15 quotes
Seeing a woman's child is like seeing a woman naked, in the way it changes how her face looks to you, how her face becomes less the whole story.
Little, Big: or, The Fairies' Parliament (1981)
The immense laughter of Bruno when he understood that Copernicus had inverted the universe — what was it but joy in the confirmation of his knowledge that Mind, in the center of all, contains within it all that it is the center of?
Little, Big: or, The Fairies' Parliament (1981)
The world is founded on a pillar which is founded on the Deep.
The Deep (1975)
You ask for her secret, though you might not know that's what you're about; and she can't tell you without learning it herself. And she wants not to learn that secret.
Engine Summer (1979)
The vastest point, the center, the infinity — Faëry, where the gigantic heroes ride across endless landscapes and sail sea upon sea and there is no end to possibility — that circle is so tiny it has no doors at all.
Little, Big: or, The Fairies' Parliament (1981)
One winter night when he was a boy … he first saw a ring around the moon.
Little, Big: or, The Fairies' Parliament (1981)
She wondered whether her head were so big as to be able to contain all this starry universe, or whether the universe were so little that it would fit within the compass of her human head.
Little, Big: or, The Fairies' Parliament (1981)
Diane felt the thread of connection between her and Danny drawn out infinitely thin, until it broke with a hurt to her heart she'd known she'd have to feel, but worse than she thought it would be.
Four Freedoms (2009)
O great wide beautiful wonderful World
With the wonderful waters around you curled
And the beautiful grass upon your breast
O World you are beautifully dressed.
She couldn't see that, though, because the haze out at sea erased the ship long before it could beyond the horizon, drawing after it the other ships. Diane felt the thread of connection between her and Danny drawn out infinitely thin, until it broke with a hurt to her heart she'd known she'd have to feel, but worse than she thought it would be.
Four Freedoms (2009)
Prosper Olander had never been in a cathedral, but now he felt something like that, the experience of entering suddenly a space so large, so devoted to a single purpose, that the insides of the heart are drawn for a moment outward and into it, trying to fill it, and failing.
Four Freedoms (2009)
Lately Marge's memory had grown weak, which is to say that it no longer contained the past time on deposit there, it was not strong enough to keep shut up the moments, the mornings and evenings, of her long life, its seals broke, and her memories ran together mingling, indistinguishable from the present. Her memory had grown incontinent with age.
Little, Big: or, The Fairies' Parliament (1981)
Sophie's hard first question to the cards had not, precisely, gone without an answer, it had been transmuted into questions about the question. It had branched and rooted like a tree, growing questions like buds, and then at some moment all the questions had become one question: what tree is this?
Little, Big: or, The Fairies' Parliament (1981)
It seems to him that he extends backwards (or is it forwards?) without beginning (or is it end?) and he can't just now remember whether the great tales and plots which he supposes he knows and forever broods on lie in the to-come or lie dead in the has-been. But then suppose that's how secrets are kept, and age-long tales remembered, and unbreakable curses made too.
Little, Big: or, The Fairies' Parliament (1981)
You went around back, where in the playground kids were dangling from the jungle gym waiting for mothers; connie could feel their cold skinned knees and barked knuckles–Bunce always said that imagining pain and discomfort was worse for her than the real thing when it came, which it almost never did.
Four Freedoms (2009)