Quotes
A big thank you to participants in the groundbreaking 2008 Secret Speakers: Read & Rate It event for providing early reviews and favorite quotes over a year before the book’s release! Here are a few of them, including a few more:
It’s possible that those who are powerless will find power. And those who are alone will be alone no more. The silent voices of those who are crying out might, just possibly, be heard. Listen. Learn. Pass the knowledge on. That is, if you choose to continue. Just know this: I can not lie, for I am made of light.
Fair felt herself take an invisible step from a scary place of not knowing, to a sure place, where not knowing didn’t matter.
She was gathering light. She could feel it when it happened. She knew—somehow—it was the same light that tingled and buzzed inside her when she held her breath to see through the darkness.
Knowledge is truth.
Truth is light.
Light is power.
Light invites more light
and banishes that which is dark.
Darkness is another power altogether.
Use your power wisely and well.
At the sound of her whisper, her dog desperately whimpered and sniffed at a crack through the floor just above her face. He scratched desperately at the wood with his claws, as though he were trying to dig a hole in it. Just to lick her hand. Fair put her fingers to the spot and whispered, “Won’t be long now.” Her reassurance seemed to settle him. He stopped scratching and cocked his head to one side. His throat warbled a melody of questions, beginning high in his throat and working its way downward, until it was low and hesitant. Then he was quiet. The wood groaned and creaked as he lay back down and rested his chin on his paws.
You have something big to do here, now.
Not doing it will feel like a burden.
Not doing it will make you feel like you
aren’t doing what you came here to do.
Not doing it will leave you feeling empty.
“Then, tell me what to do. Where do I start?” Fair asked. “How do I find someone when I don’t even know where to look?”
A new feeling was born in her soul just then. She felt it crawl gently through her limbs and spread far beyond her body, tugging at the garment of her soul’s farthest edges. This feeling–this something that stretched her wide–unraveled the hems of her soul. She felt the threads weave themselves into everything known and unknown in the world around her, seen and unseen. She saw her beginning as a child of light, woven into the fabric of time. And on this tapestry of her soul, she saw her life stitched out in perfect purpose, connected to all that was and ever would be. She saw where she hoped to go when her body was laid beneath the soil. She belonged–even if her life was difficult–like a flower belongs to its thorny stem. Her soul was planted in eternity. Its roots reached deep from suffering. She was a blossom unfolding. Her heart had been broken. Open. This was a good thing. And she knew it.
From underneath the mighty foot
ones stepped upon shall rise,
to open the door and lance the bull
amidst his anguished cries.
The seeds of law lie fallow now,
yet root and stem shall form.
The Planter then shall gather all
at the sounding of the horn.
Thelras kept her hand there a moment longer. She said, “Are you ready, Fair?”
“I don’t know what to be ready for.”
Right then she felt something deeper, something peaceful like a river that flowed deep within her soul. She was right where she was supposed to be at that very moment.
“You have been gathering light even in your darkness, Fair. You are ready to see.” Fair thought of the Scrolls of Truth, surprised that Thelras knew.
Her mother told her that Azanamer’s skin was dark because she had absorbed so much of the sun. It had darkened her skin to show that she was filled inside with nothing but light.
“How will I find what I’m looking for if I don’t know what I’m looking for?”
Thelras said, “You’re the only one who can find what needs to be found. And you have everything you need to help you find it.”
Purity of heart, strength of mind,
They who seek shall also find.
Eyes to see, ears to hear,
Look through me and to me
and all will be clear.
She fell into the first restful sleep she had known in years. Beneath her, beneath the striped rug, lay the secret door to the cellar where Fair had been dead to the world for the last nine years. The grave was empty. Her daughter was alive.
“Pay attention to the signals, Fair. Your body lets you know what your heart is trying to tell you.”
My heart is beating fiercely. Finding them must be ‘it,’ that ‘something big’.
There are many ways to be alone, and some of them are almost divine. There is a feeling that comes from being at peace in such a solitary moment, sensing in a very deep way that the space you occupy is important and fulfills the measure of its creation by simply being.
Your sleep is untroubled because you have a clear conscience towards all, for you have made right that which you have done wrong as best you can. Harrold King knew a feeling of being alone that resulted from a different reason altogether. Simply put, he detested all, and he was detested by all. And so, Harrold King was a horror to all who knew him. But in the guilty conscience that simmered somewhere far beneath his pea-sized heart that had no beat, he was a terror to himself. This is what it means to be truly alone.
