“The land is all too shallow
It is painted on the sky
And trembles like the wind-shook rain
When the Raven King passed by”
Source: Jonathan Strange i pan Norrell. Tom 3
Help us to complete the source, original and additional information
Susanna Clarke 29
British author 1959Related quotes

'Lament of the Frontier Guard' (From Cathay, 1915)
“When I die
let the black rag fly
raven falling
from the sky.”
"Black Flag" in Collected Poems (1983)
The Mask of Apollo (1966)
Context: Christianity and Islam have changed irrevocably the moral reflexes of the world. The philosopher Herakleitos said with profound truth that you cannot step twice into the same river. The perpetual stream of human nature is formed into ever-changing shallows, eddies, falls and pools by the land over which it passes. Perhaps the only real value of history lies in considering this endlessly varied play between the essence and the accidents.

“Like a trembling hind pursued by a Hyrcanian tigress, or like a pigeon that checks her flight when she sees a hawk in the sky, or like a hare that dives into the thicket at sight of the eagle hovering with outstretched wings in the cloudless sky.”
...ceu tigride cerva
Hyrcana cum pressa tremit, vel territa pennas
colligit accipitrem cernens in nube columba,
aut dumis subit, albenti si sensit in aethra
librantem nisus aquilam, lepus.
Book V, lines 280–284
Punica
Se tout le ciel estoit de feuilles d'or,
Et li airs fust estellés d'argent fin,
Et tous les vens fussent pleins de tresor,
Et les gouttes fussent toutes florin
D'eaue de mer, et pleust soir et matin
Richesses, biens, honeurs, joiaux, argent,
Tant que rempli en fust toute la gent,
La terre aussi en fust mouillee toute,
Et fusse nu, – de tel pluie et tel vent
Ja sur mon cors n'en cherroit une goutte.
"Se tout le ciel estoit de feuilles d'or", line 1; text and translation from Brian Woledge (ed.) The Penguin Book of French Verse, 1: To the Fifteenth Century (Harmondsworth: Penguin, [1961] 1968) p. 236.

Source: undated quotes, Renoir – his life and work, 1975, p. 196 : on painting landscape in open air, to art-buyer George Riviere.

“Sometimes when it rains, it's not that simple, when the sky has reasons to cry.”
"What it Means to be a Human Being" Speech (2001)