Kristin Cashore quotes:

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  • Katsa didn't think a person should thank her for not causing pain. Causing joy was worthy of thanks, and causing pain worthy of disgust. Causing neither was neither, it was nothing, and nothing didn't warrant thanks.

  • All right," Clara said. "We have our swordsman, so let's get moving. Brigan, could you attempt, at least, to make yourself presentable? I know this is a war, but the rest of us are trying to pretend it's a party.

  • I truly thought I might hurt that man," he said, "very badly." "I didn't know you were capable of such bad temper." "Apparently I am.

  • Everyone wants a bit of something beautiful." Clara said. "Among the wealthy it's the rare skins and furs sold on the black market. With everyone else it's whatever they find clogging the gutters or killed in the housetraps. It al amounts to the same thing, of course, but the rich people feel better knowing they've paid a fortune.

  • She didn't want to go far, just out of the trees so she could see the stars. They always eased her loneliness. She thought of them as beautiful creatures, burning and cold; each solitary, and bleak, and silent like her.

  • Living is too hard right now. Dying is easy. Let me die.

  • I know this is war, but the rest of us are trying to pretend it's a party.

  • A book that bores me to tears is a book that neglects character building and quality of prose.

  • He made her drunk, this man made her drunk; and every time his eyes flashed into hers she could not breathe.

  • Well then," Roen said briskly, "are you sleeping?""Yes.""Come now. A mother can tell when her son lies. Are you eating?""No," Brigan said gravely"I've not eaten in two months. It's a hunger strike to protest the spring flooding in the south.""Gracious," Roen said, reaching for the fruit bowl"Have an apple, dear.

  • When Brocker arrived he took her hands and held them to his face and cried into them."

  • That was a perfectly reasonable explanation," she said grumpily. "Perhaps my advisers don't lie to me." "Isn't that what you'd want?" asked Giddon. "Well, yes, but it doesn't elucidate my puzzle!" "If I may say so, Lady Queen," said Giddon, "it's not always easy to follow your conversation." "Oh, Giddon," she said, sighing. "If it's any comfort, I don't follow it either.

  • But you're better than I am, Katsa. And it doesn't humiliate me. It humbles me. But it doesn't humiliate me.

  • Katsa sat in the darkness of the Sunderan forest and understood three truths. She loved Po. She wanted Po. And she could never be anyone's but her own.

  • Katsa and Po were trying to drown each other and, judging from their hoots of laughter, enjoying it immensely.

  • Teddy grinned again. 'Truths are dangerous,' he said. -'Then why are you writing them in a book?' -'To catch them between the pages,' said Teddy, 'and trap them before they disappear.' -'If they're dangerous, why not let them disappear?' -'Because when truths disappear, they leave behind blank spaces, and that is also dangerous.

  • ...when truths disappear, they leave behind blank spaces, and that is also dangerous.

  • The kingdoms' people were at the mercy of the natures of those who rose to be their rulers. It was a gamble, and the current generation did not make for a winning hand.

  • Brigan threw his head back and smiled at the sky. "Well said, Lady. The world may be falling to pieces, but at least the lot of us can have a bath.

  • They seemed no closer to the tops of the peaks that rose before them. It was only by looking back, to the forest far below, that she knew they'd climbed.

  • A man who fights you as he does is no better than an opportunist and no worse than a thug.

  • Katsa turned to Po with tears in her eyes. 'He'll be so angry.' 'He won't stay angry forever.' 'Won't he?' she said. 'People do sometimes.' 'Do they?' he said. 'Reasonable people? I hope that's not true.' Katsa gave him a funny look, but didn't answer. Resumed hugging herself and kicking things.

  • When a monster stopped behaving like a monster, did it stop being a monster? Did it become something else?

  • What are you grinning at?" Katsa demanded for the third or fourth time. "Is the ceiling about to cave in on my head or something? You look like we're both on the verge of an enormous joke." "Katsa, only you would consider the collapse of the ceiling a good joke.

  • How absurd it was that in all seven kingdoms, the weakest and most vulnerable of people - girls, women - went unarmed and were taught nothing of fighting, while the strong were trained to the highest reaches of their skill.

  • He laughed. "I know you're teasing me. And you should know I'm not easily humiliated. You may hunt for my food, and pound me every time we fight, and protect me when we're attacked, if you like. I'll thank you for it.

  • It seems better to me for a child to have these skills and never use them, than not have them and one day need them," she said.

  • Our own story is even more important for us to know than history.

  • If we're to be judged by our parents and grandparents, then we all may as well impale ourselves upon jagged bits of rock.

