletcher

Grieving needs space, and it needs so much time. And it needs to be done; it cannot be trodden round or not looked in the eye. — Susan Fletcher

It is evening. The moon is small, and new. There are stars, and a stream's sound, and I can hear the wings of insects, in the dark. I think what gifts we are given, such gifts
every day. — Susan Fletcher

Fear is the price we pay for love. — Susan Fletcher

Love is blind, they say
but isn't it more that love makes us see too much? Isn't it more that love floods our brain with sights and sounds, so that everything looks bigger, brighter, more lovely than ever before? — Susan Fletcher