Quotes from Elizabeth Bear

She tilted her head back reflexively, drinking deep of the night air tainted by the unwholesome sweetness of the Well, looking upward as if the stars were there to help her bear the pain.

Fighting the snare only deepens the wound. One must lie in wait, hoarding strength until the hunter returns.

The crippled Raven found Will in his new room and seemed well pleased with the wider window, for all it must rattle at the glass for attention. Will didn't think this typical behavior in a raven, but perhaps the pampered birds at the Tower had been hand-fed into audacity.

I wanted to finish my investigation, when I was so close to answers that I could taste them.

Perhaps there is prophecy in the stage after all.

He stank of something bitter and sharp. His thumb moved across the scar on Cathoair's cheek, a sickening caress, and Cahey somehow got his hands up on Mingan's shoulders, and shoved. Mingan kneed him in the solar plexus, so if not for the Wolf's grip on his neck, Cathoair would have gone to the ground.

A poet flanked them on either side-one dark, one fair and blood-smeared-and a Fool rode on a pony between.

One does not call down archangels in my city, Detective, if one cares to go unnoticed.

Matthew the Magician leaned against a wrought iron lampost on Forty-second Street, richly picking at the edges of his ten rings and listening to his city breathing into the warm September night.

The Mebd is unimpressed by suffering.

She had long since stopped finding it ironic or eerie that the city at large paid no attention to a murder, whether the victim was a prominent citizen or a guttersnipe.

They stripped him only to the waist, and left his feet free when they bound him standing between two pillars, and not helplessly prone on some clammy altar.

He sailed forward, the dark iron in his hand burning like a spear of light, a voice like a choir of falcons bellowing Lucifer's name somehow rising in his throat and everything a fury of gold-barred black and searing light.

Elizabeth glanced at her sister queen and smiled. Clever boy. Aye, and they both loved cleverness. Kit winked at Will over his Queen's diamond-studded shoulder, and Will's knees half melted before he quite forced his gaze back to Elizabeth. Damn honor, he thought. And damn vows.

For a moment, they sat together, the understanding between them almost big enough to fill that space.

We get along with carnivorous plants and talking screwdrivers. I don't know what should be so hard about getting along with you.

Tis the side we're on.

Still perfect sixteen, and she glares when Ellie and I burst out laughing.

Maybe you could feel all sorts of things, all of them mutually contradictory.

The wine was finished; the night's conversation drifted into sitting and dozing, watching the night.

The Daoine Sidhe ride at down; I cannot stay them longer. There will be power raised that dawn, and all are loath to miss it.

Life went on; there were apples in the markets now, and squash, and cabbages and potatoes to set by for winter. It was Garrett's job to be concerned with justice and the dead.

He was in there-all his ghosts and legends, all the twisted Gothic nonsense out of which he'd built a realm in the long dreaming time when the broken world orbited the shipwreck stars.

For Leah. Yes. Because for her, I would crawl through fire.