50 Important Quotes in ‘We Have Always Lived in the Castle’

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#11: Slowly the pattern of our days grew, and shaped itself into a happy life.

• Techniques: Metaphor and imagery
• Characters: Merricat
• Chapter: Ten

#12: The flames of rage and loneliness that burn through her smirk: flames that can’t be put out. 

• Techniques: Metaphor, imagery and personification
• Characters: Charlotte and the Detective
• Chapter: Grove

#13: I am a coast person. I don’t like being hemmed by these trees. 

• Techniques: Metaphor and imagery
• Characters: Charlotte
• Chapter: Grove

#14: The thought of a ring around my finger always made me feel tied tight, because rings had no openings to get out of.

• Techniques: Foreshadowing and symbolism
• Characters: Merricat
• Chapter: Six

#15: I thought of my mother’s jewels, since this was a day of sparkling things, but they might not be strong on a dull day, and Constance would be angry if I took them out of the box where they belonged, when she herself had decided against it.

• Techniques: Foreshadowing
• Characters: Merricat
• Chapter: Five

Supernatural and Mystery

#16: On the moon we wore feathers in our hair, and rubies on our hands. On the moon we had gold spoons.

• Techniques: Imagery, symbolism, parallelism, hyperbole and irony
• Characters: Merricat
• Chapter: Five

#17: I remember that I stood on the library steps holding my books and looking for a minute at the soft hinted green in the branches against the sky and wishing, as I always did, that I could walk home across the sky instead of through the village.

• Techniques: Imagery, metaphor, symbolism, repetition and pathos
• Characters: Merricat
• Chapter: One

#18: All cat stories start with this statement: “My mother, who was the first cat, told me this…”

• Techniques: Allusion, metafiction, humour and characterization
• Characters: Merricat
• Chapter: Four

#19: Fate intervened. Some of us, that day, she led inexorably through the gates of death. Some of us, innocent and unsuspecting, took, unwillingly, that one last step to oblivion. Some of us took very little sugar.

• Techniques: Personification, parallelism, foreshadowing, irony and humor
• Characters: Uncle Julian
• Chapter: Two

#20: All our land was enriched with my treasures buried in it, thickly inhabited just below the surface with my marbles and my teeth and my colored stones, all perhaps turned to jewels by now, held together under the ground in a powerful taut web which never loosened, but held fast to guard us.

• Techniques: Imagery, metaphor, symbolism, personification and foreshadowing
• Characters: Merricat
• Chapter: Three

#21: I was wondering about my eyes; one of my eyes–-the left–-saw everything golden and yellow and orange, and the other eye saw shades of blue and grey and green; perhaps one eye was for daylight and the other was for night. If everyone in the world saw different colors from different eyes there might be a great many new colors still to be invented

• Techniques: Imagery, metaphor, symbolism and personification
• Characters: Merricat
• Chapter: Eight

#22: We were going to the long field which today looked like an ocean, although I had never seen an ocean; the grass was moving in the breeze and the cloud shadows passed back and forth and the trees in the distance moved.

• Techniques: Imagery and symbolism
• Characters: Merricat
• Chapter: Four

#23: I had buried all my baby teeth as they came out one by one and perhaps someday they would grow as dragons.

• Techniques: Metaphor, imagery, symbolism and foreshadowing
• Characters: Merricat
• Chapter: Three

#24: I am living on the moon, I told myself, I have a little house all by myself on the moon.

• Techniques: Imagery and Symbolism
• Characters: Merricat
• Chapter: One

#25: The last time I glanced at the library books on the kitchen shelf they were more than five months overdue, and I wondered whether I would have chosen differently if I had known that these were the last books, the ones which would stand forever on our kitchen shelf.

• Techniques: Symbolism
• Characters: Merricat
• Chapter: One

#26: On the moon we spoke a soft, liquid tongue, and sang in the starlight, looking down on the dead dried world.

• Techniques: Imagery, symbolism and hyperbole
• Characters: Merricat
• Chapter: One

#27: Perhaps someday they would grow as dragons

• Techniques: Hyperbole and imagery
• Characters: Merricat
• Chapter: Three

Isolation and Hostility

#28: I can’t help it when people are frightened, I always want to frighten them more.

• Techniques: Irony, characterisation, conflict, repetition, tone
• Characters: Merricat
• Chapter: Two

#29: We eat the year away. We eat the spring and the summer and the fall. We wait for something to grow and then we eat it.