  • I hear you're supposed to be good at manipulating people. Try a little harder to make me like you, all right? I'm the queen. Your life will be nicer if I like you."

  • I wouldn't marry Giddon to save my life," Katsa said. "Not even to save yours." "Well." Raffin's eyes were full of laughter. "I'd leave that part out.

  • Sit, Your High Majestic Lord Princes," she said. She yanked a chair from the table and sat herself down. "You're in fine temper," Raffin said. "Your hair is blue," Katsa snapped back.

  • I'll teach you how to defend yourself, how to maim a man. We can use Po as a model.' 'Wonderful,' Po said. 'It's quite boring really, the way you beat me to death with your hands and feet, Katsa. It'll be refreshing to have you come at me with a knife.

  • I'm not such a bad fighter myself," Skye said. Po exploded with laughter. "Oh, fight him, Katsa. Please fight him. I can't imagine a more entertaining diversion.

  • He considered her seriously. "Well. And that's easy," he said. "My Grace will protect me from him, And I'll protect you. You'll be safe with me, Katsa.

  • Hidden yourself in a hole and dared to burden no one with your grievous friendship? I will have friends, Katsa. I will have a life, even though I carry this burden.

  • Katsa watched the long grass moving around them. The wind pushed it, attacked it, struck it in one place and then another. It rose and fell and rose again. It flowed, like water.

  • Katsa now sat calmly on the stomach of her vanquished foe. "He was handsome," said said. Po moaned. "Was he beat-to-a-pulp handsome, or perhaps just push-down-a-flight-of-stairs handsome?" "I would not push a seventy six year old man down a flight of stairs," said Katsa indignantly.

  • I'd like to restrain from cruelity and not be thanked." ~ Katsa

  • Helda's been trying to impress me with the embroidery on the sheets. One more minute and I thought I might use them to hang myself." "My mother did the embroidery," Bittterblue said. Katsa clapped her mouth shut and glared at Helda. "Thank you, Helda, for mentioning that detail.

  • To Garan's credit, the treatment of Dellian prisoners did change after that. One particularly laconic man, after a session in which Fire learned positively nothing, thanked her for it specifically. "Best dungeons I ever been in," he said, chewing on a toothpick. "Wonderful," Garan grumbled when he had gone. "We'll grow a reputation for our kindness to lawbreakers.

  • You're good at love," she said simply, because it seemed to her that it was true. "I'm not so good at love. I'm like a barbed creature. I push everyone I love away." He shrugged. "I don't mind you pushing me away if it means you love me, little sister.

  • As he left to answer the call, she heard him exclaiming in wonderment on the rise. "Rocks, Nash. Is that a river mare out there? Do you see her? Have you ever laid eyes on a more gorgeous creature?

  • Danzhol. The one with the marriage proposal and the objections to the town charter in central Monsea. "Bacon," Bitterblue muttered. "Bacon!" she repeated, then carefully made her way up the spiral stairs.

  • I've always been led to believe that the ultimate goal for an author is the movie deal. Now I understand that the movie deal is merely a MEANS TO A MUCH HIGHER END: NAIL POLISH.

  • I push everyone I love away." He shrugged. "I don't mind you pushing me away if it means you love me, little sister.

  • Well then, Roen said briskly, are you sleeping?Yes.Come now. A mother can tell when her son lies. Are you eating?No, Brigan said gravelyI've not eaten in two months. It's a hunger strike to protest the spring flooding in the south.Gracious, Roen said, reaching for the fruit bowlHave an apple, dear.

  • For a moment, it was almost as if they were friends again.

  • Fire looked into his quiet eyes, touched his dear familiar face and considered the question.

  • She didn't know what would happen because of this. But she knew that today, she would hurt no one. She threw back her blankets and though only of today.

  • From the warmth of her fondness for her horse she constructed a fragile and changeable thing that almost resembled courage. She hoped it would be enough.

  • She wanted to cause him pain for taking a place in her heart she wouldn't have given him if she'd known the truth.

  • I wonder if it's meant to be punishment for something one can't forgive oneself for. Or an external expression, Lady Queen, of an internal pain? Or perhaps it's a way to realise that you actually do want to stay alive.

  • While I was looking the other way your fire went outLeft me with cinders to kick into dustWhat a waste of the wonder you wereIn my living fire I will keep your scorn and mineIn my living fire I will keep your heartache and mineAt the disgrace of a waste of a life

  • Lady Queen," he said, "You've given me all I want. You're the queen a librarian dreams of.

