Karen Foxlee Quotes

“If we knew everything would change we would have turned back but we didn't know. Thats how things happen. Especially sunny days hide dark moments in their pockets.”

— Karen Foxlee

“After the kiss some of it still sparkled in the air around her.”

— Karen Foxlee

Big secrets were catastrophic. However hard you try to hide them, they bob to the surface and you must go over them again and again. They are taken out so often they become worn smooth as a river stone. You have to carry them around you like a baby. The secret grows until you feel like you are a skin that covers it, a thin skin, easily split, ripe

— Karen Foxlee

“This is because secrets are terrible things.
Even the simplest ones”

— Karen Foxlee

Before everything happened I wished i had double voice box like a song bird so I could sing two songs at once, the way a bird can harmonize with itself. I wanted to sing crystal clear notes. I wanted to sing them one after anther in ascending order. And at the same time I wanted to let another fountain of notes descend from my heart.

— Karen Foxlee

“Girls are good at running away. It's a fact.”

— Karen Foxlee

“She was running out of the room as fast as she could, with the sword raised before her. She called back to her father. I'll be back soon. I've just got to save the world.”

— Karen Foxlee

And you might think a name is just a name, nothing but a word, but that is not the case. Your name is tacked to you. Where it has joined you, it has seeped into your skin and into your essence and into your soul. So when they plucked my name from me with their spell, it was as heavy as a rock in their hands but as invisible as the wind, and it wasn't just the memory of my name, but me myself. A tiny part of me that they took and stored away.

— Karen Foxlee

“I would be a wedge-tailed eagle. I would only live for the joy of flight. I would soar at great heights, on top of the wind. I would be above everything, over the little towns clinging to the highway. I would be a part of everything.”

— Karen Foxlee

“If i could have sung it would be a very sad song.”

— Karen Foxlee

“The Main Street is wide, ridiculously wide, as though when it was built, the town was expecting something amazing to arrive, a thousand people to stake their claim to a patch of soggy green land, a huge boat, Titanic-size, on the back of a truck.”

— Karen Foxlee

“There is a whole week inside each day.”

— Karen Foxlee

When you are in love, you think nothing will ever be the same but then the tide rushes out and there it is, everything, just as it was.

— Karen Foxlee

“The cicadas were singing a song.
It was a one-noted, one-worded; The words sounded like "please".
They were singing and singing and singing and the whole world was falling down.”

— Karen Foxlee

“Everything that she saw glowing during the day seemed tarnished beside the light that was at the heart of the evening. the bleached color of things replaced by a beauty that stole into everything. the pale yellow leaves grew golden. The white gems opened up their hearts and shone.”

— Karen Foxlee

Sudden singing was the only type I really missed. When sudden singing happened it came out of the blue and made me feel so good that my toes curled up and I got goose bumps all over my body and tears in my eyes.

— Karen Foxlee

“The strangest think I have learned is that it's impossible to know what's inside someone. The wizards didn't teach me this, but I have learned it myself. Those who appear tall and straight and very good are sometimes rotten on the inside, and others, huge and clawed and apparently very bad, sometimes contain a pure and sweet form of goodness. The biggest trap is to judge a person by their outer casing. Their skin. Their hair. Their snow-white feathers.”

— Karen Foxlee

“Everyone tiptoed backward and forward past the door and looked at her sadness like it was an exhibition. A jewel in its case.”

— Karen Foxlee

There's no point being frightened of the night.

— Karen Foxlee

“The problem with magic was that it made her feel very alone.”

— Karen Foxlee

“Our house was like sleeping beauties palace after the enchanted spell is cast”

— Karen Foxlee

“It was like a slap. I dont remember her being mean before that. It made Miranda smile. The smile that unlocked something in Beth like a key”

— Karen Foxlee

“A glimpse, a little piece of their story, flapping like ribbon in the wind.”

— Karen Foxlee

“The cool air Edie speaks of? It drifts down off the mountain, unraveling itself through trees, dipping its fingers in the streams. It comes in through the back door and through the windows cast open for it. The fat possums shiver and return to their meals. It lifts up the months on the calendar and leafs through the newspaper pattern in a pile on the table. It fills up the yellow kitchen and overflows into the hallway and spills into the rooms.
Rose closes her eyes again and smiles.”

