10 Quotes by Sarah C. Patten

The travelers’ dances were wild and carefree and, summer after summer, Penelope learned to reveal her deepest truths through movement. The choreography of freedom had a hypnotic sway.

Betrayal, it was the most solitary word of all, beyond abandonment, beyond torture, beyond hatred. It was the human act that cut the most deeply, splintering north from south and east from west.

Perhaps the loss of your voice has more to do with your heart than your throat. The grotto's water can only fix wounds of the flesh that are unhealed, not wounds of the heart. Trust me. I have tried to heal my heart there many times.

Think, Penelope, Fulcanelli blurted out. We don't have time for this. You see, humans are the weakest of all the animals because we so rarely see a clear purpose for ourselves.

They had spent whole summers collecting other ingredients from the forest— micah, chalk, the resin of a pine tree, lichen, some wax, and a drop of dew. After a long and belabored search, Penelope had even discovered some locust wings in the piles of dust beneath her father’s unkempt desk. She had been mixing strange scientific and alchemical potions with her father for as long as she could remember.

He touched Penelope’s hand, confiscating her gaze for a private, burning second, making her feel taller and more beautiful. 'Is this what love does?' She wondered.

It's so easy for humans to blame God for their misery, Manfri said. Really, it's mostly of their own making.

It was a simple truth. She thought of Lucien and of his love of Isaac Newton. She remember Newton’s deeply held mistrust of people. He was an introvert and a private man who never traveled far from his birthplace. While Newton experienced so much celestial wonder, he mostly kept to himself. In fact, it was believed that throughout his life, he never fell in love.

Happiness was not the only virtue. After all, loneliness wrote great symphonies and could paint masterpieces. It was the imperfections and miseries that necessitated the magic.