Jane Johnson > Quotes

“Somewhere a bird sang, its chant hanging plaintive and melancholy in the still air...I think it's a sort of lark or something. Our tradition has it that they sing with the voices of lost lovers. If the stars are smiling on them, you will hear its mate call back in a moment.”
― Jane Johnson, The Tenth Gift

“There are days when I think there really is some huge great tapestry of a plan out there and we're all woven into it - this fabulous, complex pattern of life and death, full of recurring motifs and waves of color, and we're each one tiny thread in the weave.”
― Jane Johnson, The Tenth Gift

“Cat wrinkled her nose. "No, thank you."
"Take," the rais told her. "Is good." He picked one up and held it out, and when she hesitated, thrust it at her with greater insistence. "With my people, hosbitality important. To refuse is insult."
She took a small bite. Sweetness flooded her mouth so that she gasped. It was not in the least what she had expected, for it tasted remarkably like the preserved medlars the cook bottled each autumn from Kenegie's orchard. "Oh..." She took the rest whole, saliva breaking from the corner of her mouth.
Al-Andalusi looked on, eyebrow cocked sardonically. "Is fig," he said. "In some tradition it was the friut Eve gave to Adam from the Tree of Knowledge."
"In the Bible that was an apple!"
"In our tradition, according to the Qu'ran, it was apple also. And when Adam swallowed mouthful od fruit, it stuk in throat and made lump all men have."
"The Adam's apple!" Cat cried, astonished. "We call it that as well."
"We are, perhaps, not such strangers to each other as you think.”
― Jane Johnson, The Tenth Gift

“Fear has trapped me, rendered me immobile and powerless. I'd forgotten I even had wings, let alone how to use them.”
― Jane Johnson, The Sea Gate

“My throat feels hard and swollen, as if bulky words are trying to choke me.”
― Jane Johnson, The Sea Gate

“There is a savagery in all of us,”
― Jane Johnson, Pillars of Light

“Embroidery is an improbable hobby for someone as disordered as me, but it's the very precision of it that attracts me, the illusion of control it offers. When engaged in stitching a new pattern, I can't think about anything else. Guilt, misery, longing all flee away, leaving just the beautiful little microcosm of the world in my hands, the flash of the needle, the rainbow colors of the thread, the calming exactitude of the discipline.”
― Jane Johnson, The Tenth Gift

“But the best things in life never come easy—”
― Jane Johnson, Pillars of Light

“I have learnt to spin words like dervishes, to bewitch and blur reality.”
― Jane Johnson, The Salt Road

“Dig your well for yourself, and also for the people who will follow along after you.”
― Jane Johnson

“There’s still so much fire in her, so much character, a sort of fierce, frail heroism. I wish I’d known Olivia when she was younger.”
― Jane Johnson, The Sea Gate

“But for us, sugar is more than just a sweetener: It's a symbol of hospitality, of good luck and happiness.”
― Jane Johnson, The Tenth Gift

“My mother’s voice is so strong it almost echoes. Concentrate on this moment, right now. It’s all we ever truly have.”
― Jane Johnson, The Sea Gate

“People do give themselves away by the things they accuse others of.”
― Jane Johnson, The Sea Gate

“Our culture prides itself on the quality of our hospitality and courtesy. And of course we are entitled to demand that the tongue be cut out of anyone who impugns our honor, or that of any member of our family.” The flicker of his smile did not reach his eyes.”
― Jane Johnson, The Tenth Gift

“None of us were perfect, and life made us infinitely less so. Tears”
― Jane Johnson, The Tenth Gift

“For decades, Europe and America have been selling arms, both officially and on the black market, to the very people you now label ‘terrorists.’ War and business, always they go hand in hand—it's realpolitik. Nothing ever really changes, human nature is what it is.”
― Jane Johnson, The Tenth Gift

“Anna's cottage was lime-washed and had shutters of a pretty, faded blue.”
― Jane Johnson, The Tenth Gift

“That night, I regarded myself in the full-length mirror in my London hotel room and marvelled at how my scars have faded and thought about the pots Eddie would sometimes make, then deliberately and carefully break, before resetting them with molten gold (so that he could sell them for much more money). At the time I thought this practice inauthentic and pretentious, but I am starting to look at some things in life in a different way. Kintsukuroi is the name for this ancient Japanese art, which teaches that broken objects are not something to hide away but should be displayed with pride, for they are stronger and more beautiful for surviving the breakage. I think I, too, am stronger and more beautiful for surviving my travails. The”
― Jane Johnson, The Sea Gate

“superstitions of a long Cornish ancestry, had touched wood (but only without legs, for fear your luck would walk away from you),”
― Jane Johnson, The Tenth Gift

“And that the hand of fate has sleight and craft to match that of any magician.”
― Jane Johnson, The Salt Road

“Everyone knew that women had not the capacity for abstract thought; in this, as in so much, men dictated and women followed.”
― Jane Johnson, The Tenth Gift

“Why are men ever at war? For power and greed and to enforce their own views on others.”
― Jane Johnson, The Tenth Gift

“Kintsukuroi is the name for this ancient Japanese art, which teaches that broken objects are not something to hide away but should be displayed with pride, for they are stronger and more beautiful for surviving the breakage. I think I, too, am stronger and more beautiful for surviving”
― Jane Johnson, The Sea Gate

“and thought of the painting of the little boat ploughing a course through dark seas towards the line of light. It had seemed to me then to represent elemental forces over which we had no control; now I see it as a brave little vessel buoyed up by beliefs and hopes, crewed by comrades and lovers, propelled by courage in the face of apparently overwhelming odds.”
― Jane Johnson, The Sea Gate

“long and prosper”
― Jane Johnson, The Tenth Gift

“The Berbers have a saying: that God gave the world ten gifts, and that the tenth of those gifts is books…”
― Jane Johnson, The Tenth Gift

“Ah, Constantinople, I would so love to visit Constantinople, to see its domes and minarets, to walk inside the Sancta Sophia and breathe the ancient air of Byzantium—”
― Jane Johnson, The Tenth Gift

“Under his shock of grey hair their father's face looked as if it had been carved out of wood by a man who had not yet mastered the tools for delicate work.”
― Jane Johnson

“But now they would believe Hamid was responsible for the death of Mamie. It suited the stories they told themselves about the dark-skinned man, the foreigner, the outsider, the Muslim.”
― Jane Johnson, The Sea Gate