Eva Ibbotson Quotes

It's true that adventures are good for people even when they are very young. Adventures can get in a person's blood even if he doesn't remember having them.

Slowly, Anna put up a hand to his muzzle and began to scratch that spot behind the ear where large dogs keep their souls.

And so they played some of the world's loveliest piano music - the exiled homesick girl, the humiliated, tired old man. Not properly. Better than that.

Loneliness had taught Harriet that there was always someone who understood - it was just so often that they were dead, and in a book.

When you're sad, my Little Star, go out of doors. It's always better underneath the open sky.

She was so intelligent that she could think herself into beauty. Intelligence...they don't talk about it much, the poets, but when a woman is intelligent and passionate and good...

She's like snow in Russian," said Anna. "Snow in the evening when the sun sets and it looks like Alpengluhen, you know? And if snow had a scent it would smell like that [the rose]....

Shadows are cool and peaceful places for those whose minds are overstocked with treasure.

You cannot stop the birds of sorrow from flying over your head, but you can stop them nesting in your hair.

I want to live like music sounds."- Ruth

But she had to know words. She had to know everything.

They were steaming out of the station before Maia asked, 'Was it books in the trunk?' 'It was books, admitted Miss Minton. And Maia said, 'Good.

Not a frog, I hope?” he asked…She shook her head. “No. And if it was I wouldn’t kiss it, I promise you. I might kiss a prince if I could be sure he’d turn into a frog, but not the other way around.

For an instant she felt his touch on her cheek then he stepped back. There that was my ration for all eternity. People have died for less I dare say.

This is worse than Hollywood, he thought. A girl comes in with a pork chop and I write a song for her.

One must not judge other cultures by the standars of one's one,' said Aunt Hilda

How dare you suppose that I don't know who you are or what you are? That I don't understand what I see? Do you take me for some kind of besotted schoolboy? It is unspeakable! You could weigh as much as a hippopotamus and shave your head and wear a wig and it wouldn't make a difference to me. I never said you were beautiful. I never thought it. I said that you were you.

Well, dear, it's true that adventures are good for people even when they are very young. Adventures can get into a person's blood even if he doesn't remember having them.

one of the sisters started shaving her legs and marrying tax inspectors, so she was no good.

The news should have terrified her, but it was difficult to be frightened of anything when she was sitting so close to Rom. 'I thought we had convinced him that I was leading a blameless life?' 'We had, till you burst out of that damnable cake.

Just because we've never done it doesn't mean we can't do it.

What are you afraid of then? Not Being able to see, I think not seeing because your obsessed by something that blots out the world.

To show too much joy in a place such as this would be unseemly but, as he padded toward her, his tail was extended in a manner which would make wagging possible should all go as expected.

He then kissed her. It was a very long time before he let her go. When he did, she looked up at him, hurt and bewilderment on her face. “Why did you stop?” asked Tessa. “I thought you might want to breathe,” said Guy carefully. “Breathe?” said Tessa, shocked. “I don’t need to breathe when I’m with you.

There are those who dance the notes, and those who dance the music.

...Adventures, once they were over, were things that had to stay inside one--that no one else could quite understand.

It was a lovely church - one of those places which look as though God might be about to give a marvellous party.

One can always bear what is right.

Pauline kept a scrapbook into which she pasted important articles that she had cut out of the newspapers. These were about the courageous deeds that had been done by people even if they only had one leg or couldn't see or had been dropped on their heads when they were babies. 'It's to make me brave,' she'd explained to Annika.

Herr Altenburg, I can't; I have vertigo.' And Marek looked at him: 'All right - I'll get the chemist to fix me something.

She stood looking carefully at the labeled portraits Ursala had put up: Little Crow, Chief of the Santees, Geronimo, last of the Apaches, and Ursala's favorite, Big Foot, dying in the snow at Wounded Knee. "Isn't that where the massacre was?" asked Ellen. "Yes. I'm going to go there when I'm grown up. To Wounded Knee." "That seems sensible," said Ellen.

But of course he knew, all of them knew. There is only one kind of a person a wizard can marry, and that is a witch.

