Till We Have Faces

I finally finished "Till We Have Faces." It's a wonderful book with some awesome insights. I would suggest it to anyone looking for a book to read.

Here are some of my favorite quotes:

"The freshness and wetness all about me (I had seen nothing but drought and withered things for many months before my sickness) made me feel that I had misjudged the world; it seemed kind, and laughing, as if its heart also danced. Even my ugliness I could not quite believe in. Who can feel ugly when the heart meets delight? It is as if, somewhere inside, within the hideous face and bony limbs, one is soft, fresh, lissom, and desireable." -- pg. 96

"Don't you think the things people are most ashamed of are the things they can't help?" -- pg. 111

"I had never seen men at their pleasures before: the gobbling, snatching, belching, hiccupping, the greasiness of it all, the bones thrown on the floor, the dogs quarreling under our feet." -- pg. 223-224

"You cannot escape Ungit by going to the deadlands, for she is there also. Die before you die. there is no chance after." -- pg. 279

"No man will love you, though you gave your life for him, unless you have a pretty face. So (might it not be?), the gods will not love you (however you try to pleasure them, and whatever you suffer) unless you have that beauty of soul. In either race, for the love of men or the love of a god, the winners and losers are marked out from birth. We bring our ugliness, in both kinds, with us into the world, with our destiny. How bitter this [is], every ill-favored woman will know. We have all had our dream of some other land, some other world, some other way of giving the prizes which would bring us in as the conquerers: leave the smooth, rounded limbs, and the little pink and white faces, and the hair like banished gold, far behind; their day ended, and ours come." -- pg. 282-283

"There was utter silence all around me. And now for the first time i knew what I had been doing. While i was reading, it had, once and again, seemed strange to me that the reading took so long; for the book was a small one. Now I knew that I had been reading it over and over - perhaps a dozen times. I would have read it forever, quick as i could, starting the first word against almost before the last was out of my mouth, if the judge had not stopped me. And the voice I read it in was strange to my ears. There was given to me a certainty that this, at last, was my real voice." -- pg. 292

"The complaint was the answer. To have heard myself making it was the answer." -- pg. 294

"I know not, Lord, why you utter no answer. You are yourself the answer. Before your face questions die away. What other answer would suffice? Only words, words; to be led out to battle against other words. Long did I hate you, long did I fear you." -- pg. 308

There are so many questions...so many questions in life. I wish I had some answers.