Book of a Thousand Days Quotes

“Mama used to say, you have to know someone a thousand days before you can glimpse her soul.”
― Shannon Hale, Book of a Thousand Days

“I let my head fall back, and I gazed into the Eternal Blue Sky. It was morning. Some of the sky was yellow, some the softest blue. One small cloud scuttled along. Strange how everything below can be such death and chaos and pain while above the sky is peace, sweet blue gentleness. I heard a shaman say once, the Ancestors want our souls to be like the blue sky.”
― Shannon Hale, Book of a Thousand Days

“You're better than seven years of food. You're better than windows. You're even better than the sky.”
― Shannon Hale, Book of a Thousand Days

“I do like the world quite a lot.”
― Shannon Hale, Book of a Thousand Days

“My mama used to say, 'Are you sad? Then just wait a minute.”
― Shannon Hale, Book of a Thousand Days

“Sometimes my fancy gets to floating inside me, threatening to carry me away like a leaf on a wind. Better to be a stone.”
― Shannon Hale, Book of a Thousand Days

“But the hoping, that's what really hurts.”
― Shannon Hale, Book of a Thousand Days

“Careful with the accusations of insanity, oh my lady whose home is a tower with windows of brick, all for the sake of some skinny-ankled, laugh-prone boy of a khan.”
― Shannon Hale, Book of a Thousand Days

“This morning, Tegus welcomed me again with an arm clasp and cheek touch. I wasn't startled this time, and I breathed in at his neck. How can I describe the scent of his skin? He smells something like cinnamon-- brown and dry and sweet and warm. Ancestors, is it wrong for me to imagine laying my head on his chest and closing my eyes and breathing in his smell?”
― Shannon Hale, Book of a Thousand Days

“They weren't nice words he said. He could've lived a good life and died never having made a person feel rubbed down to bones and too sad to hold together. ”
― Shannon Hale, Book of a Thousand Days

“I wonder if everyone who faces death hurts like this. It's as though for the first time I realize how much just being alive makes my body ache. But I don't want that ache to stop.”
― Shannon Hale, Book of a Thousand Days

“... and with my last thought I felt some real sympathy for those poor chickens.”
― Shannon Hale, Book of a Thousand Days

“There's nothing more aggravating in the world than the midnight sniffling of the person you've decided to hate.”
― Shannon Hale, Book of a Thousand Days

“Smell is the voice of the soul...”
― Shannon Hale, Book of a Thousand Days

“Time is a wind that keeps blowing in my face and mumbling words that don't make sense.”
― Shannon Hale, Book of a Thousand Days

“A cat can make you feel well rested when you're tired or turn a rage into a calm just by sitting on your lap. His very nearness is a healing song.”
― Shannon Hale, Book of a Thousand Days

“I think sometimes just being silent and watching can change a person.”
― Shannon Hale, Book of a Thousand Days

“I was thinking how you can't tell if a person's beautiful or not by her shadow...”
― Shannon Hale, Book of a Thousand Days

“Tegus, I'm leaving this book behind for you, so you will know the why of it all, and maybe you'll forgive me, or maybe you'll think me false and reprehensible. You'd be justified. I couldn't stand the thought of your reading all my words unless I knew for certain that I'd never have to face you again, so please don't look for me. If you read the book in its entirety, you'll know for truth who is Lady Saren. And I guess you'll also know that I'm a silly girl who writes down every word you said to me.”
― Shannon Hale, Book of a Thousand Days

“I always knew it was ill-fated, but he truly believed I would be his bride. I guess I'd never realized that before. He had taken my mucker hand and looked at my mottled face and believed we would wed. And he hadn't seemed sorry. In fact, he'd swooped me up in a corridor and kissed me.
That set me to crying.”
― Shannon Hale, Book of a Thousand Days

“Sometimes I think they're all ridiculous. There I was, a sensible person with thoughts in my head, offering a solution. And they wouldn't listen. What aggravation, to believe I can help and yet not be allowed. -Dashti”
― Shannon Hale, Book of a Thousand Days

“I think sometimes, being silent and watching, can change a person.”
― Shannon Hale, Book of a Thousand Days

“Khan Tegas never looked at me. I'm a mucker maid. I guess I needed to be reminded of that. So, good. Fine. Sometimes my fancy gets to floating inside me, threatening to carry me away like a leaf on a wind. Better to be a stone.”
― Shannon Hale, Book of a Thousand Days

“I held her head to my shoulder, rocking her, rubbing her back. Poor thing, I don't think she know where to put the whole world.”
― Shannon Hale, Book of a Thousand Days

“More than a thousand days we've been together, more than a thousand songs I've sung for her, and only now, I think, do I see Saren truly begin to heal.”
― Shannon Hale, Book of a Thousand Days

“You have to know someone a thousand days before you can glimpse her soul.”
― Shannon Hale, Book of a Thousand Days

“My heart’s so light it floats and carries me so my feet don’t walk. I sing all day and I don’t mind the washing, and that’s how I know I’m in love. Completely smitten with My Lord the cat.”
― Shannon Hale, Book of a Thousand Days

“You slew Khasar, you healed me, and you have perfect ankles. I really don't think this is a question we need to debate. -Khan Tegus”
― Shannon Hale, Book of a Thousand Days

“Maybe I got a few words wrong, but that's so near how the conversation went, I'm going to call it truth.”
― Shannon Hale, Book of a Thousand Days

“To keep telling my story seems like the last bit of living I can still do. I feel like a dragonfly clinging to a grass blade in a windstorm, but I can't just let go. I can't. I stare at the candle, how the flame shivers and bends when the wick is too long. The light is small and unsteady, but unless it's snuffed out, it'll keep burning for as long as the wick runs.”
― Shannon Hale, Book of a Thousand Days