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Quote by D. Morgenstern

“She had been nothing but a beloved bauble passed from a mother to a son, a decoration of vanity, devoid of identity.”

Quote by D. Morgenstern

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D. Morgenstern

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“She’s not your mother. She’s not a woman; she’s not even human. From the moment she went over, we lost her just as surely as if she’d died. They do not live for our benefit. They belong to Themselves.” I remembered the rolling otter and its sweet-looking paws – dashing that urchin with the rock and the blood staining the water. I remembered the jewel-red carb – dragging that scavenged flesh into the sea grass. I’d found them comical, and pretty, but they were their own creatures too, just as my aunt had said, and busy with the job of living. They probably didn’t even see me. I remembered the way the cave spiders and suchlike scurried to hide from me in the rocks. They were not there for us. They had their own mysterious life living inside them. Their world was not my world, their story not mine.”

“What were you singing?" Merritt asked. "A lullaby?" "An old song from the islands, about a selkie." Seeing the word was unfamiliar, he explained, "A changeling, who looks like a seal in the water but takes the form of a man on land. In the song he woos a human maiden, who gives birth to his son. Seven years later, he comes back to take the child." Keir hesitated before adding absently, "But before they leave, the selkie tells the mother he'll give the boy a gold chain to wear on his neck, so she'll recognize him if they meet someday." "Are she and her son ever reunited?" Merritt asked. Keir shook his head. "Someone brings her the gold chain one day, and she realizes he's dead. Shot by-" He broke off as he saw Merritt's face begin to crumple. "Och," he exclaimed softly. "No... dinna do that..." "It's so terribly sad," she said in a watery voice, damning herself for being emotional. A chuckle broke from Keir as he moved closer. "I won't tell you the rest, then." His hand cupped the side of her face, his thumb wiping an escaping tear. "'Tis only a song, lass. Ah, you've a tender heart." His blue eyes sparkled as he looked down at her. "I warn you, no more tears or I'll have to put you on my shoulder and pat you asleep as I did the bairnie." It left Merritt temporarily speechless, that he sincerely seemed to believe she would regard that as a threat.”

“The Losing of Love . . . Like discovering a shard of heaven’s handwriting in the snowflake that has landed upon your hand, desperately wishing you could give such beauty to your best friend before it melts away. And what you are left with is an exquisite regret—the eloquent conspiracy of memory—of the moment lived and the moment wished for that never will arrive.”

“And why don't you write? Write! Writing is for you, you are for you; your body is yours, take it. I know why you haven't written. (And why I didn't write before the age of twenty-seven.) Because writing is at once too high, too great for you, it's reserved for the great-that is for "great men"; and it's "silly." Besides, you've written a little, but in secret. And it wasn't good, because it was in secret, and because you punished yourself for writing, because you didn't go all the way, or because you wrote, irresistibly, as when we would masturbate in secret, not to go further, but to attenuate the tension a bit, just enough to take the edge off. And then as soon as we come, we go and make ourselves feel guilty-so as to be forgiven; or to forget, to bury it until the next time.”