Colin Harker > Quotes

“Once Joseph had closed the door and bolted it securely, he cast his spectacled eyes once more upon the newcomer. The cowl had now fallen back to reveal a face that astonished the old man fully as much as if he had caught sight of goat’s hooves under the man’s cloak. The quality of the stranger’s visage was neither old nor young but strangely redolent of both: for while he possessed all of the fine features of youth untarnished by age, there was an weariness about his eyes and a discontent that was neither the sullenness of youth nor the bitterness of old age but something far more strongly felt and eternal, that darkened his brow. Thin and considering were those lips in that face of ivory and it seemed to the querulous old man as though they were fashioned into a smile such as might have played upon the mouths of satyrs in wanton Greece. In the trembling light of the cressets and torches within the great hall, the stranger’s hair seemed like a coronet of dark flames that surrounded his face; his eyes, twin drops spilt from the same slow, emerald poison.”
― Colin Harker, Dreams of Desolation

“The solemn bell of the grandfather clock in the downstairs hall tolled the hour, the eleven echoing reverberations reaching even into the closed upper chamber where three figures were seated about a round wooden table.”
― Colin Harker, Dreams of Desolation

“Tis strange that on the fifth of March 1766, though having enjoy’d London for little less than a month after my travels upon the Continent, I awoke with a curious resolution to see the North Country.”
― Colin Harker, The Book of Blasphemous Words

“The game is finished. You have taken all that I possess.”

“I have taken nothing that mere Death could not rob you of.”

“What more can you possibly desire?”

“The one possession that you value least of all – your soul.”

“And this will satisfy?”

“Satisfy? Along with the souls of all within this castle, within this isle, within this world – yes, that shall satisfy.”
― Colin Harker, Dreams of Desolation

“I would have felt too afraid even to draw breath were I not also desirous to see whether they would rise or not. Is this what our modern philosophes such as Mr. Burke mean when they speak of a fear that exalts man, a terror that pleases as well as dismays? Or was it simply the madness of my dreaming self?”
― Colin Harker, The Book of Blasphemous Words