{"author":"A.S. Peterson","author_id":"A.S.+Peterson","total_quotes":16,"quotes":[{"text":"Though he wouldn’t take it or offer it back, she gave. She squeezed it into him and held it there. She accepted him. She loved him in his wretchedness, kissed his ragged cheek, and called him /father./.","author":"A.S. Peterson","tags":["daughter","father","forgiveness","forgiving-your-father","love"],"id":2750,"author_id":"A.S.+Peterson"},{"text":"She dove, plunging fully beneath the surface and came up again in tears. Rivulets ran from her face, and the sun ignited them each, transforming them, even amid her sorrow, into gilded runnels set with a diamond shine.","author":"A.S. Peterson","tags":["beauty","beauty-in-sorrow","beauty-in-suffering","grief","sorrow","swimming","tears"],"id":11825,"author_id":"A.S.+Peterson"},{"text":"Turn it beautiful. His words came faintly at first, but they came again and again, always softly, always with the insistence of an elder commanding wisdom. Turn it all to beauty. She walked to the rail. When she turned and sat upon it, she heard a sailor in the crowd murmur that she might play them a tune. She hoped he was right. She needed the voices to be wrong. Fin raised the instrument to the cleft of her neck and closed her eyes. She emptied her mind and let herself be carried back to her earliest memory, the first pain she ever knew: the knowledge that her parents didn’t want her. The despair of rejection coursed through her. It fathered a knot of questions that bound her, enveloped her. Waves of uncertainty and frailty shook her to the bones. Her body quivered with anger and hopelessness. She reeled on the edge of a precipice. She wanted to scream or to throw her fists but she held it inside; she struggled to control it. She fought to subjugate her pain, but it grew. It welled up; it filled her mind. When she could hold it no more, exhausted by defiance and wearied by years of pretending not to care, Bartimaeus’s words surrounded her. Got to turn it beautiful. She dropped her defenses. She let weakness fill her. She accepted it. And the abyss yawned. She tottered over the edge and fell. The forces at war within her raced down her arms and set something extraordinary in motion; they became melody and harmony: rapturous, golden. Her fingers coaxed the long-silent fiddle to life. They danced across the strings without hesitation, molding beauty out of the miraculous combination of wood, vibration, and emotion. The music was so bright she felt she could see it. The poisonous voices were outsung. Notes raged out of her in a torrent. She had such music within her that her bones ached with it, the air around her trembled with it, her veins bled it. The men around fell still and silent. Some slipped to the deck and sat enraptured like children before a travelling bard.","author":"A.S. Peterson","tags":["abandonment","beauty","depression","despair","fiddle","music","orphan","pain","redemption","suffering"],"id":18365,"author_id":"A.S.+Peterson"},{"text":"In all the vastness of the world, the deepest adventure is not of war or mortal danger, but of heart, of soul, of the infinite discovery of a beloved other.","author":"A.S. Peterson","tags":["adventure","heart","life","soul","the-meaning-of-life","the-world","war"],"id":21225,"author_id":"A.S.+Peterson"},{"text":"Don’t seem right, do it?” said Topper. “It ain’t right,” replied Fin. “Not at all.” Jack guzzled his wine and wiped at his beard. “Mayhap it’s right and we can’t see it...” Topper scratched his bald head and hummed in thought. “Still don’t seem right,” he proclaimed when he’d hummed enough. Jack dropped his flagon to the deck and it rolled away clattering. “Yeah, well, what seems ain’t always what is.","author":"A.S. Peterson","tags":["finite-perspective","justice","life","providence","right-and-wrong","seeing-is-believing"],"id":70157,"author_id":"A.S.+Peterson"},{"text":"What do you know of the Knights?” he asked. Fin shrugged. “I thought knights were only in children’s stories until a few days ago.” Jeannot smiled. “A man could do worse than to live in the stories of a child. There is, perhaps, no better remembrance.” “Until the child grows up and finds out the stories aren’t true. You might be knights, but I don’t see any shining armor,” Fin said. Jeannot stopped near the gate of the auberge and faced her. “Each time a story is told, the details and accuracies and facts are winnowed away until all that remains is the heart of the tale. If there is truth at the heart of it, a tale may live forever. As a knight, there is no dragon to slay, no maiden to rescue, and no miraculous grail to uncover. A knight seeks the truth beneath these things, seeks the heart. We call this the corso. The path set before us. The race we must run.","author":"A.S. Peterson","tags":["children-s-stories","corso","fables","fairy-tales","knights","life","myth","mythology","storytelling","the-knights-of-malta","the-meaning-of-life","the-purpose-of-life","truth"],"id":92356,"author_id":"A.S.+Peterson"},{"text":"These times of war and ruin will pass, and by love, you will be renewed and all terrible things shall be undone. Do you hear me, Fin Button?” Jeannot pushed the hair from her face and though shaking yet, Fin nodded. “In the name of God I drew you from the water, and in his name shall you be delivered home.","author":"A.S. Peterson","tags":["beauty","emotion","god","home","hope","redemption","suffering"],"id":102545,"author_id":"A.S.+Peterson"},{"text":"She closed her eyes and began to weave a song. She abandoned the familiar melodies she’d played so many times before and went in search of something new, no longer wanting a song fed on pain or guilt. She needed one that could replace those wounds with strength, with resolve, with confidence. She needed a song that could not only assuage, but heal and build anew. The notes stumbled around the room, tripping over beds and empty stools and hollow men sleeping. They warbled and fell, haphazard, chaotic, settling without flight. Fin’s forehead creased and she persisted. She let her fingers wander, reached out with her mind. She chased the fleeting song she’d glimpsed once before. In Madeira she’d felt a hint of it: something wild, untameable, a thing sprung whole and flawless from the instant of creation.","author":"A.S. Peterson","tags":["courage","fiddle","healing","hope","longing","music","musician","violin"],"id":124192,"author_id":"A.S.+Peterson"},{"text":"She will at least be decently clothed as she waits. Tomorrow I shall find her a brush and powder and whatever else a woman of her dignity requires.” Fin rolled her eyes. “Is ‘dignity’ what you call it?” Jeannot offered her his hand. Fin took it and pulled herself up from the deck. She was barefoot and her pants and shirt were stained with everything from blood to oakum to lampblack. She stretched her shirt out between her hands and considered its mottle of stains. “I’m not dignified?” she asked. When Fin looked up, Jeannot had an eyebrow cocked high and one side of his mouth was curled in amusement. “Where you are concerned, much requires redefinition.","author":"A.S. Peterson","tags":["dignity","witty-banter","womanhood"],"id":158378,"author_id":"A.S.+Peterson"},{"text":"She chased the song like a hound fast upon a scent. She pursued it through a forest primeval: a dark land planted with musical staves and rests and grown thick with briars of annotation. On she went and on still until she caught sight of the song ahead of her, fleeting and sly. “I see it,” she said aloud, though she didn’t mean to.","author":"A.S. Peterson","tags":["fiddle","longing","music","musician","violin"],"id":200920,"author_id":"A.S.+Peterson"}],"pagination":{"page":1,"page_size":10,"total":16,"pages":2,"next":"?page=2\u0026page_size=10"}}