Carol Goodman > Quotes

“Which of us can say what the gods hold wicked?”
― Carol Goodman

“You told me trees could speak
and the only reason one heard
silence in the forest
was that they had all been born knowing different languages.

That night I went into the forest
to bury dictionaries under roots,
so many books in so many tongues
as to insure speech.

and now this very moment,
the forest seems alive
with whispers and murmurs and rumblings of sound
wind-rushed into my ears.

I do not speak any language
that crosses the silence around me
but how soothing to know
that the yearning and grasping embodied
in trees’ convoluted and startling shapes
is finally being fulfilled
in their wind shouts to each other.

Yet we who both speak English
and have since we were born
are moving ever farther apart
even as branch tips touch.”
― Carol Goodman, The Drowning Tree

“There’s always that first step in skating, from dry ground to slick ice, when it just seems impossible. Impossible that two thin blades of metal will support you, impossible that because its molecules have begun to dance a little slower water will hold you up.”
― Carol Goodman, The Lake of Dead Languages

“Little Red Riding Hood got what she deserved. You don’t go walking in the woods alone if you want to avoid wolves.”
I was about to say something in response, but Nicky Ballard did it for me. “You could say that about the wolf, too. If you go around attacking defenseless girls, you can expect payback.”
― Carol Goodman, The Angel Stone

“I think that sometimes when you get used to a bad thing -- like being in prison or getting kidnapped by fairies -- it's better to live with that bad thing than trying to change it. Because what if you get to chance to change it and you mess up? What if it's your last chance?”
― Carol Goodman

“yes, he had been preoccupied, but hadn't that been what I was looking for--someone who wouldn't pay too much attention, someone who wouldn't look at me to closely?”
― Carol Goodman, The Lake of Dead Languages

“Holy shit!” Moondance swung around, her face now streaked with the ashy remains of the nephilim, her eyes wide at the sight of me. “Callie’s back, and she brought a laser gun!”
― Carol Goodman, The Angel Stone

“We don't get to choose what truths God reveals to us -- but we do get to choose what we do with the truths -- whom we share it with and how.”
― Carol Goodman, The Seduction of Water

“Hush, hush, my bonnie sweet lamb. Tho’ my ship must sail in the morning, I will be with you When the salt spray fans the shore, I will be with you When the wind blows the heather, I will be with you when the dove sings her song, Sing ba la loo laddie, sing ba la loo dear Hush, hush, my bonnie sweet lamb.”
― Carol Goodman, The Angel Stone

“I told him then that I loved him.
“Because I’ve read Jane Eyre?” he asked incredulously. “Not because I realized the voice really was yours and ran down the hill to find you?”
“Both,” I told him. “But mostly because of Jane Eyre.”
― Carol Goodman, River Road

“You see it is not enough to merely evade evil. One must seek it out and destroy it.”
― Carol Goodman

“I could feel my difference—my wrongness—like an itch on my skin that threatened to spread into an ugly rash for everybody to see.”
― Carol Goodman, Blythewood

“Touched by an angel, my ass!” roared the woman, whom I recognized despite the ash covering her face: Moondance. “I’ll touch you, asshole!” She fired again.”
― Carol Goodman , The Angel Stone

“ I am glad when we enter the conference room that Chihiro made sure I wasn’t late to the meeting. Not only does my appearance cut short several whispered confabs in the corners of the room (confirming her suspicion that people would have used my lateness as a chance to talk about me), but I also get to take my favorite seat: at the far end of the table next to my favorite monkey.

I’ve never quite understood how the monkeys got here. The fresco on the ceiling of this room –originally the formal dining room- is modeled on the one in the formal dining room at La Civetta. It depicts a lemon-covered pergola in a garden. An assortment of birds –doves, sparrows, and long-tailed peacocks – roost on the wooden struts. In the original fresco, fat cupids also frolic amidst the greenery, their chubby feet dangling precariously from their perches. In one corner a plaster foot even protrudes from the frescoed surface. In this New York version of the fresco, there are monkeys instead of cupids: monkeys peering out between leafy branches and monkeys dangling by their tails from the wooden slats of the pergola. If you look carefully (and I have had ample opportunity through long and tedious budget reviews to examine every inch of the palatial room), you can even find a few monkeys that have climbed down from the pergola and found their way into the formal dining room to perform rude and unspeakable acts... My favorite monkey, though, is the little one who peers out from behind the leafy fronds of an aspidistra, making an obscene gesture I have seen only on the streets of Italy. I always sit right next to him. He gives me some relief for the sentiments I am unable to express in the course of department meetings.”
― Carol Goodman

“It is that time of evening when the sky shifts from indigo to violet. In sympathy, the sea has darkened to purple—a color that could earn the Homeric epithet “wine-dark.” Lights are just beginning to come on around the shoreline, like beads being strung, one by one, on a curved diadem crowning the amethyst brow of the bay.”
― Carol Goodman, The Night Villa

“It was van Drood who looked surprised. 'I thought she didn't love him,' he began. Helen's act had not only driven the shadows from Nathan, she had managed to confound the Shadow Master himself.”
― Carol Goodman, Ravencliffe

“Lesbia’s”
― Carol Goodman, The Lake of Dead Languages

“That’s what Sunny was beaming about. This was what she loved—the process of making art even more than the final product.”
― Carol Goodman, The Widow's House

“began,”
― Carol Goodman, River Road

“I know that the harder you try to dispel a legend the more power it gains.”
― Carol Goodman, The Lake of Dead Languages

“It should have been a happy time, but all around us our classmates were talking about what they planned to do when they graduated. Helen, though, didn't have a happy marriage or college or a flying career or military adventures to look forward to after graduation.”
― Carol Goodman, Hawthorn

“The smile he gives me comes slowly but reaches into someplace deep, someplace that feel as if it's never been touched until now, like the cold bottom of the lake that the sun has never warmed before this moment. "You forget," he says, "you're my heart's true love.”
― Carol Goodman, The Lake of Dead Languages