Karen Maitland > Quotes

“You've heard tales of beauty and the beast. How a fair maid falls in love with a monster and sees the beauty of his soul beneath the hideous visage. But you've never heard the tale of the handsome man falling for the monstrous woman and finding joy in her love, because it doesn't happen, not even in a story-teller's tale.”
― Karen Maitland, Company of Liars

“Rain slips through your fingers as easily as words blow away in the wind, and yet it has the power to destroy your whole world.”
― Karen Maitland, Company of Liars

“Home is the place you return to when you have finally lost your soul. Home is the place where life is born, not the place of your birth, but the place where you seek rebirth. When you no longer have to remember which tale of your own past is true and which is an invention, when you know that you are an invention, then is the time to seek out your home. Perhaps only when you have come to understand that can you finally reach home.”
― Karen Maitland, Company of Liars

“They all wait impatiently for the blessed cloak of darkness to cover their wretched little deeds, but the sun will not be hurried by the whims of men.”
― Karen Maitland, The Gallows Curse

“Reckon it's best if you don't have anyone you care about; then it can't hurt you. Don't have to be afraid of losing someone if you no one to lose.”
― Karen Maitland, Company of Liars

“The day that I left my home, I had prayed that my children would forget me. I wanted to spare them the pain of remembering. But that night, as I crouched in the white mist, waiting, I knew more than anything that I wanted them to remember, I wanted desperately to go on living in someone's memory. If we are not remembered, we are more than dead, for it is as if we had never lived.”
― Karen Maitland, Company of Liars

“But then, the flames of a fire are not made less painful by the knowledge that others are burning with you.”
― Karen Maitland, Company of Liars

“Sometimes mercy is not a kindness and pity is not love.”
― Karen Maitland, The Falcons of Fire and Ice

“We had taken her for granted until she was no longer there, like an ancient tree you don't truly see until it is felled, and then only from the empty space in the sky do you suddenly grasp its stature.”
― Karen Maitland, Company of Liars

“Are you finally admitting that you can sell a man hope? Have I at last succeeded in teaching you that?”

He laughed and flicked his whip again, harder. He was in a better mood than I had seen for months.

“No, Camelot, not hope. Hope is for the weak; have I not succeeded in teaching you that? To hope is to put your faith in others and in things outside yourself; that way lies betrayal and disappointment. They didn't want hope, Camelot; they wanted certainty. What a man needs is the certainty that he is right, no self-doubt, no fleeting thought that he might be wrong or misled. Absolute certainty that he is right—that's what gives a man the confidence and power to do whatever he wants and to take whatever he wants from this world and the next.”
― Karen Maitland, Company of Liars

“I'd believed mine was the greatest of all the arts, the noblest of all the lies, the creation of hope. I thought hope could overcome everything, but I was wrong. Hope cannot overcome truth. Hope and truth cannot co-exist. Truth destroys hope. The most savage cruelties man inflicts on man are committed in the pursuit of truth. My last lie had been the most honest, the most honorable of them all, for there is an art greater even than the creation of hope. The greatest art of all is the destruction of truth.”
― Karen Maitland, Company of Liars

“Hope is a beautiful lie and it requires talent to create it for others.”
― Karen Maitland, Company of Liars

“There was a new king and his name was pestilence. And he had created a new law - thou shalt do anything to survive.”
― Karen Maitland, Company of Liars

“Mortals are strange creatures; they cling to life even when that life is nothing but pain and misery, yet they will throw away their lives for a word, an idea, even a flag. Wolves piss to mark their territory. Smell the stench of another pack and wolves will quietly slink away. Why risk a fight when it might maim or kill you? But humans will slash and slaughter in their thousands to plant their little piece of cloth on a hill or hang it from a battlement.”
― Karen Maitland, The Gallows Curse

“Hope itself is always genuine. It's only what it's placed in that can prove to be false.”
― Karen Maitland, Company of Liars

“God's hand can be seen in any occurrence for those who are determined to find it there, but then again, so can the devil's”
― Karen Maitland, Company of Liars

“Hope may be an illusion, but it's what keeps you from jumping in the river or swallowing hemlock. Hope is a beautiful lie and it requires talent to create it for others. And back then on that day when they say it first began, I truly believed that the creation of hope was the greatest of all the arts, the noblest of all the lies. I was wrong.”
― Karen Maitland, Company of Liars

“Why do mortals think that suffering is a coin with which they can buy justice or salvation? ... life is a steal if you are a talented thief, and if you are not, then you may suffer all you please but if will buy you nothing but pain.”
― Karen Maitland, The Gallows Curse