All things have a light, or spirit, that existed before they were created in physical form: whether rock, bird, twig, cloud–or hoomin.
And since everything you touch, and all that has been created is made up of light in varying degrees, suffice it to say you are absolutely brilliant to behold. So is this book in your hands.
Do what is right, let consequence follow. Follow your heart, come joy or come sorrow.
Fair felt strength continue to fill her in a way she didn’t understand. It was as though the wood beneath her feet was breathing courage in to her, as if the air itself had solidified in order to hold her up. She took two steps forward. The crowd gasped. He stared at her feet, the feet that had dared to take two steps. He looked at her face through narrowed eyes. “Well, did I hear you say something?” He was just a potato bug sitting all alone on a very large chair. At least, to her.
“. . . .For they must be responsible for themselves, with no one else to blame but themselves—if they fail.”
You are powerful.
You will always have strength given to you
when you need it most.
This day had been a succession of moving from one scary place of not knowing to the next. What would this scary place be like? She leaned further into the branch behind her.
You come into this life with a bundle of wisdom
that you are supposed to unpack and give away.
If you don’t give it away, it will get heavier and heavier,
until the only option is to drag it behind you.
“I have no feeling to know what my heart would tell me, Fair. You’ll have to decide for yourself.”
Deep and dark though woods may be,
beneath my feet this path leads me
to the one I know, the one so kind whoI once knew and now must find.
I am not going to be invisible, she cried inside.
Some things are just wrong
and don’t merit a reward.
She looked Harrold King squarely in the eye and quietly answered, “I will wash your feet, but first you must start over.”
“Start over?” he yelled. “How dare you tell me what to do.”
Fair stood silent. Unmoving.
Soon, the two of them stood in front of Pewgen Flype in their gray, sleeveless undershirts and baggy bloomers, flaunting his power.
There is great strength in quietly allowing another’s foolishness to reveal itself.
Before anyone realized what was happening, Pewgen Flype threaded the chain through the dog’s bound legs and began to pull while he whistled a tuneless melody, thinking to himself, My pretty little pet. My very, very own. I can do what I like. You’ll get no bone. He wasn’t strong enough to pull the dog off the floor, so he ordered the newly unchained matternots to help him. The boys grabbed the chain and pulled back in what looked like a tug-of-war. Soon, the dog was hanging upside down from the ceiling. Pewgen Flype secured the chain and locked it.
He said, “There! Who’s the master around here?”
If you push aside what matters to you to please another
who is hurtful towards you, that is not love.
It only reveals the the lack of love you have for yourself.
Do not let your lack be visible:
Speak up. Stand up. Stand tall.
Soon your void will be filled with who you are:
a powerful and strong light that shines.
At that moment, he felt a silence quieter than he had ever known. In that silence was a single thought, closer to him than deafness. I am part of something much greater than myself. The silence deepened into his soul until it came out the other side, enveloping him completely. It was so peaceful to him that the whisper of a smile formed upon his face . . . Then, his body slammed into something hard. Something that moved. Something that closed it’s mouth around him. It spoke to his fainting mind, “Do not be afraid.”
What matters to you, matters—because you matter.
Do not let yourself be treated as less than you are.
She echoed those words for her friend. “Fidavine Belle, when someone hurts you on purpose, that’s not love. It’s wrong. If you keep letting them do it, that’s not love either. It’s wrong as well, because you’re letting that someone be less than they are. They end up despising you for your weakness, then they convince themselves they’re right to treat you so poorly.”
Fair shuddered when she realized her friend had grown to love the creature that preyed upon her weakness.
A small, single thought swirled into Fair’s mind as her cheek slid into the cool, liquid slumber beneath her. It was another dry leaf that danced beneath that lonesome tree on that lonesome hillside. The leaf thought was the remembrance of a face. Fair felt a yearning to call out for help, for the face—those eyes—that looked at her with such love. And they were above her dark, liquid world. She wouldn’t find it there.
Fair’s voice caught and she choked out the words, “The grassy path . . . it wasn’t what I thought it was.” She began to shake. “It wasn’t safe . . . or easy.”
“But it brought you to me, didn’t it?”
Soon the traveling whisper blew through the hillsides of Cloven Grave and the trees gusted to and fro in excited gossip. The glory of the day was whispered by the leaves, who heard it from the branches, who heard it from the roots, who heard it from the dirt and stones around them.
You are wise, Liver. We have heard the silent cries of the wounded. The Scrolls of Truth are safe and the matternots will know everything. They will emerge.
