Sunset Song

In honour of World Book Day, one of my favourites, Sunset Song by Lewis Grassic Gibbon. I've owned this book since I was about fourteen and have re-read it every few years since then. The following paragraph in particular has always resonated with me (being someone who moved from a rural area to the city for university, who misses the sea and the hills, and who speaks in a completely different way when she goes home!):

"So that was Chris and her reading and schooling, two Chrisses there were that fought for her heart and tormented her. You hated the land and the coarse speak of the folk and learning was brave and fine one day and the next you'd waken with the peewits crying across the hills, deep and deep, crying in the heart of you and the smell of the earth in your face, almost you'd cry for that , the beauty of it and the sweetness of the Scottish land and skies. You saw their faces in firelight, father's and mother's and the neighbours', before the lamps lit up, tired and kind, faces dear and close to you, you wanted the words they'd known and used, forgotten in the far-off youngness of their lives, Scots words to tell to your heart, how they wrung it and held it, the toil of their days and unendingly their fight. And the next minute that passed from you, you were English, back to the English words so sharp and clean and true - for a while, for a while, till they slid so smooth from your throat you knew they could never say anything that was worth the saying at all."