Quotes from Elizabeth Bear

I could have tuned myself into sleep, but I had an idea that if I stared into space and tried not to think about the things that were currently bothering me, I might be giving my subsconscious time to work on the problem.

Kit's voice stayed level, amused, but there was a honeyed rasp in it that Will knew for sheerest hatred.

It was mockery, but not dismissal. Mockery that hid something else, something slick and sapient, and Will went after it carefully as tickling fish.

Every question is the answer to someone else's dilemma.

How convenient, she thought, how freeing to be able to embrace the role of necromancer, trickster, betrayer. How it must release one from the bounds of common courtesy and right behavior. What a romantic series of excuses.

He has outlived two Ragnaroks and a far more human apocalypse. It is time to tear down, shed the husk, leave behind a dead world to see a new world reborn.

Mehiel, my brother, I dare say the one thou lovest doth care for thee, as well.

Sly and sickways. I have to swallow my grief and my hope before it all spills down my face again: somehow she's not broken yet.

I cannot see as they see, in shades of advantage and degrees of subtlety.

Kit stepped close enough for Oxford to feel the heat of his breath, Will imagined, the naked blade angled between them as if laid down the center of a bed.

Amazing how one's organic memory could cling so tightly to the worst moments of a life, and lose everything that surrounded them.

Will glanced over his shoulder, and saw Kit's eyes drop a second too late to hide the intensity of his regard. Relief and pity warred in him, and a cold white flame he knew for bitter, possessive love.

The list of what the world would not allow was long for mourning over.

I can tell you what it is my wife seeks: sovereignity for Faerie, and freedom from old bargains." "Lucifer," Will said. "Everyone wants to remake the world.

Throughout history, certain doctors have done terrible things. It's never nice to be reminded.

When the massive door swung open, though, and the puff of escaping air sailed them grandly into the crooked sunlight between the world's vast webworked cables, Rien forgot everything but the cold black fire-pricked vault of the universe stretching out forever, and the wheeling world that framed it on each side.

The poet stripped off his gloves with an elegantly negligent gesture and smiled up at the Queens. Will wondered if anyone else could see what Kit's smile cost.

Whatever confidence came to her when she gripped a knife didn't serve her here.

She hadn't trusted anyone, not since Patience. Not since Moon Morrow's confidential secretary had turned out to be not so confidential after all.

The irony makes me laugh myself sick: think for a moment of ripping myself free, taking Elspeth and Gabe and running for the hells-and find out my gorgeous justification is already part of the prime minister's audacious plan for world cooperation-By the time I'm done, wiping tears onto the back of my left hand, everybody else by the windows is staring at me. I shake my head helplessly and grab Ellie's hand.

Her skin was soft with age, the bones and tendons visible.

Perceval Conn glided through warm water, feeling the swirl and suck of eddying currents along her skin, over her scalp, through the tendrils of her unbound hair.

Dry hands, hot, callused. Eyes dripping silver light, so it pooled and ran down the Wolf's creased cheeks like tears. But the look on his face wasn't sorrow.

Maybe she, Rien, should become a sorcerer. Or an angel. Then she could be an asshole, too, and if anybody commented on it, she could shrug and present her union card.