Martine Leavitt > Quotes

“Tell me what it is like to die," I answered.
He dismounted from his horse, looking at me strangely the whole while. "You experience something similar every day," he said softly. "It is as familiar to you as bread and butter."
"Yes," I said. "It is like every night when I fall asleep."
"No. It is like every morning when you wake up.”
― Martine Leavitt, Keturah and Lord Death

“Each man, when he dies, sees the landscape of his own soul.”
― Martine Leavitt, Keturah and Lord Death

“If untimely death came only those who deserved that fate, Keturah, where would choice be? No one would do good for its own sake, but only to avoid an early demise. No one would speak out against evil because of his own courageous soul, but only to live another day. The right to choose is man's great gift, but one thing is not his to choose--the time and means of death.”
― Martine Leavitt, Keturah and Lord Death

“It is life that hurts you not death.”
― Martine Leavitt, Keturah and Lord Death

“You, my lord, are the ending of all true stories.”
― Martine Leavitt, Keturah and Lord Death

“You have no dower," he said. "Live, Keturah. Go home."

"But I do have a dower," I said plainly. "This is my dower, Lord Death; the crown of flowers I will never wear at my wedding."

He knelt on one knee before me.

"The little house I would have had of my own, to furnish and clean. That, too, is part of my dower."

"I will give you the world for your footstool," he said.

"And most precious of all, I give you the wee baby I will never hold in my arms.”
― Martine Leavitt, Keturah and Lord Death

“His [Death] voice is cold at first, John. It seems unfeeling. But if you listen without fear, you find that when he speaks, the most ordinary words become poetry. When he stands close to you, your life becomes a song, a praise. When he touches you, your smallest talents become gold; the most ordinary loves break your heart with their beauty.”
― Martine Leavitt, Keturah and Lord Death

“There is no hell, John Temsland. Each man, when he dies, sees the landscape of his own soul.”
― Martine Leavitt, Keturah and Lord Death

“...the girl longed for a love that could not be ended by death. From the time she was young, she knew that her true love was there, somewhere, living a life that would one day intersect her own. Knowing this made every day full of sweet possibility. Knowing that her true love lived and breathed and went about his day under her same sun made her fears vanish, her sorrows small, and her hopes high. Though she did not yet know his face, the color of his eyes, still she knew him better than anyone else knew him, knew his hopes and dreams, what made him laugh and cry.”
― Martine Leavitt, Keturah and Lord Death

“Had I truly thought I would not die when he kissed me? But I did. For a moment the breath and life went out of me and there was no time and no tomorrow but only my lips against his.”
― Martine Leavitt, Keturah and Lord Death

“And so he did his endless work,' I continued quietly, 'without feeling, without pity, without rest, for to open his heart to these would be to open his heart to his loneliness and longing and that was beyond bearing.”
― Martine Leavitt, Keturah and Lord Death

“How thin the air felt at the forest's edge, how ghostly the trees that guarded their realm.... The whole world seemed as delicate as a dandelion seed, and as fleeting.... How sad to know that the figment village of my imagination would not vanish when I ended, to understand that it was not I who had invented the moon the first time I realized how lovely it was. To admit that it was not my breath that made the winds blow.... [M]y heart, my heart knew that when I closed my eyes I invented the night sky and the stars too. Wasn't the whole dome of the sky the same shape as the inside of my skull? Didn't I create the sun and the day when I raised my eyelids every morning?”
― Martine Leavitt, Keturah and Lord Death

“Papa loves you with a dying and infernal love," the youngest girl said.
"Undying," the eldest girl corrected. "And eternal.”
― Martine Leavitt, Keturah and Lord Death

“She knew she had never been truly alive until she met him, and never so happy and content with her lot until she was touched by the sorrow of him.”
― Martine Leavitt, Keturah and Lord Death

“Living to an extraordinary age, she mourned them all equally as she buried her husband and, one by one, her children. In this suffering she found the best sort of perfection--the kind that never demands it of others.”
― Martine Leavitt, Keturah and Lord Death

“The soul, it longs for its mate as mas as the body. Sad it is that the body be greedier than the soul. But if you be happy all your days, as I was with your grandfather, subdue the body and marry the soul. Look for the heart-and-soul love.”
― Martine Leavitt, Keturah and Lord Death

“When it is winter and we must walk in the blizzard snow do not our fingers and toes whisper death  And when winter is at last over. . .can we not hear our bellies whisper death to us  In the dark don't we know  And when we are paralyzed by nightmares  We know what you are.  With our first cries we rail against you.  We see you in every drop of blood in every tear.”
― Martine Leavitt, Keturah and Lord Death

“Demonstrate talent, said Grandmother often to me, and you will still be loved by a husband when beauty has faded.”
― Martine Leavitt, Keturah and Lord Death

“There was no breath in him, no flush of blood, no taint of sweat or tears. Next to him, I felt the grossness of my own body, how more I was like the earth than I was like him. He was air and wind and cloud and bird; I was dust and worm.”
― Martine Leavitt, Keturah and Lord Death

“The girl knew that quarrels would come because their lives were intertwined - how passionately one defends a heart that is vulnerable.”
― Martine Leavitt, Keturah and Lord Death

“I have observed that you treat a man as an old garment to be taken apart and stitched again. Perhaps you could think of him as good cloth, rich fabric that wants only to be embroidered upon. And perhaps, if you will do that, you will see that you love Tailor yourself.”
― Martine Leavitt, Keturah and Lord Death

“My lord, why do you trouble me by walking with me in the dark? It is cruel."
"I think to protect you from them," he said.”
― Martine Leavitt, Keturah and Lord Death

“Death is the ending of all true stories.”
― Martine Leavitt, Keturah and Lord Death

“There are some who come willingly," I said, as if I had not heard him, "not out of love, but out of sickness and sadness and a lack of understanding. He wanted none of them. And so he waited without waiting, and dreamed of what he could not imagine, and performed his terrible work and lived only in the moments out of which eternity is spun, knowing it was hopeless.”
― Martine Leavitt, Keturah and Lord Death

“In the fall, she knew it was Death who sweetened the apples.”
― Martine Leavitt, Keturah and Lord Death

“There is no hell...Each man, when he dies, sees the landscape of his own soul.”
― Martine Leavitt

“Anything could happen in a cosmos that was part math and part magic.”
― Martine Leavitt, Heck Superhero

“Doesn't it make you feel kind of awesome that the world is beautiful for no other apparent reason that that it is? Like beauty has its own secret reason. It doesn't need human eyes to notice. It just wants to be glorious and unbelievable.”
― Martine Leavitt, Calvin

“If my father discovered my secret, that for some time now I have been foiling his efforts to have the hart, I would lose my thumbs indeed, son or no," he said. "But it is cold, and I would have my clothes back.”
― Martine Leavitt, Keturah and Lord Death

“There is no hell. Each man, when he dies, sees the landscape of his own soul.”
― Martine Leavitt, Keturah and Lord Death