Susan Cooper Quotes

The future can not blame the present, just as the present cannot blame the past.

All life is theatre,' he said. 'We are all actors, you and I, in a play which nobody wrote and which nobody will see. We have no audience but ourselves....

I do not believe any power can possess the mind of a man or woman... I believe in God-given free will, you see. I think nothing is forced on us, except by other people like ourselves. I think our choices are our own.

It is a burden...(M)ake no mistake about that. Any great gift or power or talent is a burden and this more than any, and you will long to be free of it. But there is nothing to be done. If you were born with the gift, then you must serve it, and nothing in this world or out of it may stand in the way of that service, because that is why you were born and that is the Law."- Susan Cooper ("Merriman" The Dark is Rising)

And at the last all shall be safe, and evil thrust out never to return. And so that the trust be kept, he said, I give it into your charge, and your sons', and your sons' sons, until the day come.

The hope is always here, always alive, but only your fierce caring can fan it into a fire to warm the world.

... He was not for that moment a human being, but a frenzied creature possessed by rage, turned into an animal. All that could be seen in him was the urge to hurt, and it was, as it always will be, the most dreadful sight in the world.

The night became silver again; looking up, it was as if they saw the moon sailing through the clouds instead of the other way around; racing smoothly across the sky, passing puffs and wisps of cloud on either side, and yet never moving from its place.

You know how many there are. You can't convince them and you can't kill 'em. You can only do your best in the opposite direction...

She understood about the comfort you can get from a small separate world, whether it's a theatre or a basketball team or the inside of a book.

Then very faintly, he heard above his head the low familiar murmur of the sea outside. At once the comfortable noise made him cheerful, and he even remembered what they were supposed to be.

For this was Christmas, which had always been a time of magic, to him and to all the world.

Your father... doesn't work late for you to pinch his dinner.

Maybe because the Dark can only reach people at extremes; blinded by their own shining ideas, or locked up in the darkness of their own heads.

Open for sun, closed for rain, that's the poor man's weathervane.

Never dismiss anyone's value until you know him.