Till We Have Faces Quotes

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

“Holy places are dark places. It is life and strength, not knowledge and words, that we get in them. Holy wisdom is not clear and thin like water, but thick and dark like blood.”

“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.”