Michelle Sagara quotes:

Generally, I like to appear smart. I don't admit being stupid when there's any hope I'm not.

History is not our guide, it is not our friend. It is a passing stranger, one which shadows legend, sprinkling it with the seeds of truth.

I hate being the only mortal in a gathering full of Immortals who think killing each other cleverly is the height of good manners.

Sanabalis never seemed to eat, and he deflected most of her questions about Dragon cuisine. Then again, he deflected most of her questions about Dragons, period. Which was annoying because he was one, and could in theory be authorative.

Stop judging your life only by the failures.

Trying is fine. Failing is inevitable. Don't let it devour you.

I'm missing something, aren't I?" "Brains", he snapped. "And survival instinct. The Hawklord's been waiting for you for three hours." "Tell him I'm dead.

Truth, like beauty, is in the eyes of the beholder.

Manners,[...] are severly underappreciated in my opinion". "Oh?" Where practiced well, they remove the probability that someone in my position will be forced to go through the effort of killing someone in yours. Belive that on occasion that much death can become tedious.

Success and failure are two edges of the same blade, two sides of the same coin. To fear one is to forever deny the possibility of the other.

The look he gave her made her turn away for a moment. Sometimes you couldn't look too closely at another person's pain.

There wasn't a colloquial phrase, or curse, that went something like, "May your day be full of angry dragons" or, "May every dragon you meet today be pissed off." But, there should have been.

We all fail. But none of us fail all the time.

Hope is often bitter, but it drives us, and we cling.

I don't make the laws, I just enforce them." "Then remind me to introduce a new set of laws, since the ones we have clearly assume a level of common sense that's lacking.

If hearts really could sink, Kaylin's was busily rearranging her internal organs.

i'm never going to understand the Barrani." "You needn't sound so morose, Lord Kaylin. They are unlikely to understand you either." "Yes, but I'm unlikely to try to kill them for fun.

In youth,' he said, speaking as if from a great distance, 'we believe, and the death of belief forces us to disavow all belief. But that disavowal, time softens, and if we do not believe, we hope. Belief is easier to kill, somehow, and its death easier to bear.

Is this some sort of test?" "Everything that doesn't kill you is." "Mind you," he added, "surviving doesn't always mean you passed.

It was true: hope could be unkind. You opened yourself up to the worst of wounds because you wanted to believe that something good could finally happen. But if you didn't? You missed this. This intense and prefect moment in which, while the world was almost literally going to hells all around you, hope and reality blended in a single, perfect note.

Kaylin is not known for her punctuality. She is known, in fact, for her lack--even by those outside of the Hawklord's command.

Lies were something you told other people to make things easier, somehow - hopefully, for them, but often more selfishly for yourself.

Not all of our heartless plans work as we intend; nor do all of our good intentions. We are where we are, and we can rarely predict where we will go, no matter how firm our beliefs.

The gods where like the weather; sometimes good, sometimes bad, and either way, always beyond her.

The truth was only another mask, even if it was the best fit, the closest to skin and all that lay beneath

There is not a man born among us who dreams"?at first"?of service, although in the end, many are bent that way.

Trying," he said at last, "is good. It always is. But failing? Everyone fails, one time or another. It's how you deal with failure that counts, in the end. It's the successes that you're known for-but it's the failures make you what you are.

What humans do when they're desperate is just an expression of fear. What they do when they feel safe is a better indication of whether or not you can trust them.

You are an... animal? A talking animal?" Without missing a beat, Teela said, "Of course not. She's much, much harder to train.

You'll be with me, won't you?" "indeed." "Then what could go wrong?" Lord Sanabalis visibly grimaced. "You clearly do not believe in angry gods.

Maybe home is something we have to make, and remake, over and over.

If life were fair, we would never have suffered what we suffered at all; having suffered it and survived, we're still reacting to things that don't exist anymore.