Hannah Kent Quotes

18 quotes in 357 categories

• It was only later that I suffocated under the weight of his arguments, and his darker thoughts articulated. It was only later that our tongues…
• To know what a person has done, and to know who a person is, are very different things.
• As though prayer could simply pluck sin out. But any woman knows that a thread, once woven, is fixed in place; the only way to…
• Memories shift like loose snow in a wind, or are a chorale of ghosts all talking over one another. There is only ever a sense…
• The treachery of a friend is worse than that of a foe.
• I preferred to read than talk with the others.
• I don't want to be remembered, I want to be here!
• A bubble of fear passes up my spine. It's the feeling of standing on ice and suddenly hearing it crack under your weight - both…
• I have made a mistake. They condemn me to death and I ask for a boy to coach me for it. A red-headed boy, who…
• ...dreadful birds, dressed in red with breasts of silver buttons, and cocked heads and sharp mouths, looking for guilt like berries on a bush.
• Cruel birds, ravens, but wise. And creatures should be loved for their wisdom if they cannot be loved for kindness.
• Most writers are drawn to what is unknown, rather than what is clear in any tale.
• There are secrets at the heart of every story; there is something that must be uncovered or discovered, both by the reader and by the…
• I first heard the story of Agnes Magnusdottir when I was an exchange student in the north of Iceland.
• I applied for funding to embark on an overseas field trip in Iceland, and spent six weeks there happily holed up in the national archives,…
• People speak of the fear of the blank canvas as though it is a temporary hesitation, a trembling moment of self-doubt. For me it was…
• I had expected that at some point during the first draft a light would go on, and I would understand, finally, how to write a…
• I was a very imaginative child, and my parents were very encouraging of that. My sister and I would put on plays; I would write…

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