Alison Uttley > Quotes

“That evening the men worked late to finish and I raked the fields in the dusk with Alison, stopping to pick the dog-roses which were like white stars in the hedges, then hastening after my sister. Dumbledores boomed as they struck our dresses, a hedgehog walked in the path, and we could hear the barking of a fox in the wood. Night”
― Alison Uttley, A Traveller in Time

“I looked at myself in the little mirror. My cheeks were flaming-red, my arms were sunburnt, but another sun had warmed them. The hot passions of those days flowed in my veins, I felt transfigured, old, wise, knowing a thousand things of which I had been barely conscious. Strangely moved by the knowledge that I was separated from that life by only the thinnest vapour, I went downstairs, my little watch ticking the minutes, awakened from its sleep.”
― Alison Uttley, A Traveller in Time

“Early in the morning a heavy dew lay on the ground, and the horses and cattle left tracks in the spangled grass, and hollow imprints where they had slept. The world was exquisite, delicate as a mother-of-pearl shell.”
― Alison Uttley, The Farm on the Hill

“There was radiant sunshine, the kind that comes sometimes in November, more ethereal than the light of summer. The sky was china-blue, ice-cold, and the sunshine delicate as yellow pollen. This light lay on the walls, already powdered with gold lichens, it gilded the trees, and gave the old farmhouse the appearance of unreality. It was dream-like, it was an old coloured print in a picture book, flat and unshadowed, and brimmed with a living beauty, sending out a light of its own.”
― Alison Uttley, When All is Done

“She wouldn’t be sad, she didn’t care if she were ugly; she had accepted her wistful elfin face as she accepted the birds and trees, as something which was part of the earth.”
― Alison Uttley, The Country Child

“A friendly thing a shadow is, neither ugly nor unkind, a fantastic dancing friend.”
― Alison Uttley, The Country Child

“Everything seemed to move. The chimney-stacks swept across the Great Bear, the Pleiades were entangled in the elm’s boughs, a shooting star fell with a trail of gold, the trees dropped lower and lower as they climbed above them.”
― Alison Uttley, The Country Child

“The smooth beeches held up their glass-clear leaves to the sun, and the light strained through them like water through a sieve.”
― Alison Uttley, The Farm on the Hill

“She stood for a time, still and meditative, with her face held up to the arch of sky, seeking a shooting star in that illimitable field above her. The stars glittered and winked as if they were live, sentient beings, the angels themselves, watching the doings of earth, not in the serene manner of celestial beings but excited and interested in what they saw below. Their colours flashed in red and ice-blue and dazzling green and amber. There was Auriga with its bright Capella, a star Susan always recognised since her father long pointed out its bright flame.
"That's the one I knows well. It's always been in the sky. I've watched it when I've been going to milking and coming home on winter nights, and it's been a kind of companion to me."
The Great Bear swung over the house top, guarding Windystone from harm. Orion was hidden, but if she walked along by the yew trees, she could see his fiery stars and steel-green Riga, and the belt like a jewel. But she stayed where she was, alone, quiet, giving herself up to the movement of the rolling heavens, and she was caught up in that heavenly motion and whirled like a dark atom with the swinging earth.”
― Alison Uttley, The Farm on the Hill

“Susan. who sat wide-eyed and silent. overawed by the presence of the great man, heard this in wonder. That she might go by train to school, and learn Latin and French, was a divine blessing, and if algebra, which surely came out of Arabian Nights, were added, her cup of bliss would be complete. Her mind flashed to unbounded knowledge, to the moon with its mountains and craters, to the stars, which were worlds. It dipped down into the earth and moved among caverns in the limestone hills and the springs running in secret places.
Her heart beat wildly; heaven was there with doors which would unlock with the key of scholarship. The golden gates would fly apart and she would step into that world of books and language, and the knowledge of echoes and sound and lightning which the schoolmaster called "science".”
― Alison Uttley, The Farm on the Hill

“When Susan went to the calf place, there in a nest of hay in the stall, lay a small, damp, red, curly-haired little calf, with shapely head and white face and body like a fawn’s.”
― Alison Uttley, The Country Child

“The sunlight poured through and sent shadows and tracery upon the white walls, so that the dreamer could lie and watch a pageant of intricate weaving light, a maze of patterned shades, a quivering picture of ever-changing design. The girl put a bowl of water on the deep sill, to catch the sunbeams and flash them in facets over the white ceiling. Dreaming, she sat watching it, fascinated by the curves and cusps of cutting light beams, the blades of fine gold. In autumn when the leaves were thinning, the pale drifts floated into the room and lay on the water.”
― Alison Uttley, When All is Done