Orual Quotes

“Some say that loving and the devouring are all the same thing.”

“I locked Orual up or laid her asleep as best I could somewhere deep down inside me; she lay curled there. It was like being with child, but reversed; the thing I carried in me grew slowly smaller and less alive.”

“There is no judge between gods and men, and the god of the mountain won’t answer me.”

“Why, yes, it’s a pity about her face. But she’s a brave girl and honest.”

“Why must holy places be dark places?”

“She made beauty all round her. When she trod on mud, the mud was beautiful; when she ran in the rain, the rain was silver. When she picked up a toad—she had the strangest and, I thought, unchanciest love for all manner of brutes—the toad became beautiful.”

“Her beauty, which most of them had never seen, worked on then as a terror might work.”

“But I was wrong to weep and beg and try to force you by your love. Love is not a thing to be so used.”

“You, woman, shall know yourself and your work. You also shall be Psyche.”