The world was so beautiful in those days, Annika. The music, the flowers, the scent of pines..." "It still is," said Annika. "Honestly, it still is.

Please, God,' Ruth would pray, 'don't let me be competitive. Let me realize what a privilege it is to study. Let me remember that knowledge must be pursued for its own sake and please, please stop me wanting to beat Verena Plackett in the exams.' She prayed hard and she meant what she said. But God was busy that autumn as the International Brigade came back, defeated, from Spain, Hitler's bestialities increased, and sparrows everywhere continued to fall.

That's silly, Anna," said the Honorable Olive. "Being afraid is silly, you know it is.

It was a night to dream about: windless, warm and scented, with a streak of gold and amethyst still lingering in the sky.

Those who think of the Amazon as a Green Hell,” she read in an old book with a tattered spine, “bring only their own fears and prejudices to this amazing land. For whether a place is a hell or a heaven rests in yourself, and those who go with courage and an open mind may find themselves in Paradise.

Dostoyevsky was her brother, Victorian children's books her passion and though she lived, when in funds, mainly on avocado pears, she took her bath each night with a different cookery book.

There are those who dance the notes and those who dance the music.

It is a fearful thing to love what time can touch.

The dowager rose and slipped from her pew. There was the sound of tearing silk as she threw up her arms to embrace her son. Then: "Oh, Rupert, darling," she exclaimed in tones of theatrical despair, "don't you see? The game's up!

Anyone who has an egg to watch over has a stake in the future, and the future--they were sure of it--was going to be good.

[Tessa] knew about phantom limbs [....] Her cheek, where the Englishman's fingers had been, did not exactly ache ... but very strangely, most curiously ... it felt.

People make their own worlds.

Happiness is almost as good as magic for altering a person's looks.

I must go-- the aunts will be worried. Guy, I don't know if we will meet again, but--" Her voice broke and she tried again. "Sometimes, when you're alone and you look up at--" Once more, she had to stop. Then she managed, "If I cannot be anything else... could I be your Star Sister? Could I at least be that?" Guy dug his nails into his palms. Everything in him rose in protest at the fey, romantic conceit. He did not want her in the heavens, linked to him by some celestial whimsy, but here and now in the flesh and after the death of the flesh, her hand in his as they rose from graves like these when the last trump sounded. "Yes," he managed to say. "You can be my Star Sister. You can at least be that.

She took a deep breath, inhaling the night air scented with hay, honeysuckle and the rich waters of the lake, listened to the music and laughter coming from the theatre, tilted her head to the the stars. She had never seen them so brilliant and clear. Cassiopeia, Orion, the great girdle of the Milky Way-and her own birth sign, Gemini. With such staggering beauty in the world, how could anyone not rejoice? It seemed however, that 'anyone' could. For at once came the age-old cry of lovers since time began. 'What are the stars if i am not gazing at them with him? What is beauty except something we share?

Would you like me to stop talking? Because I can. I have to concentrate, but it's possible

Smells are odd things. They follow you about when you’re not thinking about them, but when you put your nose to where they ought to be, they aren’t there. The

Once the hag got upset she was apt to go downhill very fast and remember things like she was an orphan. People are often orphans when they are eighty-two, but it is true that when you have no mother or father you can feel very lonely at any age.

What about you, Ellen?' he asked. 'What does music mean to you?' It was a while before she answered. 'When I was at school... quite little still... there was a girl there who had perfect pitch and a lovely voice and she played the piano. I used to hear people talking about her.' She paused, lacing her fingers together. '"She's musical," they used to say, "Deirdre's musical," and it was as if they'd said: "She's angelic." That's how it seemed to me to be musical: to be angelic.' Isaac turned to her. 'My God, Ellen,' he said huskily, 'it is you who are angelic. If there's anyone in the world who is angelic it is you.

We mustn't only remember the good bits," she said. "We must remember the bad bits, too, so that we know it was real.

When you know what you want you usually get it.

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.

