Quotes from Elizabeth Bear

Slowly, slowly, she turned to look over her shoulder, the fall of her hair kissing the high bone of her cheek.

She studied him; he did look drawn, with the waxen countenance she had come to associate with his need.

It was not Muire's first apocalypse. But then, her kind had always been better at retribution than prevention.

The parasite wings weighed almost nothing, but she felt them stir in the wind or with their own will.

In his second night in his room in the Salt Tower, Kit had tried to make his escape through the reflections in the narrow windows; he'd been unable to touch the power of the Darkling Glass at all, and he had wondered at how easily the iron rings on his fingers quelled all the strength he knew he had in him.

Lucifer caught him by the wrist, pulled him close, cradled him in the warm snowfall of wings.

I may have the run away, you understand. That is the sensible thing to do when a large predator is pursuing you. No hard feelings at all.

Its voice reached me as vibrations through the deck, through the air. It set my hairs prickling.

Not even a dive bar in sight, just a long dingy curve of corridor with fibrous gray carpeting institutionalizing it further.

It amused me momentarily to think of those dark matter laceworks of mass as actual cobwebs, structures spun for some purpose, then abandoned and left behind when that purpose served and their denizens moved on. It was a conceit, of course: I didn't imagine for an instant that some godlike creature or species had actually-literally or figuratively-pulled the universe out of its ass. But the image entertained me.

His knock apparently startled the scullery maid, but a good suit and a sober-headed cane opened many a door, including this one. And if she seemed inclined to shut it in his face again quite promptly, a silver shilling slipped into her hand with his visiting card corrected the matter.

Mallory," Dust hissed. "And the familiar basilisk. You sent my maidens for them." "My maidens? The world's maidens, surely. Do you begrudge them a little assistance, a little education?" "That is no Ben Kenobi. More une belle quelquesomething sans merci." "The question stands, my dearest Dust.

If you cannot bear it, there's always the knife. Suicide, and back into Satan's hands. He wished he didn't know the shiver that crept up his neck was desire and not terror. Back into his hands whenever he wants you. And you cannot pretend you did it for Will.

Orphans. Dream of being secret princesses." Perceval's thumbs made firm circles in Rien's muscles. "And so?" she said. "You are.

From the vantage of Cathoair's nineteen years, it was a span beyond bewildering into incomprehensible.

She never called, but she was there always, just at the edge of his awareness. He knew her despair and her grief. She punished herself. He thought she must not understand how she punished him, as well.

He's not Richard Feynman-just an artificial persona, a program meant to mimic the original.

Maybe faith is a thing your decide to have, even knowing that it's not safe. Even knowing you could lose it, you could be betrayed at any time.

A silent observer in the early morning could mean many things, for a prisoner, and none likely to her benefit.

The windows were small, but a small man might slide through them. Far below he could see lights scattered around the Tower precincts like flower petals on the sheets of a marriage bed.

Someone unraveled from the shadows under a gorse shrub, uncoiling taller than anything had a right to from such a small hiding place. The woman swayed like a cobra, standing clad only in a deluge of golden bracelets and necklaces and a bright patterned sarong that stood out like blood on black marble against her skin. Rubies glittered in her ears, her nose, her navel. Rows of tiny beadlike scars shiny as drops of sweat covered her breasts, her arms, her forehead.

Seduced by Faerie already, Merlin the Magician?" "Not everyone who comes to a lover's bed is seduced.

Time passed, and given enough time, anyone could make enemies. Even-especially-a Conn.

When Samael uncrossed his arms, it was to stand hipshot, balanced one the toes of one bare foot and the heel of the other. He had simulated silver toenail polish.