Skellig Quotes

Anything seems possible at night when the rest of the world has gone to sleep.

What are you?" I whispered. He shrugged again. "Something," he said. "Something like you, something like a beast, something like a bird, something like an angel." He laughed. "Something like that.

They say that shoulder blades are where your wings were, when you were an angel," she said. "They say they're where your wings will grow again one day.

Words should wander and meander. They should fly like owls and flicker like bats and slip like cats. They should murmur and scream and dance and sing.

Writing will be like a journey, every word a footstep that takes me further into undiscovered land.

And what is wrong with playing with words? Words love to be played with, just like children or kittens do!

Sometimes we think we should be able to know everything. But we can’t. We have to allow ourselves to see what there is to see, and we have to imagine.

Maybe we're all in somebody's dream. Maybe everything's a dream, and nothing else.

Sometimes we just have to accept there are things we can’t know. Why is your sister ill? Why did my father die?…Sometimes we think we should be able to know everything. But we can’t. we have to allow ourselves to see what there is to see, and we have to imagine.

I sit in my tree I sing like the birds My beak is my pen My songs are my poems.

The dead are often known to eat 27 and 53

Drawing makes you look at the world more closely. It helps you to see what you're looking at more clearly. Did you know that?" I said nothing. "What colour's a blackbird?" she said. "Black" "Typical!

Can love help a person to get better?’ I asked.

Yes. But sad's alright. Sad's just apart of everything

Drawing makes you look at the world more closely. It helps you see what you’re looking at more clearly. Did you know that?

What is is?’ ‘I don’t know. I don’t even know if it’s true or if it’s a dream.’ ‘That’s alright. Truth and Dreams are always getting muddled.

Sometimes children must be left alone to be still and silent, and to do.

We stand dead still and we listen to the night. The city drones. An owl hoots and a cat howls and a dog barks and a siren wails. We let the stars shine into us.

Truth and dreams are always getting muddled. --Mina

I said, 'Do you know what shoulder blades are for?' She giggled. 'Do you not even know that?' she said. 'Do you?' 'It's a proven fact, common knowledge. They're where your wings were, and where they'll grow again.

Look at all the life in this," she said. "Every pip could become a tree, and every tree could bear another hundred fruits and every fruit could bear another hundred trees. And so on to infinity." I picked the picks from my tongue with my fingers. "Just imagine," she said. "If every seed grew, there'd be no room in the world for anything but pomegranate trees.

We come to a lamp beside the pathway, and suddenly we stop walking, and we start to dance, and we glitter in the shafts of light, like stars, like flies, like flakes of dust.

It was great to see the owls," I said. She smiled. "Yes. They're wild things, of course. Killers, savages. They're wonderful.

This might be heaven! We might be living in heaven right now! And we might be the angels!

I thought how you can never tell just by looking at them what they were thinking or what was happening In their lives. Even when you got daft people or drunk people on buses, people that went on stupid and shouted rubbish or tried to tell you all about themselves, you could never really tell about them either... I knew if somebody looked at me, they'd know nothing about me, either.

Nobody. Mr nobody. Mr bones and mr had enough and mr arthur itis. Now get out and leave me alone.

Some say that you should turn your face from the light of the moon. They say it makes you mad. I turn my face towards it and I laugh. Make me mad, I whisper. Go on, make Mina mad. I laugh again. Some people think that she's already mad, I think.

We thought a little longer, and in the end we simply called her Joy.

more 27 and 53,'i said. 'Food of the gods,' he said

I woke up and knew he was gone. Straightaway I knew he was gone. When you love somebody you know these things. David Almond, Skellig

Mum has made a little model of Dad - it looks nothing like him, of course, at least not when I compare it with his photographs, but somehow it seems to be more like him than the photographs do.

Then what shall I write? I can't just write that this happened then this happened then this happened to boring infinitum. I'll let my journal grow just like the mind does, just like a tree or beast does, just like life does. Why should a book tell a tale in a dull straight line? Words should wander and meander. They should fly like owls and flicker like bats and slip like cats. They should murmur and scream and dance and sing.

...maybe one day we all had wings and one day we'll all have wings again." "D'you think the baby had wings?" "Oh, I'm sure that one had wings. Just got to take one look at her. Sometimes I think she's never quite left Heaven and never quite made it all the way here to Earth." She smiled, but there were tears in her eyes. "Maybe that's why she has such trouble staying here," she said.

