She sleeps. And now she wakes each day a little less. And, each day, takes less and less nourishment, as if grudging the least moment of wakefulness, for, from the movement under her eyelids, and the somnolent gestures of her hands and feet, it seems as if her dreams grow more urgent and intense, as if the life she lives in the closed world of dreams is now about to possess her utterly, as if her small, increasingly reluctant wakenings were an interpretation of some more vital existence, so she is loath to spend even those necessary moments of wakefulness with us, wakings strange as her sleepings. Her marvellous fate - a sleep more lifelike than the living, a dream which consumes the world.' And, sir, ' concluded Fevvers, in a voice that now took on the sombre, majestic tones of a great organ, 'we do believe . . her dream will be the coming century.' And, oh, God . how frequently she weeps! .Angela Carter
About This Quote
The book is The Amber Spyglass, by Philip Pullman. It's about a girl named Lyra who has the ability to see the invisible world, but her father has to hide this from the world at large because of what it may do to people. When Lyra lives with Mrs. Coulter, she finds that Mrs.
Coulter is part of a fly-like species that are the keepers of the truth about the world. They are able to use people's dreams to get answers about the world, but they cannot be seen in their dreams. Lyra realizes that Mrs.
Coulter is dying and she is trying to take her secret with her, but Mrs. Coulter said that she may not make it out alive and Lyra doesn't want anyone else to die because of her secret. That's why she doesn't want anyone to know what she knows.
Source: Nights At The Circus
Some Similar Quotes
- You know you're in love when you can't fall asleep because reality is finally better than your dreams.
- I would like to be the air that inhabits you for a moment only. I would like to be that unnoticed and that necessary.
- Making love with a woman and sleeping with a woman are two separate passions, not merely different but opposite. Love does not make itself felt in the desire for copulation (a desire that extends to an infinite number of women) but in the desire for...
- Sleep my little baby-oh Sleep until you waken When you wake you'll see the world If I'm not mistaken... Kiss a lover Dance a measure, Find your name And buried treasure... Face your life Its pain, Its pleasure, Leave no path untaken.
- I do my best thinking at night when everyone else is sleeping. No interruptions. No noise. I like the feeling of being awake when no one else is.
More Quotes By Angela Carter
- I think I want to be in love with you but I don't know how.
- Those were her best days, although there was always something feckless about her, something so slack and almost fearful in her too frequent smile, so that when you saw Mignon being happy, you always thought: "It can't last." She had the febrile gaiety of a...
- She herself is a haunted house. She does not possess herself; her ancestors sometimes come and peer out of the windows of her eyes and that is very frightening. She has the mysterious solitude of ambiguous states; she hovers in a no-man’s land between life...
- To ride a bicycle is in itself some protection against superstitious fears, since the bicycle is the product of pure reason applied to motion. Geometry at the service of man! Give me two spheres and a straight line and I will show you how far...
- Reading a book is like re-writing it for yourself. You bring to a novel, anything you read, all your experience of the world. You bring your history and you read it in your own terms.