Betsy James > Quotes

“No. Silence is something. This is nothing. Why couldn’t I hear it before? I think it has been there always. From the beginning of time.’ He put out his hand and stubbed it on my arm, stared at it. ‘At the end of the world, at the beginning of the world; under the sea and over the sky; at the root and crown of the universe: nothing. At all. That’s what I heard. What I hear.’ He leaned forward. ‘Do you understand?”
― Betsy James, Listening at the Gate

“Another face shone through his man’s face, like a stone through running water.”
― Betsy James, Listening at the Gate

“But behind Nall’s abandoned face he was sinking, as if he held a stone that he would not let go of though it dragged him under.”
― Betsy James, Listening at the Gate

“The high fear was over, and nothing was left but the fear that never stops, the one that asks and asks, *How shall I stay alive today?*”
― Betsy James, Roadsouls

“Because I was too afraid, I walked to the corpse and looked at it. It was bad. Then not so bad—a man turning into bone.”
― Betsy James, Listening at the Gate

“He gazed at me, grave and straight. With a shock I realized he was perfectly sane. He had just fallen through, all at once, into a deeper layer of himself—as if he had crashed through rotten floorboards into the basement.”
― Betsy James, Listening at the Gate

“Duuni let her questions fall and rode on toward wherever it was she was supposed to go, watching the mountain change slowly, like a jewel turned in the light.”
― Betsy James, Roadsouls

“There is only one thing to know. The manat is *you.* A little skin and bone to keep the sea out—but you are its weight, its balance. You and I.”
― Betsy James, Listening at the Gate

“I am the heart that heals the stone”
― Betsy James, Long Night Dance

“I heard she married some hunter, well, they all marry hunters, so did I, ha! You’re just as foolish I expect, young girls are, some lad catches your eye and there’s your whole life gone, snap, a lap full of babies and grandbabies and it’s all over, you’re an old woman knitting at the hearth and that’s it, that’s it!’

I could not wait to get out of there. She shrank my whole life to the size of a poppy seed, and ate it.”
― Betsy James, Listening at the Gate

“All deaths seem terrible to the one who dies.”
― Betsy James, Listening at the Gate

“The line of his cheek bunched in a smile. My heart made a little lurch toward him. But if I let it move, it would spill its cargo into the sea of pain, so I held it still again, tight and cold.”
― Betsy James, Listening at the Gate

“The soul’s hand
has an eye.
*Carved on a rain-worn stone.*
Welling-in-the-Mountains.”
― Betsy James, Roadsouls

“I am whole," said Raím. "Broken and whole are the same.”
― Betsy James, Roadsouls

“A huge impatience overcame me. Maybe it was impatience to find out what death was like, since life had been so different than anybody said.”
― Betsy James, Listening at the Gate

“Every holy passage leaves a scar.”
― Betsy James, Listening at the Gate

“What followed her stayed just out of sight in the woods and deep grasses. It was quiet. She was not sure what it waited for; it ought to have eaten her before she had walked so far with nothing but grubs for dinner. Her arms looked narrow, and even her hurt wrist looked thin. She thought, At my right hand Raím follows me in the mountain. He is a ghost; I am becoming a ghost. When I have walked to the end of the mountain he will be there, and I shall lie down against his shoulder, and stop walking, and be safe.”
― Betsy James, Roadsouls

“I shoved my feet under the sheets and against her thigh until she fell off the bed onto the floor. That was another thing she had taught me: that when you love someone, you must jokingly mistreat them, just a little. It makes it easier when you leave them, or they die.”
― Betsy James, Listening at the Gate

“I am dying,’ she said. ‘I want you to paint the goddess on my hand. When I go to that other land I shall hold up my hand—’ she held it up ‘and greet her. She has given me a good life.’…

‘Aye,’ said the old woman. ‘Imoy, there she is. Here we paint her looking down to see us, but this is better. Her eyes are open, she will know me.”
― Betsy James, Roadsouls

“The real thing was how I felt: like a root groping in darkness for water it knows is there, that it must have. Nall was that water.”
― Betsy James, Listening at the Gate

“The clerestories were soft with evening light. Through them, to the east, I saw something invisible from the road: a short gibbet. From it a bundle dangled, turning a little. A crow picked at it. At first I thought nothing because I could think nothing. Then I thought, So that’s what smells.”
― Betsy James, Listening at the Gate

“The steam at the kettle’s spout,
The flame at the candle’s wick,
Rest on an emptiness
Invisible, quick.
The word at the poet’s lip,
The line at the painter’s brush,
Rest on an emptiness.

Hush.
*Shrine poem.* Welling-in-the-Mountains.”
― Betsy James, Roadsouls

“The air changed. It had been dry, the Hill air I had grown used to. All in a moment the breeze went moist and soft, like a hand laid against me. I smelled salt and iodine, fish and weed, the coast and all that dwells there—its countless lives.”
― betsy james, Listening at the Gate

“A tidal wave is caused by the snapping of tension that has built for a long time,’ said Nondany. “An earthquake under the sea. To be caught in a tidal wave is not to be its cause.”
― Betsy James, Listening at the Gate

“From cold or horror I could not speak. The sodden blanket was heavy, the coldness in my heart flowed out and turned the whole world cold—there was no warm place. The thoughts I had frozen in order not to feel them grew monstrous, freezing everything else.”
― Betsy James, Listening at the Gate

“Where do the winds go? What does the rain know?
Where is the egg when the bird has flown?
Where does the moon sleep? What makes the sea deep?
Where is the soul when the breast is bone?

What makes the mouth sing? What loves listening?
Where is the tune when the song is done?
Where is our joined heart, when at last our hands part
And we have returned to be sea, to be sun?”
― Betsy James, Listening at the Gate