Truth and dreams are always getting muddled.

In the end she just said..... All I did was to run away for a few minutes! All I wanted was to be free!

I love afternoons like that, like when we talk about things like metempsychosis, when we learn so much, and explore so much, and ideas grow and take flight, like the idea about the universe and the egg. I love being home-schooled, when we don't have to stick to subjects and timetables and rules.

It's called evolution. You must know that. Yes, we are.' She looked up from her book. 'I would hope, though,' she went on, 'that we also have some rather more beautiful ancestors. Don't you?' --Mina

Queen Calanthe wants her to marry someone from Skellige; an alliance with the islanders would mean a lot to us.’ ‘Why them?’ ‘Those they’re allied with aren’t attacked as often as others.’ ‘A good reason.

They think schools stop you from learning,' I said. 'They think schools try to make everybody just the same.

She told us about the goddess called Persephone, who was forced to spend half a year in the darkness deep underground. Winter happened when she was trapped inside the earth. The days shrank, they became cold and short and dark. Living things hid themselves away. Spring came when she was released and made her slow way up to the world again. The world became brighter and bolder in order to welcome her back. It began to be filled with warmth and light. The animals dared to wake, they dared to have their young. Plants dared to send out buds and shoots. Life dared to come back.

I went out into the corridor. I asked a nurse if she knew where the people with arthritis went. She said lots of them went to Ward 34 on the top floor. She said she thought that was a silly place to put people with bad bones who had such trouble walking and climbing stairs.

I closed my eyes and tried to discover where the happy half of me was hiding. I felt the tears trickling through my tightly closed eyelids. I felt Whisper's claws tugging at my jeans. I wanted to be all alone in an attic like Skellig with just the owls and the moonlight and an oblivious heart.

My mother educates me," she said. "We believe that schools inhibit the natural curiosity, creativity and intelligence of children. The mind needs to be opened out into the word, not shuttered down inside a gloomy classroom.

There were hundreds of tiny creases and cracks all over his pale face. A few fine colourless hairs grew on his chin.

You’re my best boy. Whatever happens, you’ll always be my best boy.

Weird how I can feel so frail and tiny sometimes, and other times so brave and bold and reckless and free, and . . . Does everybody feel the same? When people get grown-up, do they always feel grown-up and sensible and sorted out and . . . And do I want to feel grown-up? Do I want to stop feeling . . . paradoxical, nonsensical? Do I want to stop being crackers? Do I want to be destrangified? O yes, sometimes I want nothing more - but it only lasts a moment, then O I want to be the strangest and crakerest of everybody.

The blood of the queens of Cintra,’ Crach began, ‘is uncannily bound to the sea. When one of the women of that blood dies the sea falls into sheer madness. It’s said that Ard Skellig bewails the daughters of Riannon. For the storm is so strong then that the waves striking from the west squeeze through crevices and caverns to the east side and suddenly salt brooks gush from the rock. And the entire island shudders. Simple folk say “See how Ard Skellig sobs. Someone has died again. Riannon’s blood has died. The Elder Blood”.

They climbed the wide stairways. Their footsteps echoed and echoed through the house. "What on earth will you be doing with something so large?" said Mum. "I shall live in it with my servants, of course," said Mina. "Or I shall establish a school." "A school, my lady?" "Yes. A school for the writing of nonsense and the pursuit of extraordinary activities.

They say that shoulder blades are where your wings were, when you were an angel,’ she said. ‘They say they’re where your wings will grow again one day.

Damn kids.

A school for the writing of nonsense and the pursuit of extraordinary activities.

There's no end to evolution.

- Ar manai, kad meilė gali padėti žmogui išgyti?

Galbūt mes amžini kažkaip kitaip...

Mes kaip maži paukščiukai – pusę laiko būname laimingi, o kitą pusę mirtinai išsigandę.

He laughed, but he didn’t smile.

They’re common, but nevertheless very beautiful. A sparrow. These are tits.

warehouses

Why should I write what they told me to write just because they told me to write it?

Twenty-one

Mąsčiau, kaip sunku iš pirmo žvilgsnio pasakyti, apie ką žmonės galvoja ir kokie jie palūžę.