I would let her...have adventures. I would let her...choose her path. It would be hard...it was hard...but I would do it. Oh, not completely, of course. Some things have to go on. Cleaning one's teeth, arithmetic. But Maia fell in love with the Amazon. It happens. THe place was for her - and the people. Of course there was some danger, but there is danger everywhere. Two years ago, in this school, there was an outbreak of typhus, and three girls died. CHildren are knocked down and killed by horses every week, here in these streets--" She broke off, gathering her thoughts. "When she was traveling and exploring...and finding her songs, Maia wasn't just happy, she was...herself. I think something broke in Maia when her parents died, and out there it healed. Perhaps I'm mad--and the professor too-- but I think children must lead big lives...if it is in them to do so.

What are you afraid of then?' She pondered. He had already noticed that it was her hands which indicated what she was thinking of quite as much as her face and now he watched as she cupped them, making them ready to receive her thoughts. 'Not being able to see, I think,' she said. 'Being blind, you mean?' 'No, not that. That would be terrible hard but Homer managed it and our blind piano tuner is one of the serenest people I know. I mean ... not seeing because you're obsessed by something that blots out the world. Some sort of mania of belief. Or passion. That awful kind of love that makes leaves and birds and cherry blossom invisible because it's not the face on some man.

Stupid women were lured into it and assured they would become young and beautiful if they let themselves be pummeled and pounded and smeared with sticky creams, and have their faces lifted and their stomachs flattened. They paid a lot of money to Madame Olympia, who would put a little bit of magic into the creams and ointments that she used so that at first they did look marvelous. But it was the kind of magic that wore off very quickly, leaving the women even uglier than before so that they would rush back to her and pay her more money and the whole thing would start again.

You’ll never know what you’ve done for me,” he said as they reached the gates of the level crossing. “If there’s anything you want--” Clovis grinned. “Can I have Maia when she’s grown up?” Finn’s smile vanished in an instant. “No,” he said.

Do I know everything about him already? she thought, bewildered. And back came the answer: Everything. You are branded with this knowledge, you will have it for the rest of time.

She realized that adventures, once they were over, were things that had to stay inside one--that no one else could quite understand.

The Unconscious, lately discovered by Professor Freud and used by others to store their joys, fears and frustrations, was for Nerine a gigantic subterranean wardrobe

One must not judge other cultures by the standards of one's own

When you’re sad, Little Star, go out of doors. It’s always better underneath the open sky.

A faint terror lest she begin to curtsy took hold of Rupert.

Ms. Wrack's mother, Mrs. Wrack, had been a mermaid: a proper one who lived on a rock and combed her hair and sang. But sailors had never been lured to their doom by her, partly because she looked like the back of a bus and partly because modern ships are so high out of the water that they never even saw her

As Maia turned to go, hardly believing that there could be such happiness, she heard a loud splash. Miss Minton was leaning over the side, watching the parcel she had held on her knees floating away downriver. “What was that?” asked Maia. Miss Minton straightened herself. If you must know,” she said, “it was my corset.

It was his time with the Xanti which had changed him. They thought that everyone’s life was like a river; you had to flow with the current and not struggle, which wasted breath and made you more likely to drown.

Miss Minton knew she was going to be dismissed, and she thought this was perfectly fair. A governess who let her charge sail up the rivers of the Amazon and live with Indian tribes could hardly expect to keep her job.

-they were still practicing the fiendishly difficult pattern at the end of the act where the diagonal lines of swans cross over and dissolve to form three groups: unequal groups, since the number seventeen is notoriously difficult to divide by three.

well wtith a statue hermann cannot possibly fight

Aware that she was on the edge of the abyss, that he must call her back very gently, he laid only the lightest of hands on her hair.

Love begets love. As he grew, Petya followed his sister everywhere… “Wait for me, Annoushka!” … And Anna did wait for him. She was to do so always.

Now, tell me everything, please. Of course if he has harmed you I shall kill him, whoever he is,” he added matter-of-factly. “But otherwise, perhaps something can be done.

...and after all, it wasn't her fault that she was an idiot and had two ridiculous children. Life isn't fair and never has been.

What do you mean to do with Maia when you do find her?” the professor asked that night. “Take her back to the Keminskys and never let her out of my sight again,” said Miss Minton. “She may not find it easy.” “Why on earth not? The Keminskys are the kindest people in the world.” “Yes. But she has tasted freedom.

