Betsy James Quotes

Source: Listening at the Gate

“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.”

Love Pain Sisters Siblings

Book:Listening at the Gate

Source: 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.”

Life Death Dying Goddess

Book:Roadsouls

Source: Roadsouls

“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.”

Love Pain Relationships Sadness

Book:Listening at the Gate

Source: 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.”

Mind Fear Sadness Survival Frozen

Book:Listening at the Gate

Source: 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.”

Fear Sadness Sorrow Depression

Book:Listening at the Gate

Source: Listening at the Gate

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

Soul Inspiration Mystery Sixth Sense Second Sight

Book:Roadsouls

Source: Roadsouls

“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?”

Empty Zen Zero Nothing

Book:Listening at the Gate

Source: 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?*”

Fear Alive Survival

Book:Roadsouls

Source: Roadsouls

“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.”

Love Life Death Fear Survival Surrender Ghost

Book:Roadsouls

Source: Roadsouls

“I am the heart that heals the stone”

Love Heart Pain Healing

Book:Long Night Dance

Source: Long Night Dance

“Another face shone through his man’s face, like a stone through running water.”

Love Pain Fear Cold Anger Stillness

Book:Listening at the Gate

Source: 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.”

Growth Insanity Sanity

Book:Listening at the Gate

Source: Listening at the Gate

“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.”

Death Fear Grief Acceptance Sorrow

Book:Listening at the Gate

Source: Listening at the Gate

“All deaths seem terrible to the one who dies.”

Death Hope Grief Recovery Mourning

Book:Listening at the Gate

Source: Listening at the Gate

“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.”

Love Nature Longing Separation Need Soulmates

Book:Listening at the Gate

Source: 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.”

Inspiration Poetry Mystery Poem Emptiness

Book:Roadsouls

Source: Roadsouls

“Every holy passage leaves a scar.”

Holy Damage Survivor Rite Of Passage

Book:Listening at the Gate

Source: Listening at the Gate

“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.”

Love Marriage Babies Selfhood

Book:Listening at the Gate

Source: Listening at the Gate

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