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Famous Emilia Hart Quotes

“There's a self-portrait, her sister's face rendered in aqueous greens and blues. The shimmering surface of a pool, bright turrets of coral visible beneath. So she's familiar with the lush application of paint, the galaxies of color. But this? This is different. The painting is enormous, almost as big as the wall behind it. Her sister has painted two female figures, their backs turned on the viewer as they wade into a raging sea. The brushstrokes are frenzied, lavish, and Jess has done something to make their skin gleam, as if it's lifting from the canvas. Lucy feels sure that if she were to reach out and touch the girls' hair--- pale, like her own--- she would feel each whorl, each strand under her fingertips. Both girls are nude, their legs swallowed by furious splatters of paint. Blue green, purple, black, foamy white.”

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Book:The Sirens
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“Voices. Women's voices, like in the old ghost stories. But they weren't screaming, crying as they drowned--- they were singing. This beautiful, lilting music--- I couldn't make out the words but I remember it sounded almost like a folk song. It comforted me, made me feel safe, somehow. It was different for Danny. His whole body froze. I could smell the fear coming off him. But there was something else, too. A kind of... desire." Lucy thinks, but doesn't say, how intertwined those things are. Fear and desire. How one can become the other so easily. All it takes is the tightening of a hand on your wrist, your throat.”

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Book:The Sirens
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“I had nature in my heart, she said. Like she did, and her mother before her. There was something about us---the Weyward women---that bonded us more tightly with the natural world. We can feel it, she said, the same way we feel rage, sorrow, or joy. The animals, the birds, the plants---they let us in, recognizing us as one of their own. That is why roots and leaves yield so easily under our fingers, to form tonics that bring comfort and healing. That is why animals welcome our embrace. Why the crows---the ones who carry the sign---watch over us and do our bidding, why their touch brings our abilities into sharpest relief. Our ancestors---the women who walked these paths before us, before there were words for who they were---did not lie in the barren soil of the churchyard, encased in rotting wood. Instead, the Weyward bones rested in the woods, in the fells, where our flesh fed plants and flowers, where trees wrapped their roots around our skeletons. We did not need stonemasons to carve our names into rock as proof we had existed. All we needed was to be returned to the wild. This wildness inside gives us our name. It was men who marked us so, in the time when language was but a shoot curling from the earth. Weyward, they called us, when we would not submit, would not bend to their will. But we learned to wear the name with pride.”

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Book:Weyward
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“My wife," he said eventually, slowly, as if it pained him to speak the words. "She nearly died in childbed, delivering our son. A wise woman in our village saved both their lives. Beatrice, she was called. I said nothing, when they accused her. She was hanged." He took a velvet pouch from his breeches and pressed it into my hands, before melting away into the throng. I looked inside the pouch and saw gold coins. I understood, then, that I had this man---or the woman who saved his family---to thank for my life.”

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Book:Weyward
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“Yes, of course," she said, the words rushing out. "You're defending your country." She opened her mouth again, then bit her lip. "Go on," he said. "Ask what you wanted to ask. I don't bite." "Well, I suppose I just wondered whether you had... whether you had actually ever killed anyone." He laughed. "You know, you do seem much younger than sixteen," he said. "But in answer to your question- yes, I have. More than one." He stopped. There was a new, dark look in his eyes when he continued. "You can't imagine what it's like. The Libyan heat sticking to you, day in, day out. Nothing but sand and rock for miles. Not a bit of green. All day, crawling in the dust, shooting and being shot at. Men dying around you. You realize, when you see a person die, that there's nothing special about humans. We're just flesh and blood and organs, no different to the pig that have us this bacon. "So, all day, dust, death, everywhere. I went to sleep each night with dust in my mouth and the smell of blood in my nose. Even here- I'm still finding dust on me. Under my nails, in my hair, caked into the soles of my shoes. And I can still smell the blood. All so that some English girl, sitting pretty in her father's manor house, can ask me if I ever killed anyone.”

