I've been working hard at assuming Court polish, but the more I learn about what really goes on behind the pretty voices and waving fans and graceful bows, the more I comprehend that what is really said matters little, so long as the manner in which it is said pleases. I understand it, but I don't like it. Were I truly influential, then I would halt this foolishness that decrees that in Court one cannot be sick; that to admit you are sick is really to admit to political or social or romantic defeat; that to admit to any emotions usually means one really feels the opposite. It is a terrible kind of falsehood that people can only claim feelings as a kind of social weapon.

Despite how entertaining certain stories were, at the bottom of every item of gossip there was someone getting hurt.

No, I don't think I could fall in love with him, handsome though he is, because I don't accept any of that huff he gives me about my great beauty and all that. I'd have to trust a man's words before I could love him. I think.

A horse blanket, Mel?I remembered what I was wearing. 'It tore in half when Hrani tried washing it. She was going to mend it. This piece was too small for a horse, but it was just right fo

If more people recognized the difference between friendship and mere attraction, or how love must partake of both to prosper, I expect there'd be more happy people." "And a lot fewer poems and plays," I said, laughing as I splashed about in the scented water.

Angry men with pointy things sent to secure a foreign city are pretty much alike anywhere. That's what I've heard. So far nothing's convinced me different.

Except. What is normal at any given time? We change just as the seasons change, and each spring brings new growth. So nothing is ever quite the same.

When people first discover beauty, they tend to linger. Even if they don’t at first recognize it for what it is.

When in doubt, be ridiculous.

Finally someone takes me seriously enough to ask for my word of honor, and it’s a villain.

What's it really like to always be the prettiest person in a room? Dos it mean you're always acting as if in a play, because no one stops looking at you?''Life is a play, isn't it?

What if feeling good only comes after you destroy someone you hate?''That's not good, that's triumph,

If everywhere you go everyone watches you, and wants you, can you truly be yourself?

Act'. How many good people do you really know? I discount those who mouth out platitudes for the edification of the young, and who truly are 'good', whatever that means?"What a strange subject, and from such a strange person!"Everyone I know is a mixture, some with more good than bad, and it varies on different days,

The only noise now was the rain, pattering softly with the magnificent indifference of nature for the tangled passions of humans.

Memory warps time, as it does the sights and sounds and smells of reality; for what shapes it is emotion, which can twist what seems clear, just as the surface of a pond seems to bend the stick thrust into the water.

Why is it the songs all end with the good people winning, but in life they don't?"They don't make songs when the good lose," I muttered. "They make war chants against the bad. So there won't be any songs for us.

No, my career as a warrior princess, short as it had been, was over, I thought morosely. Violence only works if you're good at it. Otherwise, it hurts too much.

But I will never ask anyone from our village-from any village in Tlanth-to risk his or her life unless I'm willing to myself.

Who in the universe halts when the enemy tells them to?

If your opponent is better armed and has longer reach, then surprise is your only ally. And then you'd better hope he's half asleep.

It would have been funny if I had been an observer and not a participant, an idea that gave me a disconcerting insight into gossip. As I walked beside the silent Tamara, I realized that despite how entertaining certain stories were, at the bottom of every item of gossip there was someone getting hurt.