Quotes from Elizabeth Bear

Kit sat in that darkness too deep for his witch sight to pierce, even had the use of it, and ran his fingers over the rugged surface of the scold's bridle Baines had left to keep him company.

The boy is a whore. For slightly less than the price of a good meal-food which the wolf has no use for-that wolf could hire his mouth, his hands…other things.

My people have a saying that every civilization is founded in a terrible crime.

It was not yet noon, but under the shadow of the conifers twilight ruled.

His face gives nothing away; Valens plays his games on a dozen levels.

Sally would have given Dr. Zhiruo a full report, so I didn't feel the need to warn her about Helen's uncanny relationship with the machine, and whatever had gone wrong with her-their?-programming that led to the progressive deconstruction of the ship.

I've always wanted to save people. Maybe because nobody saved me.

He was tall, sarcastic, slender, bird-handed, generous with smiles as breathtaking as the nebula outside the bubble port.

it turns out that ten thousand amateurs taken on average are usually better at coming up with a workable solution than one expert is. Anybody that's ever heard an unrehearsed crowd sing a familiar melody accurately has witnessed this in action.

Cathoair reached out with both hands, his last measure of strength, and yanked Mingan's body against his own, pressed his mouth down, broke both their lips between their teeth so the bright taste of blood flavored the kiss.

It's not the solar system they'll claim, but eventually the universe. It might be lonely. It will be strange. Do you really want to be one of them?

The light from the windows fell across Àine's alabaster profile like the glow from a fire. She turned and winked at me, her eyes liquid and lovely as a doe.

He knew every inch of the thing's surface by now, had bloodied his fingertips with worrying at it, with picking at the spikes of the mouthpiece and exploring the curve and cheeks. It weighed as much as a small child in his arms, resting against his knees, and holding it close to his breast was the only thing that silenced the savage pain in his brands any more.

Seeker moved in a place of Names and glamours, of knotted hairs and deadly magics.

Right now, with the taste of Muire's life hot on his lips, filling him with a restless passion, the temptation is unbearable.

I felt a little guilty at how thankful I was to realize that Helen Alloy and her quicksilver bosoms were somebody else's problem now. I reminded myself that I wasn't unreasonable to experience a reduction in anxiety when relieved of a responsibility for which one wasn't really qualified.

Through the resistance of their wardrobes, fingers brushed.

Jane did not rise, and the angel did not settle. But the silence dragged taut between them as if they struggled over a rope, and in Michael's eyes Jane saw all her sin and malfeasance, the small selfishnesses and the hubris that had nearly wrecked the world, reflected. The chill settled into her, hard and sharp as swallowed glass. She had failed and failed again, and all her failures were naked in her angel's eyes.

She cast a glance at Sayeh that raked Sayeh like a tiger's claws and sketched a plausible courtesy before Anuraja. It wasn't much of a courtesy.

There are people, even now, who manage to elude rightminding to the point where they enjoy their pleasures more if somebody else suffers to provide them.

He tried to feel the meaning of the words, speak them with passion nonetheless. If this was what he was inspired to, then he would not believe he had been inspired wrong. And it wrong to simply intone the Scholar-God's arguments. They must be…internalized. Considered. Spoken as if they lived and breathed and were each day argued anew, not as if they lay dead and dusty in some tomb.

When I leave the hall, I smell her before I see her, a scent that should be perfume. I know it is not.

I had the skills, and making myself hate them would have been a real waste of time and energy.

In the end, the wolf could own them both. Both on the same instant, possess them, prove at last who it was whose weakness brought down the Last Day, and the fall of all that was.