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Book:Weyward
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“When Robert drew a human face he felt as if he'd pinned a butterfly for study. As if he'd taken something that flickered with life and beauty and killed it. He would not do that to her. And so instead he decided to draw something else to remind him, secretly, of her. Something that recalled the lustrous spread of her fins, the quivering spines. Something that was beautiful and vicious all at once. A lionfish.”

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Book:The Sirens
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“An insect hovers nearby. She can't remember what it's called: smaller than a dragonfly, with delicate mother-of-pearl wings. It skims the surface of the beck. She stays like that for a long time, listening to the birds, the water, the insects. She shuts her eyes, opening them again when she feels something brush her hand. The dragonfly-like creature with the iridescent wings. The word swims up from the depths of her brain: a damselfly. Tears well in her eyes, surprising her. She was fascinated by insects as a child. She remembers begging her mother to spare the moths that fluttered out from wardrobes, the gauzy spider's webs that clung to the ceiling. She'd collected vividly illustrated books about them. About birds, too. She would hide under the covers reading, in the small, silent hours of the morning while her parents slept in the next room. It hurts now, to think of that little girl, her innocent wonder: flashlight in hand, turning the glossy pages and marveling at the wild and wonderful creatures. Butterflies with eyes on their wings, parrots in candy-colored plumage.”

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Book:Weyward
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“She feels a tickling sensation against her hand, different from the silky touch of soil. Looking down, she sees the pink glimmer of a worm---and then another, and another. As she watches, spellbound, other insects emerge from the earth, glowing like jewels in the summer sun. The copper glint of a beetle's shell. The pale, segmented bodies of larvae. There is a buzzing in her ears, and she's not sure if it's from the roar of her pulse or the bees that have begun to circle nearby. They're getting closer. It's as if something---as if Kate---is drawing them. A beetle climbs her wrist, a worm brushes against the bare skin of her knee, a bee lands on her earlobe.”

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Book:Weyward
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“The State Library of NSW rises in front of her, a sandstone behemoth. With its sweeping entrance and ionic columns, it brings to mind an ancient temple, erected to honor the gods. Inside the foyer, the atmosphere is suitably reverent. The spines of countless books glimmer from the shelves, catching the sun that pours in from the skylight. She breathes in the smell of dust and old paper, draws strength from it.”

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Book:The Sirens
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“And then the sea, bright and unreal as a painting. She's never seen so many shades of blue" gleaming turquoise near the breakers; further out, a blue so dark it's almost black. Lucy shivers, thinking of the world beneath the spangled waves. The coastline curves around, so that she can see the cliffs on the other side of the bay, honeycombed with caves. Devil's Lookout. It's the same view she's seen already, on Jess's postcard, but the photographer hadn't quite captured the eeriness of the cliff face. In person, the caves look deeper and darker; one in particular, closest to the waterline, is large enough that she can almost imagine a demon lurking there, surveying the sea below. A prickle starts at the base of Lucy's spine. Maybe it's the knowledge of what the water would do to her skin. She imagines the waves lapping at her like tongues, stripping her of flesh until she is nothing but bone, gleaming white. Or perhaps it's the podcast; the thought of all those missing men, presumed drowned. But with the prickling fear there's a strange pull, too. Lucy struggles to tear her gaze from the bright waves, mesmerized by the way they curl over the shore. A part of her wants to get closer, to feel spindrift on her face, slick rock beneath her palms.”

