Jane Yolen Quotes

Overhead the swallows dipped down to catch bugs rising from the ground. Then they soared back up beyond the barracks. Hannah watched them for a moment, scarcely breathing. It was as if all nature ignored what went on in the camp. There were brilliant sunsets and soft breezes. Around the commandant’s house, bright flowers were teased by the wind. Once she’d seen a fox cross the meadow to disappear into the forest.

Know, my son, that the enemy will always be with you. He will be in the shadow of your dreams and in your living flesh, for he is the other part of yourself.

But when I asked Mom, she shrugged and looked up at the sky. She had given up looking at me when we talked.
“Reverend Beelson told us God would provide,” she said, as if reading that in the clouds. “And he does not lie.” It wasn’t clear if she meant Reverend Beelson or God.

The thing about signs from God is that you can never be sure.
In the morning, going to the Porta Potti, I saw a deer. There was also a dead pigeon being a smorgas-bird for crows near the perimeter when I went with a message for an Angel. And the shed skin of some small snake that Grahame had collected.
If those were signs, what did they mean?
God loved me?
God hated me?
God didn’t care?…
I saw more signs than I can remember.
The moon was still shining like a pale penny at noon.
There was an eagle wheeling overhead at four.
A pair of bluejays squabbled in a fir tree when I came out of the Place of Eating after dinner.
God was saying yes?
God was saying no?
God wasn’t speaking at all?

She hated to lie but she hated arguments even more.

Dad, everyone knows Beelson is a nutcase! You should hear the things they say about him in school."
My father looked at me sadly. "I thought you didn't believe in basing your life on what everyone else says, Mr. Nonconformist."
"OK, skip what everyone else says. I think he's nuts.

But I scolded myself, That’s magical thinking, Marina. Consider instead what’s real.

Fifteen years can be a long or a short time, depending upon whether one is immortal or not.

Madness also makes folks uneasy; they fear contagion.

We had more church after supper, with a long sermon from Reverend Beelson. He talked about wars and earthquakes and floods as signs that the End was coming. Which made me wonder if he had somehow managed to not notice that wars, earthquakes, and floods have been going on since the beginning of history.
But I didn’t say anything.
It wasn’t worth the effort.

She filled the pot, got out a new filter, threw the old one onto the garbage, and counted out five tablespoons of Columbian Supreme. Then she waited while the magic of modern invention turned tap water into a hot dark-brown caffeine-powered drink. It was better than any Biblical miracle and risked no beliefs.

Princesses did not make scenes. One needed to be a queen to do that.

It is not crazy to want to know the past. It is only crazy to live there, like so many of the aristocracy.

I actually said a little prayer of my own then, my first since we had arrived: Please, God—get me out of this nuthouse!

Time may heal wounds, but it does not erase the scars.