Quotes from Elizabeth Bear

She laughed inside, and even let the laughter touch her lips.

Death was always a relative function, a complicated thing when you were dealing with angels or Exalt. People died in pieces, by increments, or were transformed into something else. For Means, death had meant something concrete, a hard limit.

She expected some word from the splinters that threaded her soul. Fasaltsen or the wolf. But they were voiceless.

It was perfectly possible to love someone objectly when you could barely stand to be in the room with them. Of all the mysteries of life, Sebastien thought, that one might be the greatest.

She should have been in her seventies, but she looked trim in a violet suit, discreet diamonds glittering in her ears. Her shoes were sensible for walking.

The dry tone, brittle enough to break an edge and cut yourself on.

Cynric did not make merely human errors. Her mistakes were more on the epic scale, her failings those of demigods.

A huge, lonely melancholy welled up inside me as the sheer enormousness of what I was contemplating. It wasn't an unpleasant feeling, exactly, so I let it inside.

Was one head dominant, or did they serve different functions?

Chalcedony wasn't built for crying. She didn't have it in her, not unless her tears were cold tapered glass droplets annealed by the inferno heat that had crippled her.

Memory is a spiderweb. It hangs in a corner and collects dust. Unless you need it to catch a fly.

Perhaps what I was feeling was the thing called awe.

He wanted to close his eyes at the declaration, remembering the heat of a crimson iron close enough to curl his lashes. The hand that did not hold his cane tightened on a bit of silk in his socket, and something pricked him. The enchanted nail Kit had given him, and Will drew strength from it.

I can see the mouse's tail through thy teeth.

His breath hurt her lungs, in and out, in and out, as if he breathed the smoke and ash he saw.

Just like a Conn, she thought. Eating everything in sight.

She shook her head, wondering if the jangle of voices was already driving her mad.

She was my mother and she smiled at me, and held out her her hand.

Sebastien gasped first at pain like flame, then pleasure, and somehow scraped his hand through the narrow space between David's back and the lid so he could knot his fingers into David's hair. He bit his lip, and did not cry out, while they rode in the lumpy coffin.

Unhelmed by her remote masters, she limped along the beach, dragging one fused limb.

It writhed brightly, a spectrum of raveling colors, and then vanished and jumped position as the star resolved into view. Some distance away.

The man Elizabeth had called her Elf never glanced down. His eyes sparkled in the lanterlight as he rubbed a glove forefinger against his thumb, and visibly came to a decision.

His own blood could not chill, but it might as well have, from the prickling sensation that crept along his arms.

Carel looked at me, stricken. Bound to me, and by more than tangles in my hair.