Hex Jenni Fagan Quotes

- You know what really brings the storms, Geillis? - What? - A storm arrives at the exact second when a girl learns she'll never be free

A woman’s voice is a hex. She must learn to exalt men always. If she doesn’t do that, then she is a threat. A demon whore, a witch – so says everyone and the law”.

Put those heels away. That click, click, click, click is Morse code for rapists. It says their sentence will be lenient or non-existent. If only she didn't wear stilettos. If only she didn't walk through a park. If only she didn't go out at night.

Girls learn to shine in secret.

I’ve got the voice of a siren – it’s not a voice to launch a thousand ships, it’s a voice to sink them.

The brightness of the stars! I needed them, so I did just the one thing. And it is really this they are killing me for. I went out at night. Alone.

- We take our chances if we go out after darkness. We often walk down the middle of the road at night. - Same. - We know that every close or alley or road might appear like it has an exit, but it may in fact be one without an end. - Aye. - If the State wanted us less dead, they'd do more about our murders. - They don't? - It depends.

If a human dies without reason a witch shall be the cause.

How can women be truth-tellers when we brought down the Garden of Eden and are weak for such deceit and evil?

- What do you women do in hundreds of years from now then Iris from the ether? - We look over our shoulder far too often. - Aye. You laugh wryly. - We try to look bigger than we are sometimes. At other times we have to be smaller than we are. We do other things. Try to take down governments. Make great art. Keep others. Work without anyone noticing what we do for whole lifetimes sometimes. We hold hands. Drink too much or not at all. We traverse boundaries whilst looking ordinary. We give beauty and patience and science and our talent and our hearts and what was once firm in our bodies - we bestow our lives to this world, most often unseen. Jenni Fagan - Hex

A thought plague. How many people in this world will be killed by thought plagues? Those infections spread. They create nothing but fear and death. They take ordinary people to an early grave, or just scare them as they try to live out their days.

Things were calling me. Night, the moon, the sea — all called me and in that order. I would have settled for a river. Or a picnic in a meadow, or even a garden, just so I could be outside a while. The stars wanted to snag at my hair, tug on it gently. The moon wanted to pull me away. The sea was calling for me like my grandmother had before she was gone.

Bring upon a woman only shame. Make sure there is nothing she can say that could be taken as truth! Take the only thing she owns – her voice, her mind. Take it. Grind it into something pestilent. Line her up as dust and imbibe. What a way to get high! Absorb her. Destroy what brought you here. Power is not something women are allowed to own easily or – often – at all, let alone learn to wield.

If a pregnant woman looks at the full moon her baby will go insane. So they say. My grandmother told it to me. Her grandmother told it to her. I learnt to cross myself when the dead were taken by for a burial before I knew how to clean a grate. I learnt to bow my head to everyone I worked for, and rich women too — they always scared me with their thin faces and how they looked at me. I would dip my head low so they didn't think I was sharp-eyed. I let them know in all my actions that I understood I was less than even the lowest of them. I talked softly to everyone at times. Sharp tongues get women killed. That's what I was told.

I had to play the Jew's harp -- with my twisted broken fingers, for him. He wanted to see how I played it for the Devil... He saw no irony at all in me playing it for him after what he had ordered done to me.

A witch-pricker's finger can be pointed at any one of us. It chose me.

As a child I used to give away light like it was nothing. Those without it would fill themselves up with all that good energy like I was an eternal font. The purest light attracts the most impenetrable darkness.

- As if going after a woman like you was something God insisted upon. Tell me what kind of god wants any of this? I would like to reassure you that five hundred years from now the fine line of misogyny no longer elongates from uncomfortable to fatal, yet I cannot. It's a form of brainwashing, isn't it? When you dared look at those men around you, what did you see? They al thought they were right. - In everything! - At all times. - What woman could question that? A dead one!

There is no man on this earth who didn't get here except by a woman parting her thighs! We are portals. Humans emerge from our bodies into a world without explanation. Some men hold a brutal kind of grudge for that. They hold hatred in their heart.

I have memories to give away before I meet God — so you can have them, Iris from the ether. Are you listening? Nobody else will write them down.