Penelope Williamson > Quotes

“My love for you won't stop with my leaving. Come an evening over the years, when you step outside your door and hear the wind blowing through the cottonwoods, that'll be me, thinking of you, whispering your name, and loving you.”
― Penelope Williamson

“If I am never to have you again after this night, this moment, you will remain the wife of my soul. Keeper of my heart.”
― Penelope Williamson, A Wild Yearning

“A heartfire, Clementine my darlin', is when you want someone, when you need her so damn bad, not only in your bed but in your life, that you're willin' to burn--".”
― Penelope Williamson, Heart of the West

“What I’ve learned of love, I’ve learned from you. I don’t believe in anything, but I believe in you.”
― Penelope Williamson, The Outsider

“What stories these are, what lessons they teach us. That the redemption of mankind comes through woman, for she takes man's seed, nurtures it within her, and brings it forth into the world. That love is often a quest, to be earned and deserved before it is given. That love can be lusty and earthy, as well as emotional and spiritual... .
But above all that love is forever.”
― Penelope Williamson, Keeper of the Dream

“I wish he was mine," he said. The words slipped out without thought, but there was no taking them back...

"I love Gus," she said, cutting him deep, deep. "Not only is he my husband, but he is honorable and noble and good, and I vowed before God that I would love him." She made a harsh tearing sound in her throat. "When I saw him that day, when he knocked me over with his bicycle, he was like something out of a dream, my dream." She looked at him, and her eyes glittered like shards of glass. "Oh, God, God, how could I have known, how could I have known? Up until that moment, you see, he was the closest thing I'd found to you.”
― Penelope Williamson, Heart of the West

“Rafferty gripped his brother's shoulder and pushed him in the direction of his wife. She was rolling on the fresh-turned earth of Charlie's grave now, and her cries were no longer human. "Go hold her. Go on, even if she fights you, but, dammit, hold her." Go on, brother, before I do, because if I do, you ain't ever getting her back.”
― Penelope Williamson, Heart of the West

“She felt as if she'd always been holding a part of herself back, saving it, and she had a terrible fear she would end up saving it forever. That she would die with whole parts of herself unused.”
― Penelope Williamson

“Shay," she said. "Shay McKenna," as if trying out his name, saying it for the first time. "Did you ever love me, even a little?"

Love you?" He turned his head and brushed his lips across her fingers. "I'm loving you now, mo chridh. After I'm dead, a thousand years from now, whatever's left of me, be it a soul or just a handful of dust, that will be loving you.”
― Penelope Williamson, The Passions of Emma

“I couldn't let him have you, Jessalyn," he said, his throat raw. "I know that I am worthless, a degenerate Trelawny buried in debts. But you're all I've ever wanted out of this life, the only thing I will ever need. Without you I have no reason to live." He held his hands up to her, spreading them in supplication, and they shook as if he had an ague. "I have no pride left. You have it all.”
― Penelope Williamson, Once in a Blue Moon

“Kindness! I think that it is possible
to kill with kindness....”
― Penelope Williamson, Once in a Blue Moon

“She’d just spent the last hours engaged in endless small talk. Now, when it mattered so much, she seemed to have no words to say, or even breath to speak them with. All her life she’d always had such trouble with words: finding them and losing them, hoarding them and wasting them.”
― Penelope Williamson, The Passions of Emma

“The future was as unfathomable as the black holes between the stars at night.”
― Penelope Williamson

“When Emma sat down on a rock to take off her shoes and stockings, he said to her, “You’ve Yankee feet. Long and skinny.”
“And you’ve Irish feet,” she said, right back at him. “Big and always in your mouth”
― Penelope Williamson, The Passions of Emma

“We are all of us both light and dark, do you not find it so, Miss Tremayne? Wanting in our hearts to do right and able to do wrong. And so it’s the choices we’ve made, surely, that make of us what we are”
― Penelope Williamson, The Passions of Emma

“He wanted to do everything over and do it right this time. He wanted to give her the world, but she had already given the world to him.”
― Penelope Williamson

“We are all of us both light and dark, do you not find it so, Miss Tremayne? Wanting in our hearts to do right and able to do wrong. And so it’s the choices we’ve made, surely, that make of us what we are.”
― Penelope Williamson, The Passions of Emma

“Yet when she stole another glance at him, she had to laugh at the face he was pulling. “What is it about you men and physicking? Wave a bottle of cod liver oil under your nose and you run like a prairie chicken. Then come winter let that same nose catch a rheum and to hear you moan, one’d think you were dying. And what are you snickering over, Benjo Yoder? You’re the worst of the lot.”
― Penelope Williamson, The Outsider