  • Every configuration of people is an entirely new universe unto itself.

  • That's interesting," Bitterblue said. "You think a conscience requires fear?

  • Your brothers are the foolish ones for not seeing the strength in beautiful things.

  • He leaned heavily on the desk now, as if danger had strengthened him before and its lack now made him weak.

  • Something caught in her throat at this second thanks, when she'd threatened him so brutally. When you're a monster, she thought, you are thanked and praised for not behaving like a monster. She would like to restrain from cruelty and receive no admiration for it.

  • This may be a thing you neither want nor need," she said. "But I'd rather you have it, wishing didn't, than not have it and wish you did.

  • It seemed to Fire it was rarely enough one knew a person one wished to marry. How unjust then to meet that person, and be kept from it because one's bed was made of hay and not feathers.

  • Truths are dangerous," he said."Then why are you writing them in a book?""To catch them between the pages," said Teddy, "and trap them before they disappear.

  • It was a strange monster, for beneath its exterior it was frightened and sickened by its own violence. It chastised itself for its savagery. And sometimes it had no heart for violence and rebelled against it utterly.

  • In the end, Leck should have stuck to his lies. For it was the truth he almost told that killed him.

  • If we're to be judged by our parents and grandparents, then we all may as well impale ourselves upon bits of rock.

  • What she really loved was to hang over the edge and watch the bow of the ship slice through the waves. She loved it especially when the waves were high and the ship rose and fell, or when it was snowing and the flakes stung her face.

  • Alone in the forest, Katsa sat on a stump and cried. She cried like a person whose heart is broken and wondered how, when two people loved each other, there could be such a broken heart.

  • Sneaking was a kind of deceit. So was disguise. Just past midnight, wearing dark trousers and Fox's hood, the queen snuck out of her own rooms and stepped into a world of stories and lies.

  • It's as if when I open myself up to every perception, things create their own focus.

  • But that's how memory works," Bitterblue said quietly. "Things disappear without your permission, then come back again without your permission." And sometimes they came back incomplete and warped.

  • It was a haunting tune, unresigned, a cry of heartache for all in the world that fell apart. As ash rose black against the brilliant sky, Fire's fiddle cried out for the dead, and for the living who stay behind and say goodbye.

  • You do trust him, though, Giddon?""Holt, who is stealing your sculptures and is of questionable mental health?""Yes.""I trusted him five minutes ago. Now I'm at a bit of a loss.""Your opinion five minutes ago is good enough for me.

  • I don't know how it'll be between us Thiel. I don't know how we'll learn to trust each other again, and I know you're not well enough to help me with every matter I face. But I miss you and I'd like to try again.

  • Ideas were growing in all directions and dimensions; they were becoming a sculpture, or a castle. And then everyone left her, to return to their own affairs; and she was alone, and empty and unbelieving again.

  • I wish people would stop hitting Po," whispered Bitterblue. "Well," Giddon said. "Yes. I'm hoping Skye is following my model. Punch Po; go on a long trip; feel better; come back and make up.

  • You won't even take your bow? Are you planning to throttle a moose with your bare hands, then?" "I've a knife in my boot," she said, and then wondered, for a moment, if she could throttle a moose with her bare hands.

  • You won't even take your bow? Are you planning to throttle a moose with your bare hands, then?

  • Your eyes are beautiful," he said, and she felt warm suddenly, warm in the sun that dappled through the treetops and rested on them in patches.

  • I was doing science," Giddon said. "He threw a bean." "I was testing the impact of a bean upon water," Bann said. "That's not even a real thing." "Perhaps I'll test the impact of a bean upon your beautiful white shirt.

  • ...that's how memory works ... Things disappear without your permission, then come back again without your permission.

  • ...you could not measure love on a scale of degrees, and now she understood that it was the same with pain. Pain might escalate upward and, just when you thought you'd reach your limit, begin to spread sideways, and spill out, and touch other people, and mix with their pain. And grow larger, but somehow less oppressive. She had thought herself trapped in a place outside the ordinary feeling lives of people; she had not noticed how many other people were trapped in that place with her.

  • A consciousness was like a face you saw once and forever recognized.

  • A quote from 'Fire' where Fire projected a thought to her best friend Archer: "Love doesn't measure that way, she [Fire] thought to him [Archer]. And you may blame me for your feelings, but it isn't fair to blame me for how you've chosen to behave.

  • Alone with Giddon again, Bitterblue considered him, rather liking the mud streaks on his face. He looked like a handsome sunken rowboat.

