Hawthorn Tree Quotes

“Oh, my poor little hawthorns," I was assuring them through my sobs, "it isn't you who want me to be unhappy, to force me to leave you. You, you've never done me any harm. So I shall always love you." And, drying my eyes, I promised them that, when I grew up, I would never copy the foolish example of other men, but that even in Paris, on fine spring days, instead of paying calls and listening to silly talk, I would set off for the country to see the first hawthorn-trees in bloom.”
― Marcel Proust, Swann’s Way

“The songs transported her backwards in time, to when she first wrote them. As each one melted into the next, as her voice sang lyrics and melodies from her past, memories burst like colors across a blank canvas.
Because inside each and every one of these songs---songs she'd written before she ever left Edgewood---memories were hidden.
Emeline choked on them. Hot tears burned in her eyes as she tapped the next file, and the next, racing through songs and, with them, memories that had been stolen from her. Images of a younger Sable flashed before her eyes, interwoven with a younger Rooke. And someone else.
Hawthorne.
He was everywhere, with his dark hair and strange eyes. Her songs were so full of him, Emeline felt like she was drowning in him. Hawthorne, sitting next to the fire, reading a book. Hawthorne, shucking off his shirt and diving into a moonlit pond. Hawthorne, climbing in through her bedroom window. Kissing her in the dark.
She'd embedded him inside her music.
Because songs were never just songs for Emeline. They were capsules, each one containing a moment trapped inside it.
As the next one started to play through her headphones, an image of a tree rose up in her mind. Emeline could see its thirsty roots; the twisting, twirling gray-brown bark; the gnarly branches stretching towards the sky. A silent sentinel, standing guard at the edge of the woods.
Her tree.”
― Kristen Ciccarelli, Edgewood