“Miracles are like murders. After the first one, each becomes easier than the last for, with each success, the miracle-worker's certainty in himself becomes stronger.”
― Karen Maitland, Company of Liars

“They say despair is a terrible thing, but hope is worse: it keeps you shackled for ever, like a dog in a wheel, always running, but never able to go anywhere, save round and round.”
― Karen Maitland, The Plague Charmer

“The present is all you can truly know of any man, and even of that you can glimpse only a fragment, however long you remain in his company.”
― Karen Maitland, Liars and Thieves (A Company of Liars short story): An exclusive e-novella accompaniment to Company of Liars

“The woman never used one word when she could torment ten.”
― Karen Maitland, The Owl Killers

“My brave husband came back from fighting the Turks and brought me a robe of silk and a necklace of human teeth. He sat up at night by his hearth telling tales of battle. Apparently the Turks are ten times more ferocious and fearless than the Scots. 'Perhaps we should invite them here to drive the Scots back,' I suggested, and he laughed, but he didn't kiss me. That's when I learned the truth about scars. A man with a battle scar is a veteran, a hero, given an honoured place at the fire. Small boys gaze up fascinated, dreaming of winning such badges of courage. Maids caress his thighs with their buttocks as they bend over to mull his ale. Women cluck and cosset, and if in time other men grow a little weary of that tale of honour, then they call for his cup to be filled again and again until he is fuddled and dozes quietly in the warmth of the embers.

But a scarred woman is not encouraged to tell her story. Boys jeer and mothers cross themselves. Pregnant women will not come close for fear that if they look upon such a sight, the infant in their belly will be marked. You've heard of the tales of Beauty and the Beast no doubt. How a fair maid falls in love with a monster and sees the beauty of his soul beneath the hideous visage. But you've never heard the tale of the handsome man falling for the monstrous woman and finding joy in her love, because it doesn't happen, not even in fairytales. The truth is that the scarred woman's husband buys her a good thick veil and enquires about nunneries for the good of her health. He spends his days with his falcons and his nights instructing pageboys in their duties. For if nothing else, the wars taught him how to be a diligent master to such pretty lads.”
― Karen Maitland, Company of Liars

“Pay heed, my darlings, and always take the greatest care over the company you keep in life: if death strikes you without warning, you may be stuck with them til the moon turns to blood and wouldn't that be a torment?”
― Karen Maitland, The Vanishing Witch

“King John won't need any persuading that the French have a hand in this. From what I've heard, if a bean gives him a bellyache he swears it was a French one.”
― Karen Maitland, The Gallows Curse

“For the fact is when men are hand, innocent or guilty, their semen, that salty white milk, falls onto the Earth and there are on that very spot we spring up... Why men should ejaculate in the throes of death is a mystery even to me. Perhaps death really is the consummation of life, or maybe it's the last act of the body desperate to bequeath a life that will go on even as its own is obliterated. But I like to believe it is a final one-fingered gesture of defiance at their executioners, the only obscene gesture they can make since their hands are tightly bound behind them. Whatever the reason, felons with their dying gasp impregnate our mother and so we, the mandrakes, are conceived.”
― Karen Maitland, The Gallows Curse

“She’s one of the fay folk; half of her is a woman, but she has the legs of a goat, except no one ever sees those for she hides them under her robes. She sleeps deep in the black pool while it’s day, but at witch-light she rises in robes green as pond weed, glowing in the dark with her silver hair trailing behind her. She’s so beautiful any man who glimpses her can’t take his eyes off her. but that’s just her witchery for inside she’s really a withered old crone with a heart as black as a marsh pool.”
― Karen Maitland, The Owl Killers

“As she pronounced the last word the corpse shuddered violently; it slumped down to the ground and for a moment Gytha thought it was going to disappear back into the earth. But as she watched, its ashen, waxy skin began to bubble all over, as if maggots were crawling out of it, covering it from its skull to its feet. The skin was erupting into soft white feathers. The child lifted its head, and in the dark empty hollows of its eyes were two black glistening pearls. Two long wings unfurled on either side of its body and as they beat, the pale creature rose silently into the air. The barn owl hovered above them for a moment, its wings outstretched against the moon, then it turned and glided away over the dark mass of the trees.”
― Karen Maitland, The Gallows Curse

“They were just the ordinary sounds of of people beginning their day, silly raucous, discordant, but they were the most beautiful sounds on earth, the sounds of living people.”
― Karen Maitland, Company of Liars

“We couldn't bring the sheep back to life, so there was nothing for it but to eat the evidence.”
― Karen Maitland, Company of Liars