Rachel Hartman quotes:

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  • I took a break, stretched, tried again, failed, kicked over the music stand (I am not proud of that), and wonder whether I had reached the limits of my musical ability. Maybe I'd never had any. Surely someone with a modicum of talent wouldn't have to work this hard.

  • We shall have long meetings where Kiggs agonizes and Glisselda teases him. That's the pattern so far.

  • Orma moved a pile of books off a stool for me but seated himself directly on another stack. This habit of his never ceased to amuse me. Dragons no longer hoarded gold; Comonot's reforms had outlawed it. For Orma and his generation, knowledge was treasure. As dragons through the ages had done, he gathered it and then he sat on it.

  • Did I become court composer through masterful procrastination? Hardly!

  • Heaven has fashioned a knife of irony to stab me with.

  • I barely noticed loneliness anymore; it was my normal condition, by necessity if not by nature.

  • Metaphor is awkward, but emotion, by its nature, leaves you no more scalable approach.

  • My own survival required me to counterbalance interesting with invisible.

  • Sometimes the truth has difficulty breaching the city walls of our beliefs. A lie, dressed in the correct livery, passes through more easily.

  • The twin gods, Necessity and Chance, walked among the stars. What needed to be, was; what might be, sometimes was.

  • The world is seldom so simple that it hinges on us alone.

  • How did you merit so much devotion so quickly?' I asked, making no attempt to keep the sarcasm from my voice.'I show them Heaven', said she, without a trace of irony. 'People are so desperate for light'.

  • He looked up at the reddening sky and said with a self-deprecating laugh, "You put me to shame, Seraphina. Your bravery always has.""It's not bravery; it's bullheaded bumbling."He shook his head, staring off into the middle distance. "I know courage when I see it, and when I lack it.

  • Was it probably true that reasoning beings were equal? It seemed more like a belief than a fact, even if I agreed with it. If you followed logic all the way back to its origin, did you inevitably end up at point of illogic, an article of faith?

  • An aged monk led me to the infirmary. "He's got the place to himself. Once the other invalids learned there was a dragon coming they miraculously got well! The lame could walk and the blind decided they didn't really need to see. He's a panacea.

  • Here there was no monster greater than the ragged mountains.

  • And I realized a wondrous truth: that knowledge could be our treasure, that there were things humankind knew that we did not, that our conquest need not comprise taking and killing, but could consist of our mutual conquest of ignorance and distrust.

  • Claude rubs the back of his neck and wrinkles his nose, about to tell me he was never sad. I believe this is called bravado and is not limited to lawyers, or even men, although that combination makes it almost unavoidable.

  • For future reference: do not underestimate the seductive power of math.

  • Haven't you always been more than yourself? Haven't we all? We are none of us just one thing.

  • However strenuously the world pulls us apart, however long the absence, we are not changed for being dashed upon the rocks. I knew you then, I know you now, I shall know you again when you come home.

  • I cannot perch among those who think that I am broken.

  • I had felt the shot coming; I hadn't realized the bow was loaded with this very quarrel, perfectly calibrated to hit him hardest. What part of me had been studying him, stockpiling knowledge as ammunition?

  • I was drawn to his aloofness, the way cats gravitate toward people who'd rather avoid them.

  • If I could keep a single moment for all time, that would be the one. I became the very air; I was full of stars.

  • It is permissible to be the god of your own metaphors.

  • The truth may not be told. Here is an acceptable lie.

  • The world inside myself is vaster and richer than this paltry plane, peopled with mere galaxies and gods.

  • We were all monsters and bastards, and we were all beautiful.

  • Your lies didn't stop me loving you; your truth hasn't stopped me either.

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