Quotes from Elizabeth Bear

There was no grand design behind any of it: just a series of fumbling attempts to do something.

He spoke before she could quite stop laughing and sink him with a comeback. And he was certain, even on brief acquaintance, that she could indeed sink him with a comeback.

Tom and Ben were silent, tall pillars on either side of the poets and the Prince.

Petunia needed no encouragement to arch his neck and prance, even though his name made Keith bite his lip to keep a suitably stern and kingly expression.

Heat cupped his body, pressed his skin. He writhed away from it, sure that there were flames and that the flames had seared his eyes from his head, because surely there could be no such agony in darkness.

Unworthy? I think not, Wolfling. Pure as the will of the pack, thou art.

Michelangelo lifted his chin, turned, and gave Vincent a smile warm enough to melt his implants. He glanced over his shoulder, as if ascertaining the lounge was empty, then learned forward, slid both hands up Vincent's neck, and pulled Vincent's head down to plant a warm, tender kiss on his lips.

Pure in love, pure in attention, pure of heart. The other is no matter. Like thee and me, 'tis but a metaphor given flesh.

He knows who this was, when he was something other than a tall, pretty young whore.

She knew what they had been up to, of course; it would have been hard to miss it, between the giggling and the scent of sex-and nobody had ever warned her how disturbing it would be to hear a necromancer giggle-but that was all right, wasn't it?

I made a grab for the fabric of the universe and hauld myself into a stable orientation.

Years of practice kept the ironic tinge from her voice.

Hitting people almost never solves anything, and you can trust me on that. I was in the military.

The smile that curved lovely lips made Tristen shiver with memory.

Rest," she said. "I've got you.

The whole world is a weapon.

The clades like to point out that their choices were just a more extreme version of being and remaining a productive member of the Synarche-or good.

Selene, waiting on Her attention, stared through the tall glass plates, tail lashing, ears still laid flat, and willed herself to clam. Fear-and-fight were not her friends. They were th animal, the instinct that made her a superlative warrior. But the threat had been left behind on the ground, and Selene was in the Tower, in Her presence. Safe.

They laughed every time they accidentally looked at each other.

You commit yourself completely to something and then you take your eyes off it for an instant and it's gone. Like it never was. Like you can't even see the evidence of the thing that was there, that you trusted your weight, your honor, your life, your heart to.

His body believed; his intuition twisted; the partnership breathed out again.

Passion filled him, terrible and sweet, a craving as fierce as ever. It was not something one could turn on a courtesan-this wantom cupidity-and expect him to live. But another wampyr was not prey, was not a courtesan. Another wampyr was an equal and a rival, though David might be less than a quarter Sebastien's age, and quite capable of surviving his unalloyed strength.

The black Russian wolf-the oborotni-seemed wired together out of broomsticks, but the grip that matched Keith's was as unyielding as the ambition in his eyes.

Scoffs a man with the Queen of Faerie at his book and a magician close enough to spit in his eye?