Eowyn Ivey quotes are thought-provoking, memorable and inspiring. From views on society and politics to thoughts on love and life, Eowyn Ivey has a lot to say. In this list we present the 15 best Eowyn Ivey quotes, in no particular order. Let yourself get inspired!
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Eowyn Ivey quotes
I am left to wonder, will anyone else see it?That day in the forest when I looked upon the marble bear, alive with the setting sun, what did I witness? Was it only sunlight on stone, or Father’s spirit, or a reflection of my own? It seems to me now that such a moment requires a kind of trinity: you and I and the thing itself.
— Eowyn Ivey, To The Bright Edge of the World
She told no one of the otter. Garrett would want to trap it; Faina would ask her to draw it. She refused to confine it by any means because, in some strange way, she knew it was her heart. Living, twisting muscle beneath bristly damp fur. Breaking through thin ice, splashing in cold creek water, sliding belly-down across snow. Joyful, though it should have known better.
— Eowyn Ivey, The Snow Child
…and she would wonder if one can truly stop the inevitable. Was it as Ada had suggested, that we can choose our own endings, joy over sorrow? Or does the cruel world just give and take, give and take, while we flounder through the wilderness?
— Eowyn Ivey, The Snow Child
A boy trying out a man’s language.
— Eowyn Ivey, The Snow Child
It was as if she had reached into her own pocket and discovered a small pebble, as hard as a diamond, that she had forgotten belonged to her.
— Eowyn Ivey, The Snow Child
I would believe again if I could. In goodness. In magnificence. In simple benevolence. Yet even in these far and icy valleys, mankind is no different, just more poorly armed. Strip away psychrometer and sextant, carbines and glass plates, skin shifts and quills and painted faces, and we are the same. Quivering maws. Gluttonous. Covetous. Fearful. We say we worship. A word. A man-god. A fiery mountain. But we worship only ourselves. And we are jealous gods.
— Eowyn Ivey, To The Bright Edge of the World
Then he returned to Mabel and put his mouth to her ear. I’d never let anything happen to you. You know that, don’t you?
— Eowyn Ivey, The Snow Child
You did not have to understand miracles to believe in them, and in fact Mabel had come to suspect the opposite. To believe, perhaps you had to cease looking for explanations and instead hold the little thing in your hands as long as you were able before it slipped like water between your fingers
— Eowyn Ivey, The Snow Child
Why was it always the woman’s fate to pace and fret and wait?
— Eowyn Ivey, The Snow Child
There’s been a lot to get used to here.” Esther laughed. “Isn’t that the truth. I don’t know if you ever get used to it really. It just gets in your blood so that you can’t stand to be anywhere else.
— Eowyn Ivey, The Snow Child
Who am I to claim such boundless sorrow? This heartache, acute and true as it may be, is slight compared to all of this world. Five miscarriages, two stillborn, three live births, and Mrs. Connor is one of our fortunate. She is not disemboweled in the snow. Her hands have committed no atrocities. She believes in God. It is remarkable how we go on. All that we come to know and witness and endure, yet our hearts keep beating, our faith persists.
— Eowyn Ivey, To The Bright Edge of the World
She had watched other women with infants and eventually understood what she craved: the boundless permission-no, the absolute necessity- to hold and kiss and stroke this tiny person. Cradling a swaddled infant in their arms, mothers would distractedly touch their lips to their babies’ foreheads. Passing their toddlers in a hall, mothers would tousle their hair even sweep them up in their arms and kiss them hard along their chins and necks until the children squealed with glee. Where else in life, Mabel wondered, could a woman love so openly and with such abandon?
— Eowyn Ivey, The Snow Child
You did not have to understand miracles to believe in them, and in fact Mabel had begun to suspect the opposite. To believe, perhaps you had to cease looking for explanations and instead hold the little thing in your hands as long as you were able before it slipped like water between your fingers.
— Eowyn Ivey, The Snow Child
The exact science of one molecule transformed into another — that Mabel could not explain, but then again she couldn’t explain how a fetus formed in the womb, cells becoming beating heart and hoping soul. She could not fathom the hexagonal miracle of snowflakes formed from clouds, crystallized fern and feather that tumble down to light on a coat sleeve, white stars melting even as they strike. How did such force and beauty come to be in something so small and fleeting and unknowable?
— Eowyn Ivey, The Snow Child
Everywhere, even in the blackest abyss, he believed one might witness the divine. The shadows and contrast―absence itself―as important as the light and marble, for one cannot exist without the other.
— Eowyn Ivey, To The Bright Edge of the World
He stood there a moment, listened to the creek, and let the mountain air blow against his face. Even with all this heartache, it was beautiful here.
— Eowyn Ivey, The Snow Child
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