Alexis Henderson > Quotes

“Good people don't bow their heads and bite their tongues while other good people suffer. Good people are not complicit.”
― Alexis Henderson, The Year of the Witching

“True Evil...wore the skin of good men. It uttered prayers, not curses. It feigned mercy where there was only malice. It studied Scriptures only to spit out lies.”
― Alexis Henderson, The Year of the Witching

“People do foolish, reckless things when they’re desperate to find ways to escape themselves.”
― Alexis Henderson, The Year of the Witching

“To be woman is to be a sacrifice.”
― Alexis Henderson, The Year of the Witching

“Sometimes I feel like I’ve been building you a House out of my own bones. And still, you look at me with so much contempt and mistrust. You complain because there are gaps in the roof of my ribs, and you ask me to give more of myself to fill them. You want my hips to be the bowl you drink from. My shoulders, your bed. My arms, your walls. My legs, the very ground you stand on. You want your fill of my blood whenever you crave it. What more do you want from me?”
― Alexis Henderson, House of Hunger

“This was the great shame of Bethel: complacency and complicity that were responsible for the deaths of generations of girls. It was the sickness that placed the pride of men before the innocents they were sworn to protect. It was a structure that exploited the weakest among them for the benefit of those born to power.”
― Alexis Henderson, The Year of the Witching

“A man who knows his past is a man with the power to choose his future.”
― Alexis Henderson, The Year of the Witching

“Isn't it strange how reading a book is a sin, but locking a girl in the stocks and leaving her to the dogs is another day of the Good Father's work?”
― Alexis Henderson, The Year of the Witching

“Reading was one of the few things she felt she was truly good at, one of the few things she prided herself on.”
― Alexis Henderson, The Year of the Witching

“I have seen the Beast and her maidens again. I hear their cries in the woods at night. They call to me, and I call to them. There is no love as pure as that.”
― Alexis Henderson, The Year of the Witching

“The forest is sentient in a way man is not. She sees with a thousand eyes and forgets nothing.”
― Alexis Henderson, The Year of the Witching

“It’s always the kind ones who keep secrets,” said Martha, squinting into the light of the fire. “Always the kind ones who best hide their sins.”
― Alexis Henderson, The Year of the Witching

“Sometimes I think we share a soul. His pain has become mine. And mine his.”
― Alexis Henderson, The Year of the Witching

“And with that pity came a kind of rage, not at Judith or Ezra, but at the system that held one accountable for her sins while the other was lauded.”
― Alexis Henderson, The Year of the Witching

“Today, we choose mercy."
The flock answered her as one.
"Now and forevermore.”
― Alexis Henderson, The Year of the Witching

“Let those who have raised a hand to me reap the harm they sow. Let the shadows snuff their light. Let their sins defy them.”
― Alexis Henderson, The Year of the Witching

“Shared or spilled, it seemed that blood did not matter as much as appearance did. And so, no matter how many centuries passed, no matter what they rendered in service of Bethel's betterment, it seemed the Outskirters would always be consigned to the fringes.”
― Alexis Henderson, The Year of the Witching

“I love him. He taught me how. I don't think I knew how to choose to love until I met him.”
― Alexis Henderson, The Year of the Witching

“My mother once told me beautiful was the worst thing a girl could be. I’m now inclined to believe her.”
― Alexis Henderson, House of Hunger

“It's almost the witching hour,' said Martha, and a bitter smile touched her lips. 'Perhaps that's what the Prophet should have named this wretched year. It's more fitting, don't you think? The Year of the Witching.”
― Alexis Henderson, The Year of the Witching

“There were wreaths of wildflowers, tokens and tributes, even a small pair of children’s shoes hanging from a fence post by the laces - as though someone believed the child they belonged to might one day emerge from the trees to claim them. These relics were all that remained of those who were lost to the Darkwood. For what the forest took it rarely returned.”
― Alexis Henderson, The Year of the Witching

“people who mistook greatness for its shadow. As long as they were in the presence of brilliance, they too were brilliant by proxy.”
― Alexis Henderson, An Academy for Liars

“In the Scriptures and the stories, in the stained-glass windows of the cathedral or the paintings that hung from its stone walls, the angels always looked like Leah: golden-haired and blue-eyed, dressed in fine silks and satins, with full cheeks and skin as pale as river pearls.
As for the girls like Immanuelle—the ones from the Outskirts, with dark skin and raven-black curls, cheekbones as keen as cut stone—well, the Scriptures never mentioned them at all. There were no statues or paintings rendered in their likeness, no poems or stories penned in their honor. They went unmentioned, unseen.”
― Alexis Henderson, The Year of the Witching

“Good people don’t bow their heads and bite their tongues while other good people suffer. Good people are not complicit.”
― Alexis Henderson, The Year of the Witching

“The mind is a different matter than the body. It’s meant to be sacred, private.”
― Alexis Henderson, House of Hunger

“she’d made the grave error of mistaking the want of closeness for closeness itself.”
― Alexis Henderson, An Academy for Liars

“four witches planted seeds of discord in the hearts of good Bethelan men, tempting them and leading their souls astray. The roots of their deceit ran deep, and it wasn’t long before the rule of the land shifted into their hands. It was only by the Father’s grace that a young man by the name of David Ford—the first prophet—had rallied a brave army of holy crusaders to overthrow the four witches with fire and purging”
― Alexis Henderson, The Year of the Witching

“intervention was exactly what she wanted. A sign, a symbol, the grasping hand of some meddling but benevolent god who would reach down through a break in the clouds and shake her senseless, until she was forced to believe—really and truly—that her life had meaning and that she was destined for something more than mediocrity.”
― Alexis Henderson, An Academy for Liars

“This was the great shame of Bethel: complacency and complicity that were responsible for the deaths of generations of girls. It was the sickness that placed the pride of men before the innocents they were sworn to protect. It was a structure that exploited the weakest among them for the benefit of those born to power.”
― Alexis Henderson, The Year of the Witching

“There will always be someone who will use the power they have to hurt those who don’t deserve it. That’s why it’s important that people like you become competent enough to stand between them and those they’d otherwise harm. To let your scruples get in the way of that vital work is cowardice.”
― Alexis Henderson, An Academy for Liars