And I've been thinking: if the human race manages to destroy itself, as it often seems to want to do, or if some great disaster comes, as it did for the dinosaurs, then the birds will still manage to survive. When our gardens and fields and farms and woods have turned wild, when the park at the end of Falconer Road has turned into a wilderness, when our cities are in ruins, the birds will go on flying and singing and making their nests and laying their eggs and raising their young. It could be that the birds will exist for ever and for ever until the earth itself comes to an end, no matter what might happen to the other creatures. They'll sing until the end of time. So here's my thought: If there is a God, could it be that He's chosen the birds to speak for Him. Could it be true? The voice of God speaks through the beaks of birds.

- Kam reikalingi mentikauliai? - Sako, tose vietose buvo tavo sparnai. Kai buvai angelas. Dar sako, kad vieną dieną jie ten vėl išaugs. - Kaip manai, ar mažylė turėjo sparnus? - Esu tikra, kad taip. Tik pažvelk į ją. Kartais man atrodo, kad iš tikrųjų ji dar nepaliko dangaus ir nepasiekė žemės.

What was?’ said Dad. She crinkled her face up, like she was embarrassed. ‘Well,’ she said. ‘I was lying here last night, tossing and turning. Kept getting up to look at her. Kept dropping off to sleep. And the strangest of dreams …’ ‘And … ?’ said Dad. ‘And I saw this man, that’s all. Another dream, though

Gaeltacht region. You can easily spend three fun nights here. In comparison, Kenmare (the best base for the Ring of Kerry loop) is pleasant but forgettable. Those spending a night on the west end of the Ring of Kerry find a rustic atmosphere in Portmagee (the base for a cruise to magical Skellig Michael). Both regions are beyond the reach of the Irish train system and require a car or spotty bus service to access. Both offer memorable scenery, great restaurants, warm B&B hospitality, and similar prices. The bottom line: With limited time, choose Dingle. If you have a day or two to spare, the Ring of Kerry is also a delight.

Except the Lord build the house, they labor in vain that build it: except the Lord keep the city, the watchman waketh but in vain.” Irish monks knew the psalms by heart; they would have been regularly recited on the Skelligs. Exposed as these monks were, as removed from the shore, these lines must have challenged, haunted, and sustained their daily activities. The island falls away below upon all sides once more. I stand on each step as upon a tiny platform, a foothold over the nothingness below, which falls more steeply away as I climb. On these same footholds, the psalms were daily intoned to the background of the crying gulls, resonating upon the empty air: Great is the Lord, and greatly to be praised in the city of our God, in the mountain of his holiness. Beautiful for situation, the joy of the whole earth, is Mount Zion . . . the city of the great King. God is known in her palaces for a refuge . . . God will establish it for ever . . . so is thy praise unto the ends of the earth . . . Walk about Zion, and go round about her: tell the towers thereof. Mark ye well her bulwarks, consider her palaces . . . He will be our guide even unto death.

Di notte, quando il resto del mondo è andato a dormire, tutto sembra possibile

A volte pensiamo che dovremmo essere capaci di sapere tutto, ma non è così. Dobbiamo contentarci di vedere quello che c'è da vedere e il resto dobbiamo immaginarlo.

è un fatto dimostrato, si sa. Le scapole sono dove avevi le ali e dove ti cresceranno di nuovo.

Non lo stiamo sognando?" "Non lo stiamo sognando." "Anche se fosse, non potremmo saperlo.

Cosa fai?" mi chiese Mina. "Voglio solo essere sicuro che il mondo ci sia ancora." dissi.

Era come se ci stessimo guardando a vicenda nel punto in cui nascevano i nostri sogni.

Volevo solo che andassero via. E volevo che rimanessero. Volevo poter di nuovo giocare come giocavo una volta. Volevo che tutto fosse di nuovo com'era una volta.

Sapevo che se mi avessero guardato, neanche loro avrebbero capito niente di me.

Mi dissi che ero stupido. Mi dissi che avevo sognato. Mi dissi che non l'avrei più visto. Sbagliavo.

Disegnare ti fa guardare il mondo con più attenzione. Ti aiuta a vedere più chiaramente quello che stai guardando.

The kind of thing William Blake saw. He said we were surrounded by angels and spirits. We must just open our eyes a little wider, look a little harder.