Lucy M. Boston > Quotes

“What's thought cannot be unthought.”
― L. M. Boston

“The moon shone in the rocking horsr's eye, and in the mouse's eye, too, when Tolly fetched it out from under his pillow to see. The clock went tick-tock, and in the stillness he heard little bare feet running across the floor, then laughter and whispering, and a sound like the pages of a big book being turned over. ”
― L.M. Boston, The Children of Green Knowe

“if somthing accurs outside wht we call the natural order,its very smallness may be more immediately unnerving than,for istance,the eclipse of the sun to a tribe without astronomy,where holy awe must override any other feeling. very small cracks in our outer sell of reason let in very cold air.

memory in a house,1973”
― Lucy M. Boston

“It's bright pinky-white sand was made entirely of shell dust, like star dust, among which, if you sifted it with your fingers, were infant shells as small as the grains but perfectly shaped. Scattered over the surface were larger shells of many kinds and shapes, some as delicate as flower petals, others, though small, built to withstand any battering sea.”
― L.M. Boston, The Sea Egg

“She had short curls and her face had so many wrinkles it looked as if someone had been trying to draw her for a very long time and every line put in had made the face more like her.”
― L.M. Boston, The Children of Green Knowe

“When she opened her eyes they were confronted by a musical box against the opposite wall - one of those early Bavarian toys where mechanical figures perform to the tune.

'How odd,' she thought. The little stage showed a group of fiddlers, two couples in costumes like those of the ball she had just quitted, and in a doorway at the side, a gypsy or beggar man.

Very faintly the distant waltz came to her ears, but no footsteps ringing in the abandoned halls.

With her hand pressed to her unsteady heart, acting under a sudden compulsion, she pushed down the lever. Delicate plucked music started up; the fiddlers sawed with their clumsy arms in time to an ethereal waltz. The couples moved jerkily out and each raised an arm to clasp its partner. To various clicks and rumbles from under the floor they began to revolve with each other and to orbit round the room. Their movements were sinister because of being both reluctant and predestined. Here they were and this is was what they must do. ("Many Coloured Glass")”
― Lucy M. Boston, Ghost Stories

“Then all was quiet, except for that murmurous half telling, half withholding of tremendous secrets that the sea would keep up all night. Each little wave seemed to say, “I’ll tell you-” and then pull back with a smothered “Oh!” to be followed by another wave saying, “Then I will say-” but whatever it was remained unsaid and unsayable.”
― L.M. Boston, The Sea Egg

“The enormous vermilion sun was dropping toward the sea, its reflected glow making a blazing path across the water to the very beach, where the last ripple was spangled with garnets. Otherwise, the sea was periwinkle purple, spilling and whispering and sidling with an easy going prattle of foam round the steeper rocks.”
― L.M. Boston, The Sea Egg

“He ran out into the garden, now brilliant with sudden sun, and for just a few minutes before the drops vanished they hung like diamonds on every twig. Then, as the sun drew up the moisture, the air was scented, so that Tolly could hardly bear to let his breath out. It seemed a waste. He was looking for scented flowers, but the strongest and most exciting smell of all was the earth itself. Really, what a thing to live on!”
― Lucy M. Boston, Treasure of Green Knowe

“The nightingale’s song was as old as the coming of summer after winter. He did not doubt it had started with the creation of the world. He did not need to fear things for being old. It was rather a reason for loving them that they had been there so comfortingly long, like hills.”
― L.M. Boston, The Stones of Green Knowe

“Pockets of divine silence still exist in blissful distant places. Their fascination is in the maintenance of what was a condition from the beginning of life, a natural beauty so taken for granted as to be unrecognised until it had gone. The present generation has no conception of silence.”
― Lucy M. Boston, Memory in A House

“How could people manage without a forest? It was essential as water.”
― L.M. Boston, The Stones of Green Knowe

“But the grandmother too was proud of her birth, and she loved her native land as a conqueror never could.”
― L.M. Boston, The Stones of Green Knowe

“Its thick stone walls were strong, warm and lively. It was furnished with comfortable polished old-fashioned things as though living in castles was quite ordinary.”
― Lucy M. Boston, The Children of Green Knowe Collection

“It was not an ogre’s soul in that egg,” said Toby in a burst of passionate despair. “It was mine.”
― L.M. Boston, The Sea Egg

“Every year that I live here it is as though another of my personalities is left behind, like a variation in a Passacaglia, leaving me nearer the first and last plain theme. It is not only that as one grows older the passions and vanities fade, nor that the pressure of the present day obliges one to live an ever simpler life, to make and to do with one's own hands whatever is necessary, to be forever saying goodbye to civilization. It is rather that civilization has turned to shoddy, plastic and sham, has become a cage with bars of cliché, so that one must get out. Here on my island the years have opened like a rose in the sun, the fury of standardization has missed one little byway, and events have remained in their real dimension as reactions of the human heart, limitless, yet dependent on its fleeting pulse.”
― Lucy M. Boston, Yew Hall