Sara Donati > Quotes

“Elizabeth Middleton, twenty-nine years old and unmarried, overly educated and excessively rational, knowing right from wrong and fancy from fact, woke in a nest of marten and fox pelts to the sight of an eagle circling overhead, and saw at once that it could not be far to Paradise.”
― Sara Donati, Into the Wilderness

“The future is mysterious and frightening to you now, but in the end all will be well. There will be great happiness and great sorrow, you will have a family, you will find yourself capable of things you cannot now imagine. But you will persevere, and one day you will look around yourself and know that your life is good and that you are, in spite of all your early fears, happy.”
― Sara Donati

“I have loved the stars too well to fear the night.
---Elizabeth Middleton Bonner”
― Sara Donati, The Endless Forest

“She wore her determination like war paint.”
― Sara Donati, Into the Wilderness

“There was nothing predictable in this life, and very little that was fair.”
― Sara Donati, The Gilded Hour

“When it's right it's never too late, when it's wrong it's always too soon”
― Sara Donati, The Endless Forest

“Over the village of Paradise lightning jumped from cloud to cloud and then it put down long legs and walked the earth.”
― Sara Donati, Fire Along the Sky

“If this went on much longer, Mary Augustin told herself, her brain would be riddled with question marks, hundreds of little hooks set so deep they’d never let go.”
― Sara Donati, The Gilded Hour

“Those who think themselves to be civilized are not always particularly intelligent, or rational.”
― Sara Donati, Dawn on a Distant Shore

“But what she wanted to do was slip between cool sheets and fall asleep in a breeze from an open window. She wanted to sleep for days on end, and to wake up when the whole sorry business of the inquest and the missing boys had been resolved. She wanted sleep in order to put Mrs. Stone’s testimony out of her head, and at the same time she wanted to bind all those words together into a club and hit every man in the room over the head with it. Because they hadn’t really understood the story behind the story, and what Mrs. Stone was trying to tell them about Janine Campbell’s life. Mrs. Stone had called herself plain-speaking and blunt, but she had wrapped every observation in the language of well-brought-up women, with the result that none of the men had any real sense of the anger and frustration that drove Janine Campbell.”
― Sara Donati, The Gilded Hour

“subject for discussion. What terrible messes we get ourselves into when we are silly enough to fall in love,”
― Sara Donati, Into the Wilderness

“Little girls are kept away from the things that would make them strong, in the name of protection and propriety.”
― Sara Donati, Into the Wilderness

“You scare one stupid man, he’ll most likely run off. But a crowd of stupid men—there ain’t nothing more dangerous, or meaner.”
― Sara Donati, Into the Wilderness

“The thrill of telling her true feelings without considering good manners or the propriety of what she had to say was intoxicating.”
― Sara Donati, Into the Wilderness

“Very slowly Elizabeth leaned forward until her forehead rested on his shoulder, shuddering with pleasure and relief at the feel of him, at his smell.”
― Sara Donati, Into the Wilderness

“Elizabeth knew that if she climbed the ladder she would find that the twins were in the same bed, sleeping back to back. She could go up there now and separate them, but in the morning she would find them together again. They might bicker and wrangle endlessly during the day, but in sleep they could not deny the bond that had been forged in the warm dark waters of the womb. One day circumstance or age or both would separate them for good, but they were in no hurry for that day to come, and neither was Elizabeth.”
― Sara Donati, Lake in the Clouds

“The more she thought about it, the more confused she became: each of them told the story with complete conviction. In the end, she thought, perhaps they were all right. The stories of what had happened to each of them in those bloody days of the revolution were a web they wove together; the truth scuttled back and forth between the delicate strands of memory, and could not be pinned down.”
― Sara Donati, Into the Wilderness

“Give children a clock to live by,” Mrs. Lee said. “So they know what’s coming, when it’s coming, how long it will last. They’ll take comfort in that knowing.”
― Sara Donati, The Gilded Hour

“Some women had that strength hidden inside them, a light that flared to life when everyone else was overwhelmed.”
― Sara Donati, The Gilded Hour

“They were silent for a moment, each of them contemplating Anthony Comstock, a demagogue with too much power for such a limited understanding and narrow mind. Many saw him as nothing more than a sanctimonious buffoon, but those who paid attention knew him to be malicious and calculating.”
― Sara Donati, Where the Light Enters

“A hole ain’t nothing either, but you can still break your neck in it.”
― Sara Donati, Lake in the Clouds

“There ain’t nothing like religion to bring out the worst in folks.”
― Sara Donati, Dawn on a Distant Shore

“Young people today (finally, I’m old enough to use that cliché) seem to have no real conception of how bad things were for women and, more important, could be again.”
― Sara Donati, The Gilded Hour

“No, I’m saying that you have got to look and think symptom, not disease. If she’s a symptom, then ask, where is the disease?”
― Sara Donati, The Gilded Hour

“No one ever does anything our of charity," Anna went on. "Every choice we make benefits ourselves directly or indirectly. Even if it looks like a sacrifice, the alternative would be unbearable in some way. If I hadn't helped I wouldn't sleep well , and I need my sleep.”
― Sara Donati, The Gilded Hour

“My father,” said Elizabeth, “is made of the same fabric as my uncle Merriweather and every other Englishman I’ve ever come across. He cannot see my point, because he cannot see me. Do you realize that, Curiosity? He sees me as a—commodity. The person I am, that person is invisible to him.”
― Sara Donati, Into the Wilderness

“Each day is unique and precious, a coin to be spent thoughtfully. Waste nothing and your regrets will be few. The young cannot imagine death and for that reason they fear it. I am not afraid of death. I greet it as anyone who has a long and satisfying day’s work behind them greets sleep. I have loved the stars too well to fear the night.”
― Sara Donati, The Endless Forest

“You call yourself teacher, and summon children to you. White children, and black, and Kahnyen’kehàka. But we ask, what do you have to offer our children? You cannot make a moccasin or skin a deer. You cannot cure hides. You know nothing of the crops, how to plant or tend them. You cannot turn your hand to hunting, or show them how to track. You do not know the names of the moons or the seasons, or of the spirits who direct them. Of medicines you know nothing. And yet you call Kahnyen’kehàka children to your school. You will teach them to read and write your language. You will teach them of your wars and your gods. You can teach them only to be white.”
― Sara Donati, Into the Wilderness

“When will you stop thinking of yourself as a burden?”
― Sara Donati, The Gilded Hour

“The wound is the place where the light enters. —RUMI (attributed)”
― Sara Donati, Where the Light Enters