— Karen Foxlee

“The trouble with magic was that is was messy and dangerous and filled with longing. There were too many moments that made your heart stop and ache and start again.”

— Karen Foxlee

And so it begins.

— Karen Foxlee

“The tree seemed very sad to be involved in such a thing and it hung its dark head over them.”

— Karen Foxlee

“Ophelia,' said the boy. He said it very quietly. She didn't like the way he said that at all. He sounded sad and as though he expected more from her.
'And how do you know my name anyways?' she said. 'I never told you it, not once.'
'I heard it once, a long time ago.'
He was full of mysterious sentences like that.”

— Karen Foxlee

“Do you know what love is like, Rose? It's like having a sky, a whole sky racing inside you. Four seasons' worth of sky. One minute you are soaring and then you are all thunderclouds and then you are deep with stars and then you are empty.”

— Karen Foxlee

“All those days had been removed, simply and precisely, whole weeks brimming with cloudless blue skies neatly severed and discarded. We needed Beth's name shouted not whispered.”

— Karen Foxlee

“It was only a little piece of knowledge but it felt as shiny and solid as a new twenty-cent piece in my hand to know i could find the thing that was wrong.”

— Karen Foxlee

“If you ever shoot a great magical owl with an arrow, you should remember this, Ophelia. Everything is connected. If you touch the ground, you touch the tops of trees. If you touch the trees, you touch the wings of birds.”

— Karen Foxlee

“The sun, sides bulging, squashed itself between two hills. It sent up a flare of golden light. The sky, patterned with a million tiny clouds like fish scales was illuminated.”

— Karen Foxlee

“When she stopped kissing him his hand went to her waist to pull her back. the sun beat down on us. The day quivered. The sky was as deep as the ocean. We breathed underwater.”

— Karen Foxlee

“Old things can become new things.”

— Karen Foxlee

“Do you promise?' said Edie, which changed things.”

— Karen Foxlee

“But later, when he found the note, he realized he was very late and had to run.”

— Karen Foxlee

“We can just talk,' he says. Like a boy.”

— Karen Foxlee

“There's no way to slow it down now it has begun.”

— Karen Foxlee

“She won't come back.”

— Karen Foxlee

Tell me I'm here.

— Karen Foxlee

“I need your help," the boy said, "to save the world.”

— Karen Foxlee

“I'm really disappointed about how you've turned out, shouted Mum like Beth was a slightly burnt biscuit.”

— Karen Foxlee

“Ophelia was surprised by how easily she lied. She had two stolen keys in her pocket, and the lies were sliding off her tongue. Soon, she'd probably be shoplifting. She expected that was how it started.”

— Karen Foxlee

“Wizards, she thought, when she gained her composure. What good were they if they couldn't tell you how to do stuff, if they were always talking in riddles and saying they knew everything before it even happened? It wasn't very helpful.
If she were a wizard, she'd write reports for people. She'd make sure everything was very clear. She'd write, Looking for a magical sword? No problem. Go to the fifth floor, turn left, open a large wooden chest, et cetera, et cetera. She'd have check boxes. Found your magical sword? Place X here.”

— Karen Foxlee

“There will be nothing to say something terrible has happened, but they will know it all the same. Nothing will be found. Not a trace of the girl in the midnight dress.”

— Karen Foxlee

You should think with your heart,' said her mother.
'My heart?' whispered Ophelia.
'Your heart,' said her mother, and she touched Ophelia's chest with the tip of her finger. It was the tiniest of touches, but a warmth and new hope spread through Ophelia's body. She began to smile.

— Karen Foxlee

Ophelia had never been prophesied before. It made her feel annoyed.

— Karen Foxlee

But across the sea was this kingdom, and it was here I met the King," he said.
"And the Snow Queen," said Ophelia, "who made you her prisoner."
"Yes," said the boy. "But that wasn't straightaway. Many years passed first."
"What were you doing for those years?"
"Well, mostly I played and ate sweets," said the boy.

— Karen Foxlee