Susan Cooper Quotes

29 Sourced Quotes

No, he is not of the Dark. But he is very useful. A man so wrapped in his own ill-will is a gift to the Dark from the earth. It is so easy to give him suitable ideas... Very useful, indeed.

Susan Cooper
So the shortest day came, and the year died, / And everywhere down the centuries of the snow-white world / Came people singing, dancing, / To drive the dark away...

Susan Cooper
Whatever happens, believe that the journey is worth taking, and then you will reach its end.

Susan Cooper
In the end, all it takes is one small action, by one person. One at a time.

Susan Cooper
Any great gift of power or talent is a burden... 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
For Drake is no longer in his hammock, children, nor is Arthur somewhere sleeping, and you may not lie idly expecting the second coming of anybody now, because the world is yours and it is up to you.

Susan Cooper
The snow lay thin and apologetic over the world. That wide grey sweep was the lawn, with the straggling trees of the orchard still dark beyond; the white squares were the roofs of the garage, the old barn, the rabbit hutches, the chicken coops. Further back there were only the flat fields of Dawson's farm, dimly white-striped. All the broad sky was grey, full of more snow that refused to fall. There was no colour anywhere.

Susan Cooper
For ever and ever, we say when we are young, or in our prayers. Twice, we say it. Old One, do we not? For ever and ever... so that a thing may be for ever, a life or a love or a quest, and yet begin again, and be for ever just as before. And any ending that may seem to come is not truly an ending, but an illusion. For Time does not die, Time has neither beginning nor end, and so nothing can end or die that has once had a place in Time.

Susan Cooper
The mindless ferocity of this man, and all those like him, their real loathing born of nothing more solid than insecurity and fear... It was a channel. Will knew that he had been gazing into the channel down which the powers of the Dark, if they gained their freedom, could ride in an instant to complete control of the earth.

Susan Cooper
Bran said, Why should some of the riders of the Dark be dressed all in white and the rest all in black?
Without color.... Will said reflectively. I don't know. 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.

Susan Cooper
Strong as a young lion, pliant as a loving woman, and bitter to the taste, as all enchantment in the end must be.

Susan Cooper
Each wave of men in turn grew peaceful as it grew to know and love the land, so that the Light flourished again. But always the Dark was there, swelling and waning, gaining a new Lord of the Dark whenever a man deliberately chose to be changed into something more dread and powerful than his fellows. Such creatures were not born to their doom, like the Old Ones, but chose it.

Susan Cooper
The future cannot blame the present, just as the present cannot blame the past. The hope is always here, always alive, but only your fierce caring can fan it into a fire to warm the world.

Susan Cooper
But why Latin? demanded Barney.
I don't know, the monks just always used it, that's all, it was one of their things. I suppose it's a religious-sounding kind of language.

Susan Cooper
All knowledge is sacred, but it should not be secret.

Susan Cooper
Will saw the cruelty now as the fierce inevitability of nature. It was not from malice that the Light and the servants of the Light would ever hound the Dark, but from the nature of things.

Susan Cooper
Nearly every tale that men tell of magic and witches and such is born out of foolishness and ignorance and sickness of mind—or is a way of explaining things they do not understand.

Susan Cooper
You have heard me talk of Logres. It was the old name for this country, thousands of years ago; in the old days when the struggle between good and evil was more bitter and open than it is now. That struggle goes on all round us all the time, like two armies fighting. And sometimes one of them seems to be winning and sometimes the other, but neither has ever triumphed altogether. Nor ever will, he added softly to himself, for there is something of each in every man.

Susan Cooper
At the very heart, that is. Other things, like humanity, and mercy, and charity, that most good men hold more precious than all else, they do not come first for the Light. Oh, sometimes they are there; often, indeed. But in the very long run the concern of you people is with the absolute good, ahead of all else. You are like fanatics. Your masters, at any rate. Like the old Crusaders—oh, like certain groups in every belief, though this is not a matter of religion, of course. At the centre of the Light there is a cold white flame, just as at the centre of the Dark there is a great black pit bottomless as the Universe.

Susan Cooper
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.... He laughed gently. Some players would say that is the best kind of theatre there can be.

Susan Cooper
The Land is neither of the Dark nor the Light, nor ever was. Its enchantment was of a separate kind, the magic of the mind and the hand and the eye, that owes no allegiance because it is neither good nor bad. It has no more to do with the behaviour of men, or the great absolutes of the Light and the Dark, than does the blossom of a rose or the curving leap of a fish.

Susan Cooper
Once upon a time... a long time ago... things that happened once perhaps but have been talked about for so long that nobody really knows. And underneath all the bits that people have added the magic swords and lamps they're all about one thing - the good hero fighting the giant or the witch or the wicked uncle. Good against bad. Good against evil.

Susan Cooper
Only the creatures of the earth take from one another, boy. All creatures, but men more than any. Life they take, and liberty, and all that another man may have—sometimes through greed, sometimes through stupidity, but never by any volition but their own. Beware your own race, Bran Davies—they are the only ones who will ever harm you, in the end.

Susan Cooper
He made the quick apologetic grimace that seemed to be as near as he ever came to a smile.

Susan Cooper
But once in a great while he remembered that he had felt pain, a terrible ache in his heart, and he swore he would never let himself feel love for a human again.

Susan Cooper
When the Dark comes rising, six shall turn it back,
Three from the circle, three from the track;
Wood, bronze, iron; water, fire, stone;
Five will return, and one go alone.

Susan Cooper
Nothing is what it seems, boy. Expect nothing and fear nothing, here or anywhere. There's your first lesson.

Susan Cooper
Funny,' Will said, as they picked their way through. 'Things are absolutely awful and yet people look much happier than usual. Look at them all. Bubbling.' 'They are English,' Merriman said. 'Quite right,' said Will's father. 'Splendid in adversity, tedious when safe. Never content, in fact. We're an odd lot….

Susan Cooper
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 will always be, the most dreadful sight in the world.

Susan Cooper