Quotes from Elizabeth Bear

Your brother had lovely patterns from his shoulders to his thighs. Very black, on so much white, white ski. Do you have marks like that?" "I wouldn't show you if I did," Matthew said softly through the rage that wanted to take the bit and run. "Give me back that child.

Fortunately, in partial gravity, one-handed push-ups aren't as hard as they are planet-side.

David had his reasons to be angry. But after a century or two, one did grow tired. Mortal lifetimes were a mercy to love, Sebastien thought. It could endure that long.

Elena put one hand out, pressing her palm to the bole of a tree to steady herself, and sighed as if she could put all her pain and worry onto the wind and let it be carried away.

Everybody seemed to think I would sell out anything, in order to gain a little physical comfort.

She leaned back against the rough trunk of a tree, half-invisible in the twilight except where it caught in glimmers on the titian of her hair.

He leans over Cathoair, his felted woolen cloak falling forward to enfold them both. Bending down, he breathes across the other's face, hand still heavy on the place where Cathoair's neck runs into his shoulder. Cathoair trembles, but raises his face to the wolf's, eyes coldly defiant and full of savage light. The wolf sees also the way Cathoair's lips half-part at the taste of Mingan's breath, and the fury that follows weakness.

She knew where he was going, but she wasn't going to give him an inch that he didn't earn.

Keith let his tail rise cockily, picture of a returning Prince, and trotted down the slope through cold reflected moonlight to his father's door.

Who would have thought three separate peaces so irreconcilable?

I am, after all a necromancer. And they shall know you by your trail of dead, Perceval Conn.

It was a relief to speak his native tongue, familiar words and known patterns that had settled into his bones with father's milk and rooted deep.

I'd had a taste of living for myself, and I could not go back to living entirely for others again.

We're looking for a mortal man to seduce and betray. Your speciality.

He didn't look at Baines, even as Baines leaned close enough to him that Kit felt his breath hot on his skin.

Nanoprocessors along my damaged spinal cord, improving in its functionality; the reflex boast that makes me potentially able to steer this improbable starship.

There was so much information, and I had so little sense of what any of it meant.

Gold for collars and bindings. Silver for protection. Werewolves and wampyrs and such. And protection from iron, of course.

Murchaud moved slowly along the wall, trailing his hands over the stones nearest the dripping ceiling as if they might whisper something in his ear if properly coaxed.

Mallory reached across Perceval's lap and stroked Rien's sweat-cold cheek. This touch, Rien did not flinch from. Perceval swallowed, an acrid pain of jealousy.

He leaned closer, for all he willed himself not to, feeling her power, the serpent's hypnotic romance. Her perfume should have dizzied him, but suddenly all he could smell was the clean animal heat of the unicorn.

Everyone was waiting for something: an arrival, a departure. It made a pleasing sort of allegory.

Muire really needed to stop taking in candle-flicker strays. She tried, Light knew: she held herself aloof, didn't place calls, avoided social engagements. Sh didn't take lovers. She didn't need friends. She especially didn't need friends who would inevitably break her heart with their fragility, their evanescence, the shadow-quick passing of their mortal lives.

David's hand rest on Sebastien's shirt front and cravat, over where his heart would have beat when he still lived. The pressure felt like a trap, suddenly, and Sebastien pulled away and stood, flicking his suitjacket straight, with his thumbs.