Then she washed and dressed very attentively, putting on high-heeled court shoes, silk stockings, a black skirt and crisply ironed white blouse, because she was Viennese and one dressed properly even when one's world had ended.

It was a heavenly summer, the summer in which France fell and the British Expeditionary Force was evacuated from Dunkirk. Leaves were never such an intense and iridescent green; sunlight glinted on flower-studded meadows as the Germans encircled the Maginot Line and overran not only France but Belgium and Holland. Birdsong filled the air in the lull between bursts of gunfire and accompanied the fleeing refugees who blocked the roads. It was as though the weather was preparing a glorious requiem for the death of Europe.

Knowing it was her last night on the Arabella, Maia fought against sleep. She must remember it all--the lapping of the water against the side of the boat, the white moths, the fireflies… Finn, too, was awake. “When we’re grown up I’ll come back for you, I promise. No one can stop us then.

And lying there, her hair in damp strands across her crumpled face, Harriet gave up the long, long struggle to love her father and her aunt. "It was for this loss above all that she wept. She had learned, during the long years of her childhood, to live without receiving love. To live without giving it seemed more than she could bear.

Duty exists and it's real. It means sharing any gift or talent that you have with people who need it. It means not being afraid or selfish or tight - but open.

For whether a place is a heaven or a hell rests in yourself, and those who go with courage may find themselves in paradise.

She made life… big for me

It was too much... the gods would not permit such joy.

It was only when the light in her eyes was extinguished, at the mention of her father, that Rupert realized how brightly it had burned.

If you want something enough you usually get it. But you have to take what goes with it.

It’s impossible. It’s madness.” There was a long pause. “Or is it?” the old man said.

They’re a jolly lot, the lepers,” said Father Liam. “People who’ve suffered don’t have time to grumble.

And when Finn complained at the end of a day that they had not come very far, she said, “What does it matter? We’ve got all the time in the world.” Which is not always a clever thing to say.

She wanted to make him swear; to have a kind of ceremony-- but then she saw his face as he looked out over the Island and saw that he loved it as she did, and she knew for certain they would both be back.

It was his time with the Xanti which had changed him. They thought that everyone's life was like a river; you had to flow with the current and not struggle, which wasted breath and made you more likely to drown.

There had, of course, been no golden-haired boys; there hadn’t been any boys at all. What there had been was a leper colony, run by the Brothers of Saint Patrick, a group of Irish missionaries to whom the crows had been sent.

He felt her hand creep from her muff into his pocket as they walked the snowy streets to buy their Christmas tree; dusted the pollen off her nose after he had brought her the first king-cups. By the gay and gilded fountains of Peterhof they bandied preposterous names for their unborn child. At night, in their big wooden bed, he watched her spoon cherry jam into her tea and told her that her habits were disgusting, that he loved her more than life itself.

He was just drifting off to sleep when it occurred to him that perhaps the dog was not so ordinary after all. Perhaps he was someone the ogre had changed, and Ivo was going to spend the night hugging a headmaster or a tax inspector

I’m sorry you never got my note that night,” said Minty. “I was arranging for us to go and live with them. You’ll like that, won’t you?” she asked Maia. Maia was silent, looking down at her plate. “Of course she will,” jeered Finn. “Sergei will be able to kneel at her feet like a person in a book.

Maia had been sitting absolutely still on a chair in the hall, waiting. Now she heard a loud peal on the street bell and turned to see a dark, wild-haired boy running up the steps. Taking no notice of the flustered maid, he came up to Maia. “I’m going home, Maia,” shouted Finn. “I’m going home!” Upstairs a door had opened, and Miss Minton came slowly down the stairs, dabbing her eyes. Then she drew herself up to her full height. “We are all going home,” she said.