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Book:The Sirens
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“She is a Weyward. And she carries another Weyward inside her. She gathers herself together, every cell blazing, and thinks: Now. The window breaks, a waterfall of sharp sounds. The room grows dark with feathered bodies, shooting through the broken window, the fireplace. Beaks, claws, and eyes flashing. Feathers brushing her skin. Simon yells, his hand loosening on her throat. She sucks in the air, falling to her knees, one hand cradling her stomach. Something touches her foot, and she sees a dark tide of spiders spreading across the floor. Birds continue to stream through the window. Insects, too: the azure flicker of damselflies, moths with orange eyes on their wings. Tiny, gossamer mayflies. Bees in a ferocious golden swarm. She feels something sharp on her shoulder, its claws digging into her flesh. She looks up at blue-black feathers, streaked with white. A crow. The same crow that has watched over her since she arrived. Tears fill her eyes, and she knows in that moment that she is not alone in the cottage. Altha is there, in the spiders that dance across the floor. Violet is there, in the mayflies that glisten and undulate like some great silver snake. And all the other Weyward women, from the first of the line, are there, too. They have always been with her, and always will be.”

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Book:Weyward
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“I am sure you understand," Father began, looking past Violet at the wall, "that I cannot allow you back into my house after what you have done. I have arranged for you to be taken to a finishing school in Scotland. You will stay there for two years, and after that I will decide what is to be done with you." Violet heard Graham clear his throat. "No," she said, before her brother could open his mouth to speak. "That won't be acceptable, I'm afraid, Father." His jowls slackened with shock. He looked as if she had slapped him. "I beg your pardon?" "I won't be going to Scotland. In fact, I won't be going anywhere. I'm staying right here." As she spoke, Violet became aware of a strange simmering sensation, as though electricity was humming beneath her skin. Images flashed in her mind---a crow cutting through the air, wings glittered with snow; the spokes of a wheel spinning. Briefly, she closed her eyes, focusing on the feeling until she could almost see it, glinting gold inside her. "That is not for you to decide," said Father. The window was open, and a bee flitted about the room, wings a silver blur. It flew near Father's cheek and he jerked away from it. "It's been decided." She stood up straight, her dark eyes boring into Father's watery ones. He blinked. The bee hovered about his face, dancing away from his hands, and she saw sweat break out on his nose. Soon it was joined by another, and then another and another, until it seemed like Father---shouting and swearing---had been engulfed in a cloud of tawny, glistening bodies. "I think it would be best if you left now, Father," said Violet softly. "After all, as you said, I'm my mother's daughter.”

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Book:Weyward
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“December. The days begin white and glittering with snow---on the roof, the branches of the sycamore, where a robin has taken up residence. It reminds Kate of Robin Redbreast from The Secret Garden---for so many years, her only safe portal to the natural world. Only now does she truly understand her favorite passage, memorized since childhood: "Everything is made out of magic, leaves and trees, flowers and birds, badgers and foxes and squirrels and people. So it must be all around us." Often, before she leaves for work, she stand outside to watch the sun catch on the white-frosted plants, searching for the robin's red breast. A spot of color against the stark morning. Sometimes, while she watches it flutter, she feels a tugging inside her womb, as if her daughter is responding to its song, anxious to breach the membrane between her mother's body and the outside world. The robin is not alone in the garden. Starlings skip over the snow, the winter sun varnishing their necks. At the front of the cottage, fieldfares---distinctive with their tawny feathers---chatter in the hedgerows. And of course, crows. So many that they form their own dark canopy of the sycamore, hooded figures watching.”

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Book:Weyward
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“What she actually wanted was to see the world, the way Father had when he was a young man. She had found all sorts of geography books and atlases in the library---books about the Orient, full of steaming rain forests and moths the size of dinner plates ("ghastly things," according to Father), and about Africa, where scorpions glittered like jewels in the sand. Yes, one day she would leave Orton Hall and travel the world---as a scientist. A biologist, she hoped, or maybe an entomologist? Something to do with animals, anyway, which in her experience were far preferable to humans. Nanny Metcalfe often spoke of the terrible fright Violet had given her when she was little: she had walked into the nursery one night to find a weasel, of all things, in Violet's cot. "I screamed blue murder," Nanny Metcalfe would say, "but there you were, right as rain, and that weasel curled up next to you, purring like a kitten.”

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Book:Weyward
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