  • And is it the way, in these kingdoms you fell from, for a woman to join forces with an unnatural child who's murdered her friend? Or is that expectation unique to you, and your infinitesimal heart?

  • And of course she understood now why her body wanted to run whenever he appeared. It was a correct instinct, for there was nothing to be got from this but sadness.

  • And she would protect him as fiercely, if it were ever his need- if a fight ever became too much for him or if he needed shelter, or food, or a fire in the rain. Or anything she could provide. She would protect him from anything.

  • And the kings were no better to their own people than they were to each others.

  • And you may blame me for your feelings, but it isn't fair to blame me for how you've chosen to behave.

  • And," he continued, his strange smile gleaming, "as I see it, our hearts are not so different in size. I murdered my father. You murdered yours. Is that something you did with a large heart?

  • Archer, is there a servant girl in my fortress you haven't taken to bed? I announce you're leaving and within minutes two of them are at each other's throats, and another is crying her eyes out in the scullery. Honestly. You've been here all of nine days." - Roen, "Fire

  • Are you determined to leave me in this world to live without my heart?

  • As she left the room, Po went to Katsa, pulled her up, sat himself in her chair, and drew her into his lap. Shushing her, he rocked her, the two of them holding on to each other as if it were the only thing keeping the world from bursting apart.

  • At least her last words to him had been words of love. But she wished she'd told him just how much she loved him. How much she had to thank him for, how many good things he had done. She hadn't told him nearly enough.

  • Bacon improved things dramatically.

  • Bitterblue had never seen a man naked, and she was curious. She decided the universe owed her a few minutes, just a few, to satisfy her curiosity. So she went to him and knelt, which shut him up.

  • Brigan spun around to face the man, swearing with as much as exasperation and fury as Fire had ever heard anyone swear. The man scuttled away in alarm.

  • Brigan was saying her name, and he was sending her a feeling. It was courage and strength, and something else too, as if he were standing with her, as if he'd taken her within himself, letting her rest her entire body for a moment on his backbone, her mind in his mind, her heart in the fire of his. The fire of Brigan's heart was astounding. Fire understood, and almost could not believe, that the feeling he was sending her was love.

  • But all I feel is impatience, fury for the opposition I anticipate and the lies I'm going to have to tell to make it happen, and frustration that I can't even take a walk without them sending someone to hover. Attack me," she said. "I beg your pardon, Lady Queen?" "You should attack me, and we'll see what he does. He's probably quite bored--it'll be a relief to him." "Mightn't he run me through with his sword?" "Oh." Bitterblue chuckled. "Yes, I suppose he might. That would be a shame." "I'm gratified that you think so," said Giddon dryly.

  • Children are geniuses.

  • Circumstances don't always align themselves with human intention.

  • Dear Brigan, she thought to herself. People want incongruous, impossible things. Horses do, too.

  • Do you understand? I don't want you to do a thing if you don't understand it.

  • Everybody was strange. In a fit of frustration, she scratched out strange and wrote the word CRACKPOTS in big letters.

  • Everyone wants a bit of something beautiful.

  • Everyone was willing to take some small risk to lessen the damage of their ambition and disorder and lawlessness.

  • Find something useful to do with your morning,' she thought to him as she neared her chambers. 'Do something heroic in front of an audience. Knock a child into a river while no one's looking and then rescue him.

  • Fire sat unbreathing. A life that was an apology for the life of his father: It was a notion she could understand, beyond words and thought. She understood it the way she understood music.

  • Fire supposed he needed to be there in order to give rousing speeches and lead the charge into the fray, or whatever is was commanders did in wartime. She resented his competence at something so tragic and senseless. She wished he, or somebody, would throw down his sword and say, 'Enough! This is a silly way to decide who's in charge!' And it seemed to her, as the beds in the healing room filled and emptied and filled, that these battles didn't leave much to be in charge of. The kingdom was already broken, and this war was tearing the broken pieces smaller.

  • For a group of people who claimed to be concerned for her safety, they did seem to have developed rather a habit of encouraging uprisings against monarchs.

  • For now, Lady Queen," he said, "allow us to continue to obey you. But give us honorable instructions, Lady Queen," he said, turning a flushed face to hers. "Ask us to do honorable things, so that we may have the honor of obeying you.

  • Garan snorted. "Now that we know about his indigestion, we can torture him with cake.

  • Go safely. Go safely, she thought to him. what a silly, empty thing it was to say to anyone, anywhere.

  • Gratitude takes less energy than anger.

  • Great seas," he said. "What do you want?" He held the candle up to her face. "Po, what do you want?" "She did a far better job than I would've done.

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