Catherine Fisher > Quotes

“Walls have ears.
Doors have eyes.
Trees have voices.
Beasts tell lies.
Beware the rain.
Beware the snow.
Beware the man
You think you know.
-Songs of Sapphique”
― Catherine Fisher, Incarceron

“Only the man who has known freedom
Can define his prison.”
― Catherine Fisher, Incarceron

“I have walked a stair of swords,
I have worn a coat of scars.
I have vowed with hollow words,
I have lied my way to the stars
-Songs of Sapphique”
― Catherine Fisher, Incarceron

“Underground, the stars are legend.”
― Catherine Fisher, Incarceron

“All my years to this moment
All my roads to this wall.
All my words to this silence
All my pride to this fall.
-Songs of Sapphique”
― Catherine Fisher, Incarceron

“If it means my death, I don't care, because even death will be a sort of freedom.”
― Catherine Fisher (Incarceron), Incarceron

“The world is a chessboard, Madam, on which we play out our ploys and follies. You are the Queen, of course. Your moves are the strongest. For myself, I claim only to be a knight, advancing in a crooked progress. Do we move ourselves, do you think, or does a great gloved hand place on our squares”
― Catherine Fisher, Incarceron

“Despair is deep. An abyss that swallows dreams. A wall at the world's end. Behind it I await death. Because all our work has come to this.”
― Catherine Fisher, Incarceron

“I remember a story of a girl in Paradise who ate an apple once. Some wise Sapient gave it to her. Because of it she saw things differently. What had seemed gold coins were dead leaves. Rich clothes were rags of cobweb. And she saw there was a wall around the world, with a locked gate.”
― Catherine Fisher, Incarceron

“Where are the leaders?' Sapphique asked.
'In the fortresses,' the swan replied.
'And the poets?'
'Lost in dreams of other worlds.'
'And the craftsmen?'
'Forging machines to challenge the darkness.'
'And the Wise, who made the world?'
The swan lowered its black neck sadly.
'Dwindled to crones and sorcerers in towers.”
― Catherine Fisher, Incarceron

“And what would they be scared of? There's nothing to fear in a perfect world, is there?”
― Catherine Fisher

“Once Incarceron became a dragon, and a Prisoner crawled into his lair. They made a wager. They would ask each other riddles, and the one who could not answer would lose. It it was the man, he would give his life. The Prison offered a secret way of Escape. But even as the man agreed, he felt its hidden laughter.
They played for a year and a day. The lights stayed dark. The dead were not removed. Food was not provided. The Prison ignored the cries of its inmates.
Sapphique was the man. He had one riddle left. He said, "What is the Key that unlocks the heart?"
For a day Incarceron thought. For two days. For three. Then it said, "If I ever knew the answer, I have forgotten it."
--Sapphique in the Tunnels of Madness”
― Catherine Fisher, Sapphique

“The Stars.
Jared slept beneath them, uneasy in the rustling leaves.

From the battlements Finn gazed up at them, seeing the impossible distances between galaxies and nebulae, and thinking they were not as wide as the distances between people.

In the study Claudia sensed them, in the sparks and crackles on the screen.

In the prison, Attia dreamt of them, She sat curled on the hard chair, Rix repacking his hidden pockets obsessively with coins and glass discs and hidden handkerchiefs.

A single spark flickered deep in the coin Keiro spun and caught, spun and caught.”
― Catherine Fisher, Sapphique

“Because I have dreams and in those dreams I see the stars”
― Catherine Fisher, Incarceron

“We are chained hand and foot by protocol, enslaved to a static, empty world where men and women can’t read, where the scientific advances of the ages are the preserve of the rich, where artists and poets are doomed to endless repetitions and sterile reworking of past masterpieces. Nothing is new. New does not exist. Nothing changes, nothing grows, evolves, develops. Time has stopped. Progress is forbidden”
― Catherine Fisher, Incarceron

“He was her enemy, and she hated him because she could not hate him enough.”
― Catherine Fisher

“He sang his last song. And the words of that have never been written down. But it was sweet and of great beauty, and those that heard it were changed utterly.
Some say it was the song that moves the stars.”
― Catherine Fisher, Sapphique

“Even across the dark, even across the loss, even across the emptiness, soul will speak to soul”
― Catherine Fisher, The Dark City

“In the Sapient tongue he said softly, ‘Tell
me, Master, did you know Incarceron was tiny?’
‘Is it?’ Sapphique replied in the same language, his green
eyes as he looked up lit by deep points of flame. ‘To you,
perhaps. Not to its Prisoners. Every prison is a universe for
its inmates. And think, Jared Sapiens. Might not the Realm
also be tiny, swinging from the watchchain of some being in
a world even vaster?”
― Catherine Fisher, Sapphique

“He had wanted so hard to Escape, to find the stars. And all he had found was a new prison.”
― Catherine Fisher, Sapphique

“Freedom is a small price to pay for survival.”
― Catherine Fisher, Incarceron

“I trust you, Jared," she whispered. "I always did. I love you, Master.”
― Catherine Fisher, Sapphique

“Despair is deep. An abyss that swallows dreams.”
― Catherine Fisher, Incarceron

“Finn smiled ruefully. "I'm a Prisoner, old man. Just like you.”
― Catherine Fisher, Sapphique

“Nothing has changed, or will change.
So we must change it.”
― Catherine Fisher, Incarceron

“He worked night and day. He made a coat that would transform him; he would be more than a man; a winged creature, beautiful as light. All the birds brought him feathers. Even the eagle. Even the swan.”
― Catherine Fisher, Sapphique

“I hate her."
Merlin laughed, tossing the stick down. "Not so. You have forgotten how to love. That's a different sorrow.”
― Catherine Fisher, Corbenic

“It's safe to tell a secret to one. Risky to tell it to two. To tell it to three is thoughtless folly, everyone else will know.”
― Catherine Fisher, Snow-Walker

“When you draw, you copy the world don't you? You remake it on paper, but it isn't the same. It's yours. No one else could have created it just like that. When I make poems, I use the words we all use, but the order and the sound create a new power. This wood is someone's creation. We stumble through it's tendrils, as if we're crawling through the synapses of his mind.”
― Catherine Fisher, Darkhenge

“None of us have much idea where we are. Perhaps all our lives are too concerned with where, and not enough with who.”
― Catherine Fisher, Incarceron