Category: the dark is rising

“The snow lay thin and apologetic over the world. That wide grey sweep was the lawn, with the…”

“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, The Dark Is Rising.

“And I’d grown up not just in England, but in a land of fantasy. Though I was the kind of child who…”

“And I’d grown up not just in England, but in a land of fantasy. Though I was the kind of child who (like you, perhaps) read anything and everything, my true love was deep make-believe, from fairy stories to all the buried archetypes of folk tale and myth. Then when I went to the University of Oxford to study English literature, two professors named Tolkien and Lewis made sure that our syllabus stopped at the year 1832, so that we were soaked in the earliest fantasies of all: Beowulf, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, Malory’s Le Morte d'Arthur, Spencer’s The Faerie Queene. As a friend of mine said, ‘They taught us to believe in dragons.’”

- Susan Cooper, preface to the The Dark is Rising.

“For Drake is no longer in his hammock, children, nor is Arthur somewhere sleeping, and you may not…”

“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. Now especially since man has the strength to destroy the world, it is the responsibility of man to keep it alive, in all its beauty and marvelous joy.”

- Susan Cooper, Silver on the Tree.