We worship…the powers that speak to our souls, if it seems they do. We do so knowing there is more to the world, and the half-world, and perhaps worlds beyond, than we can grasp. We always knew that. We can’t even stop children from dying, how would we presume to understand the truth of things? Behind things? Does the presence of one power deny another? [p. 176]

My youngest brother had a wonderful schtick from some time in high school, through to graduating medicine. He had a card in his wallet that read, ‘If I am found with amnesia, please give me the following books to read …’ And it listed half a dozen books where he longed to recapture that first glorious sense of needing to find out ‘what happens next’ … the feeling that keeps you up half the night. The feeling that comes before the plot’s been learned.

If this is truly the time that will decide, we have no business refusing people who feel the way we do. No right to decide that they must huddle in their homes waiting to see if they are still slaves or not when the summer ends.

He had a sense—honed by experience—that what he’d contrived might achieve something of the effect he wanted. That, Martinius had always said, was the best any man in this fallible world could expect. [p. 67]

Eyyia?" said her husband, and Eliane bet Danel heard the mangling of her name as music."You sound like a marsh frog," she said, moving to stand before his chair.By the flickering light she saw him smile."Where have you been," she asked. "My dear. I've needed you so much.""Eyyia," he tried again, and stood up. His eyes were black hollows. They would always be hollows.He opened his arms and she moved into the space they made in the world, and laying her head against his chest she permitted herself the almost unimaginable luxury of grief.

He sang one whole verse directly to her, then, in fidelity to the song, he sent his vision inward to where his purest music was always found, and he looked at no one at all as he sang to Eanna herself, a hymn to names and the naming of things.

Bright star of Eanna, forgive me the manner of this, but you are the harbor of my soul’s journeying.

[We let] the universality of fantasy, of once upon a time, allow escapist fiction to be more than just that - to also bring us home.

You have no idea how dearly I wish you were of my blood. My daughter, granddaughter. Will you allow me to take pride in what you are?"-- Sandre to Catriana

Reading is a collaboration between the writer and reader. Both parties must keep that in mind when dealing with a work of fiction.”{Guy Gavriel Kay}

There are no wrong turnings. Only paths we had not known we were meant to walk.

By things so achingly small are lives measured and marred.

What mortal knew the way their fate line would run?

That felt strange. How sharp a rent a handful of moments made in the fabric of a life.

Tigana, let my memory ofyou be like a blade in mysoul.

We cannot know. But sometimes there is kindness, and sometimes there is love.

When I'm all grown up, come what may,I'll build a boat to carry me away

It was different, though, knowing something in your thoughts and then hearing it confirmed, made real, planted in the world like a tree

I didn't ask to be made a princess."This time all three of them laugh, although it is gentle enough."Who chooses their fate?" It is the third one, the tallest. "Who asks to be born into the times that are theirs?""Well, who accepts the world only as it comes to them?" she says, too quickly.

I have been made to realize tonight that there are limits to what I wish to do or see done for any cause.

No man ever truly possesses a woman, anyhow," said Gidas moodily. "He has her body for a time if he's lucky, but only the most fleeting glimpse into her soul." Gidas was a poet, or wanted to be.

The privacy of pride.

She had been a solitary child, and then solitary as a woman, drawn into an orbit of her own that took her away from others, even those who would be her friends.

A hand fought best when it made a fist.

It can be hard to write a skillfully entertaining fiction, but a great book wants to be more, and wants more from us.

Ambitions and dreams put you at a drinking table with unexpected companions. Cups were filled and refilled, making you drunk with the illusion of changing the world.

When you didn't say a lot, he thought, you said the important things.

It had taken skill, tact, an ability to choose friends well, and a great deal of luck... Luck was always part of it, one way or another