Quotessence
Home / Quotes / Quote by Eva Ibbotson

Quote by Eva Ibbotson

Work

A Company of Swans

Browse quotes and source details for this work. more

Author

Eva Ibbotson
Eva Ibbotson

Eva Ibbotson was a celebrated British novelist known for her works in children's and adult fiction. Born on January 21, 1925, she enchanted readers with her imaginative storytelling and whimsical characters. Ibbotson's writing often combined elements of fantasy and romance, infused with humor and wit. She passed away on October 20, 2010, leaving behind a rich literary legacy. more

You May Also Like

“I watch the beautiful performance with an ache in my chest. Then, just when I can’t stand the sadness anymore, a dancer floats out from the side of the stage. A dancer in ragged clothes, filthy and half starved. He’s not even in ballet shoes. He’s just barefoot as he glides out to take his place in the dance. The other dancers turn to him, and it’s clear that he is one of them. One of the lost ones. By the look on their faces, they weren’t expecting him. This is not part of the practiced show. He must have seen them onstage and joined in. Amazingly, the dance continues without a missed beat. The newcomer simply glides into place, and the final dancer who should have danced solo with her missing partner dances with the newcomer. It is full of joy, and the ballerina actually laughs. Her voice is clear and high, and it lifts us all.”

“It was still twilight when they reached the flat rock. They sat, and the stone still held the warmth of the day's sun. At first there were only occasional sparkles, but as it got darker Chuck was lost in a daze pf delight as a galaxy of fireflies twinkled on and off, flinging upward in a blaze of light, dropping earthward like falling stars, moving in contiuous effervescent dance.”

“Yet for a moment it seemed to him that the men who had dragged marble from Italy and porphyry from Portugal, who had ransacked the jungle for its rarest woods and paid their millions to build this opulent and fantastical theatre, had done so in order that a young girl with loose brown hair should move across its stage, drawing her future from its empty air.”

“It was still, at the root, the same dance: the same two bodies, connecting, gliding together, two aching souls reaching for each other and finding more than could be told. And then, in the fourth song, or maybe it was the fifth, they switched roles, without speaking, their bodies deciding, hands moving from waist to shoulder or shoulder to waist and pouring the dance in the opposite direction, which was, they discovered, not an opposite at all but a continuation of the very same dance, the same essential language of the body, of two bodies wishing to be one, forming a kinetic poem out of longing.”