Quotes from Elizabeth Bear

Cristokos had only scorn of service, and for those served, pity. But service was Kasmir's purpose, even when that service was best met through disagreement and argument. His service , however, had always been a chosen one. Cristakos's had been plundered.

Kadiska and my father looked like spots of smoking blood against all that white, stepping away as the Queen came toward us.

Kit woke in absolute blackness, with a ringing head, and tried to remember how he had gotten there and why he was lying on a dank, lumpy surface with the taste of earth on his lips.

I think you did try to save him for you loved him. And he failed to be saved because he loved himself.

Kit hid his flinch as Will's gloved fingers tightened on his arm.

God, she sounded like my first girlfriend. Only girlfriend, if I'm going to be honest.

Hot breath surrounded her, fragrant of summer. The voice was tolerant and amused, maternal in its enormity

My enemy and my rider's enemy. He hunts her creatures.

We had been going to change the galaxy together.

She was not accustomed to finding someone with such obvious male attributes attractive. But the eyes and the throat and the breasts were all woman, if the long hands and torso and crotch were all wrong.

This was as good a spot to try a little meditation on the shape of the universe as I was likely to find, so I settled in, loosened my suit up a bit, and made myself comfortable.

You're on a ride-along in a jumbo flying squid. Dosideieus gigas. I thought it would be nicer than waking up in a hospital bed, given how much time you've spent in those.

Even in the heart of the empire, corruption spreads.

We all have our own purposes in seducing thee, Sir Poet. Thee, and that which thou dost harbor.

A Gallic-nosed fellow, slight with silver-shot dark curls and dark eyes, brushed rudely past them just as Jack returned from the top of the plank. He reeked of vertiver and musk; Jack's nose wrinkled as he passed, and he half-smiled at himself to realize how accustomed he'd become to the Puritan cleanliness of American colonials, and their aversion to heavy perfumes.

I don't suppose you know where in Hell we're going?" "Not Hell," Puck said. "Well, perhaps Hell, but I think it unlikely.

I'm not usually stunned speechless. Call it a character flaw.

The Freeporters were violently oppressed to social controls of all sorts. Even-especially?-healthy ones.

Anxiety was a distraction I did not need.

The blue flecks in his hazel eyes seemed brighter than green, momentarily, and Muire glanced down at the platter.

The ballads were a true history of Faerie and a false one. They were true because all stories are true, and false because all stories have echoes and interplay and Faerie was the result of the tension between those two. The pattern of a tapestry was not the substance of the strands.

I don't know how you can walk around in a utility fog that could start disassembling your body anything your Governors decide they're done with you.

Welcome, poets. Welcome, bards.

The cold could kill me, but it's no worse than the memories. Endurable as long as I keep moving.