Hannah Kent Quotes

To know what a person has done, and to know who a person is, are very different things.

As though prayer could simply pluck sin out. But any woman knows that a thread, once woven, is fixed in place; the only way to smooth a mistake is to let it all unravel.

In Iceland, you can see the contours of the mountains wherever you go, and the swell of the hills, and always beyond that the horizon. And theres this strange thing: youre never sort of hidden; you always feel exposed in that landscape. But it makes it very beautiful as well.

Cruel birds, ravens, but wise. And creatures should be loved for their wisdom if they cannot be loved for kindness.

I first heard the story of Agnes Magnusdottir when I was an exchange student in the north of Iceland.

I don't want to be remembered, I want to be here!

A bubble of fear passes up my spine. It's the feeling of standing on ice and suddenly hearing it crack under your weight - both thrilling and terrifying together.

No doves come from ravens’ eggs

How can I say what it was like to breathe again? I felt newborn. I staggered in the light of the world and took deep gulps of fresh sea air. It was late in the day: the wet mouth of the afternoon was full on my face. My soul blossomed in that brief moment as they led me out of doors. I fell, my skirts in the mud, and I turned my face upwards as if in prayer. I could have wept from the relief of light.

If I believed everything everyone had ever told me about my family I'd be a sight more miserable than I am now

I preferred to read than talk with the others.

I've been half-frozen for so long, it is as though the winter has set up home in my marrow.

When did a smile ever get anyone into trouble?

It’s not fair. People claim to know you through the things you’ve done, and not by sitting down and listening to you speak for yourself.

People speak of the fear of the blank canvas as though it is a temporary hesitation, a trembling moment of self-doubt. For me it was more like being abducted from my bed by a clown, thrust into a circus arena with a wicker chair, and told to tame a pissed-off lion in front of an expectant crowd.

So lonely I make friends with the ravens that prey on lambs.

Endless days of dark indoors and hateful glances are enough to set a rime on anyone's bones.

The gloom encroaches upon my mind, and my heart flutters like a bird held fast in a fist.

Memories shift like loose snow in a wind, or are a chorale of ghosts all talking over one another. There is only ever a sense that what is real to me is not real to others, and to share a memory with someone is to risk sullying my belief in what has truly happened.

It was only later that I suffocated under the weight of his arguments, and his darker thoughts articulated. It was only later that our tongues produced landslides, that we become caught in the cracks between what we said and what we meant, until we could not find each other, did not trust the words in our own mouths.

I have a deep and ongoing love of Iceland, particular the landscape, and when writing Burial Rites, I was constantly trying to see whether I could distill its extraordinary and ineffable qualities into a kind of poetry.

...dreadful birds, dressed in red with breasts of silver buttons, and cocked heads and sharp mouths, looking for guilt like berries on a bush.

I have made a mistake. They condemn me to death and I ask for a boy to coach me for it. A red-headed boy, who gobbles his buttered bread and toddles to his horse with the seat of his pants wet, this is the young man they hope will get me on my knees, full of prayer. This is the young man I hope will be able to help me, although with what and how I cannot think.

The treachery of a friend is worse than that of a foe.