Emily Tesh > Quotes

“Tobias had thought and thought about it, for four hundred years, until he’d reached the conclusion that Fabian must have loved him, after all, in his own way. That was the worst of it. The thing that woke now every year was always glad to see him.”
― Emily Tesh, Silver in the Wood

“At once slow deep green rolled over him. He took a breath, and another, smelling old rotting leaves and healthy growth and autumn light. He felt almost as though he could have planted his feet and become a tree himself, a strong oak reaching up to the sky, brother of the old oak who ruled the wood.”
― Emily Tesh, Silver in the Wood

“There was a time three thousand years gone you could have walked from one end of the country to the other never leaving the shadow of the trees. “The Green Man walks the wood,” he tried explaining. “But the wood remembers.”
― Emily Tesh, Silver in the Wood

“What a waste it was, what a terrible waste, to take a person who dreamed cities and gardens and enormous shining skies and teach him that the only answer to an unanswerable suffering was slaughter.”
― Emily Tesh, Some Desperate Glory

“The Green Man walks the wood," he tried explaining. "But the wood remembers.”
― Emily Tesh, Silver in the Wood

“He felt almost as though he could have planted his feet and become a tree himself, a strong oak reaching up to the sky, brother of the old oak who ruled the wood.”
― Emily Tesh, Silver in the Wood

“He had glimpsed eternity in the drowned forest, and it had opened something up inside him which could not bear to be any smaller than he already was. And by God, it would be a terrible smallness, a terrible selfishness, to force upon another man a fate he could not bear himself.”
― Emily Tesh, Drowned Country

“Pearl graciously crawled into his lap and butted his hand with her head to indicate he might have the honour of petting her.”
― Emily Tesh, Silver in the Wood

“Almost no one was paying for magical boarding school because of the magic. The magic was an interesting quirk, a historical curiosity, in a few cases a genuine passion being indulged by a loving parent—but you didn’t pay fifty thousand pounds a year for magic tricks, any more than you paid it for Shakespeare or the respiratory system or the ability to solve quadratic equations. No: Chetwood’s school fees were insurance money, a policy taken out against the future. Let my child be safe. Let my child be happy. Let my child have every single possible chance at freedom, joy, hope, power. Because an elite education was an investment in power. Magic was the least of what you gained at Chetwood. What mattered was the power to walk the walk and talk the talk, to have your résumé picked out of the pile”
― Emily Tesh, The Incandescent

“The world was far bigger than Tobias remembered from four centuries ago. It was bigger than he had ever known, and he was living in it. He had thought himself a thing uprooted, like the great oak, ready to begin his death.

"Mr Finch," said Mrs Silver, the one time he said anything about it. "you are not, in point of fact, a tree.”
― Emily Tesh, Silver in the Wood

“he felt himself for a moment as the stump of a rotten old tree, putting up thin green shoots at strange new angles.”
― Emily Tesh, Silver in the Wood

“He was ashamed after for losing his temper. He always tried not to: it seemed to him that being a big fellow meant you had to keep a rein on yourself.”
― Emily Tesh, Silver in the Wood

“he never has a court and is always fundamentally alone:”
― Emily Tesh, Silver in the Wood

“I really should apologise,” she said, and still didn’t.”
― Emily Tesh, Drowned Country

“While we live, we’re alive,” Kyr said. “And that’s all.”
― Emily Tesh, Some Desperate Glory

“A long, long time, that was what. A long time, whispered the low rustle of the breeze in the leaves outside. A long time, sang the drip-drip-drip of rainwater, softly, while Tobias sat clear-eyed and sleepless in the dark, listening to the wood.”
― Emily Tesh, Silver in the Wood

“The way he said it, and the look he gave Tobias with it, was flirting. Flirting! At least Tobias recognised it this time. Funny thing, to be flirted with by a pretty young fellow who wore expensive coats. Made Tobias feel young again, and at the same time very, very old.”
― Emily Tesh, Silver in the Wood

“He planted his feet a shoulders width apart in the ground. After a moment he closed his eyes. Here was the wood. Slow and green he felt the life of it, the life that had been his life as well these four centuries past. It poured around him thick and steady, binding all together: the long patient strength of the trees that anchored, the deep bright power of the handful of dryads--Tobias felt Bramble clear as day among them, young and strong--and then the small and necessary, the bracken and ferns, the mosses and mushrooms. Here were the songbirds and ravens and solemn wide-winged owls, shy deer and burrowing rabbits, fox and badger and snake, beetles and moths and midges, all the things that were in the wood, that lived each in their own way under the shelter of the old oak.”
― Emily Tesh, Silver in the Wood

“He knew it the same way the woodsman knew it, because he knew trees: but he also knew it with the knowledge of the Wild Man of Greenhallow, who felt every slow green beat of the forest's heart.”
― Emily Tesh, Silver in the Wood

“It may not treat you kindly; it is the Wood. It may not keep you safe; it is the Wood. It will not last forever, but it will last long enough; and the trees grow, and the seasons change, and the wild things come and go, as do the monsters.”
― Emily Tesh, Drowned Country

“A peace brought about with the threat of violence is only a war in waiting.”
― Emily Tesh, Some Desperate Glory

“Fairies he had met, and chased off usually; even more than dryads, they were better off far away from humans, and humans far from them.”
― Emily Tesh, Silver in the Wood

“Nothing very much frightened him. Was he not the Lord of the Wood, nearer demigod than mortal man, master of time and seasons, beasts and birds, earth and sky? “Your mother is here,” said Bramble. Silver froze. After a long silence he managed, “Make her go away.”
― Emily Tesh, The Greenhollow Duology: Silver in the Wood, Drowned Country

“You’re another folklorist,” said Tobias, trying to keep up. “A practical folklorist,” said Mrs Silver. “Vampires eliminated, ghouls laid to rest, fairies discouraged, and so on.”
― Emily Tesh, Silver in the Wood

“They were the things of this world and of this time, human right through. Tobias started to find he liked them.”
― Emily Tesh, Silver in the Wood

“For every sentimental my teacher changed my life story you heard, there were dozens of my teacher made me moderately bored a few times a week and then I got through the year and moved on with my life and never thought about them again.”
― Emily Tesh, The Incandescent

“Selves came and went. They grew and grew. You discovered something to be and then you learned how to inhabit it with every inch of your being.”
― Emily Tesh, The Incandescent

“No, no, he loves them,” said Tobias. “They distract him, you see. Keep him amused with drink and song and games, and he won’t be any trouble. It’s when he gets bored that the trouble starts.”
― Emily Tesh, Silver in the Wood

“Silver did not flinch away from her. She was a powerful and dangerous and strange creature, one of the mysteries of the Hallow Wood, unique even among her tree-sisters, but she did not frighten him. Nothing very much frightened him. Was he not the Lord of the Wood, nearer demigod than mortal man, master of time and seasons, beasts and birds, earth and sky?

"You mother is here," said Bramble.

Silver froze.

After a long silence he managed, "Make her go away.”
― Emily Tesh, Drowned Country

“It was a foulness that refused to surrender to cleansing decay. Year on year it endured, throwing off poison in all directions, waiting in the dark, coiling itself into the fabric of the wood.”
― Emily Tesh, Silver in the Wood