• Techniques: Metaphor, personification, symbolism, alliteration, and irony
• Characters: Merricat
• Chapter: Three

#30:  I was pretending that I did not speak their language; on the moon we spoke a soft, liquid tongue, and sang in the starlight, looking down on the dead dried world.

• Techniques: Metaphor, imagery, symbolism, parallelism and contrast
• Characters: Merricat
• Chapter: One

#31: I’m going to put death in all their food and watch them die.

• Techniques: Personification, foreshadowing, irony, imagery and antagonism
• Characters: Merricat
• Chapter: Eight

#32: Poor strangers, they have so much to be afraid of.

• Techniques: Irony and empathy
• Characters: Merricat
• Chapter: Ten

#33: There had not been this many words sounded in our house for a long time, and it was going to take a while to clean them out.

• Techniques: Metaphor, personification, imagery, symbolism and hyperbole
• Characters: Merricat
• Chapter: Eight

#34: I wonder if I could eat a child if I had the chance.

• Techniques: Hyperbole
• Characters: Merricat
• Chapter: Ten

#35: I have often thought that with any luck at all I could have been born a werewolf, because the two middle fingers on both my hands are the same length, but I have had to be content with what I had.

• Techniques: Humor, hyperbole, irony and imagery
• Characters: Merricat
• Chapter: One

#36: On the moon we have everything. Lettuce, and pumpkin pie and Amanita phalloides. We have cat-furred plants and horses dancing with their wings. All the locks are solid and tight, and there are no ghosts.

• Techniques: Juxtaposition
• Characters: Merricat
• Chapter: Six

#37: When Jim Donell thought of something to say he said it as often and in as many ways as possible, perhaps because he had very few ideas and had to wring each one dry.

• Techniques: Irony
• Characters: Merricat
• Chapter: One

#38: Merricat, said Connie, would you like to go to sleep? Down in the boneyard ten feet deep!

• Techniques: Imagery and symbolism
• Characters: Merricat and Connie
• Chapter: One

#39: I wondered about going down to the creek, but I had no reason to suppose that the creek would even be there, since I never visited it on Tuesday mornings.

• Techniques: Imagery and symbolism
• Characters: Merricat
• Chapter: Six

#40: I shall commence, I think, with a slight exaggeration and go on from there into an outright lie.

• Techniques: Irony, humor, foreshadowing and satire
• Characters: Uncle Julian and Constance
• Chapter: Five

#41: I decided that I would choose three powerful words, words of strong protection, and so long as these great words were never spoken aloud no change would come.

• Techniques: Foreshadowing
• Characters: Merricat
• Chapter: Three

#42: It was as though the people needed the ugliness of the village, and fed on it. The houses and the stores seemed to have been set up in contemptuous haste to provide shelter for the drab and the unpleasant.

• Techniques: Imagery, metaphor and social commentary
• Characters: Merricat
• Chapter: One

#43: I disliked having a fork pointed at me and I disliked the sound of the voice never stopping; I wished he would put food on the fork and put it into his mouth and strangle himself.

• Technqiues: Imagery and hyperbole
• Characters: Merricat
• Chapter: Eight

#44: I never turned; it was enough to feel them all there without looking into their flat grey faces with hating eyes.

• Techniques: Imagery, symbolism and parallelism
• Characters: Merricat
• Chapter: One

#45: I wish you were all dead, I thought, and longed to say it out loud

• Techniques: Hyperbole
• Characters: Merricat
• Chapter: One

#46: Constance said, “Never let them see that you care,” and “If you pay attention they’ll only get worse,” and probably it was true, but I wished they were dead.

• Techniques: Hyperbole
• Characters: Merricat and Constance
• Chapter: One

#47: I would have liked to come into the grocery some morning and see them all, even the Elberts and the children, lying there crying with the pain of dying

• Techniques: Hyperbole and imagery
• Characters: Merricat
• Chapter: One

#48: I would help myself to groceries, I thought, stepping over their bodies, taking whatever I fancied from the shelves, and go home, with perhaps a kick for Mrs. Donell while she lay there

• Techniques: Imagery and hyperbole
• Characters: Merricat
• Chapter: One

#49: I was never sorry when I had thoughts like this; I only wished they would come true.

• Techniques: Symbolism
• Characters: Merricat
• Chapter: One

#50: Therefore it was not pride that took me into the village twice a week, or even stubbornness, but only the simple need for books and food.

• Techniques: Symbolism
• Characters: Merricat
• Chapter: One