Clovis straightened himself. He squared his shoulders. He tossed back his curls. Then slowly, with immense dignity, he climbed the cellar steps. “Unhand my servant, please,” he ordered the crows. “As you see, I am Finn Taverner.” The crows let go of the Indian. They stared at the golden-haired youth who had appeared at the top of the cellar steps. The boy’s breeding showed in every movement; he was an undoubted and true aristocrat. Here before them was The Blood which Sir Aubrey longed for, and they were filled with joy. The boy now addressed his servant. “You have served me well, Kumari,” he said--and every word was crystal clear; the words of a perfect English gentleman, speaking slowly to a foreigner. “Now I give you your freedom. And with it, this token of my thanks.” And out of the pocket of his tunic he took a watch on a long chain which he handed to the Indian. “But, sir,” said Mr. Trapwood, who had seen the glint of silver. “Should you--” “I am a Taverner,” said Clovis. “And no one shall say that I am not grateful to those who have served me. And now, gentlemen, I am ready. I take it you have reserved a first-class cabin for me?” “Well,” began Mr. Low. Mr. Trapwood kicked his shin. “It shall be arranged, sir,” he said. “Everything will be taken care of.” “Good. I should like to go on board immediately.” “Yes, sir, of course. If you’ll just come with us.” Clovis bowed to Miss Minton, then to Maia. His eyes were dry and his dignity was matchless. Then he followed the crows out of the museum.

As for Maia, she was to go back to school. “She will be safe there for a few years till she is ready to go out into the world,” Mr. Murray had written to Miss Minton. So now Maia was collecting her memories. “We mustn’t only remember the good bits,” she said. “We must remember the bad bits, too, so that we know it was real.” But there weren’t really any bad bits once she had escaped from the twins. The fried termites which the Xanti had cooked for them hadn’t tasted very nice, and there had been a tame bush turkey which woke them up at an unearthly hour with its screeching. “But it was all part of it,” said Maia. “It belonged.

Maia had thought that having Finn with them would make it easier--at least they could all be miserable together--but it didn’t. Finn had disappeared into himself. He was very quiet and stood hunched up over the rail, looking out at the gray sea. The cold surprised him; he would shiver suddenly in the wind. He had decided that Westwood was to be his fate. “It’s what you said in the museum,” he told Miss Minton. “Come out, Finn Taverner, and be a man.’ I thought I could run away forever, but if Clovis is in trouble, I’ve got to help him.” It was his time with the Xanti which had changed him. They thought that everyone’s life was like a river; you had to flow with the current and not struggle, which wasted breath and made you more likely to drown. And the river of life seemed to be carrying him back to Westwood.

Knowing it was her last night on the Arabella, Maia fought against sleep. She must remember it all--the lapping of the water against the side of the boat, the white moths, the fireflies… Finn, too, was awake. “When we’re grown up I’ll come back for you, I promise. No one can stop us then.” But she wasn’t grown up and nor was he, and Finn was going on alone. The professor had tried to persuade him to come back with them, but Finn only said, “I promised my father I’d go and find the Xanti. I promised.” Now, though, lying in the dark, he realized how much he hated the idea of going on by himself. He wasn’t afraid exactly; he knew he could do it--but it suddenly seemed utterly dismal to go on without his friend. “We could still run away into the forest,” said Maia. But Finn said no. “Minty really cares about you. The professor told me she nearly went mad when she thought you’d been killed in the fire. You can’t play tricks on her--or on him. They’re good people. It’s just…oh, why can’t grown-ups understand that we might know what is right for us just as well as they do?

The howler monkeys had been right to laugh when he said he wasn’t going back. He had turned downriver again almost at once to fetch Maia, and he had made good time, traveling with the current--but he had come too late. Finn went outside again and stood on the square of raked gravel that had been the Carters’ garden. His mind seemed to have stopped working. He had no idea what to do. Should he go in to Manaus and see if he could find anything out--from the hospital perhaps? After a while he found himself walking back along the river path to where he had left the Arabella. As he came to the fork in the path which led back into the forest, the dog put his head down excitedly into a patch of leaf mold. Finn pushed him aside and saw a smear of blood…and then a little way off, another…and another. He almost fell over her, she lay so still, hidden in the leaves and creepers, almost as if she had burrowed into the forest to die. But she was not dead. She lay stunned, still in her nightdress, breathing lightly with closed eyes. The blood came from a gash in her leg. He could see no burns on her skin. She must have fainted from loss of blood. Then, when he said her name, she opened her eyes. One hand went out to his sleeve. “Can we go now?” she whispered. And he answered. “Yes.