Quotes from Elizabeth Bear

Whose judgment do you think he faces, if not his own?

Sweet death in a vacuum, why can't anybody be uncomplicatedly evil in real life? Or uncomplicatedly good? Why are we all such a twist of good and bad decisions, selfishness and self-justification, altruism and desire?

She's my whole goddamned world.

You've infested the whole ship with your medieval madness." Dust smiled. "Not mine. Conn's. The Captain's word is Law.

In that expression, Dust glimpsed the woman she had not been, the woman whose body she now inhabited.

Eddies of Magi collected in the corners, rejoined the spiral when there was a gap.

Jane, he realized now, with an old familiar chill, had never lost her grip on his leash.

Angelo's description hadn't prepared Vincent for the reality of Kii. That serpentine shape emerging from camouflaging jungle triggered atavistic responses, an adrenaline spike for which his watch barely compensated. He took one unwilling step back anyway, shivering, and forced himself to pretend to be calm.

Space is big, and even at ludicrous rates of speed, crossing chunks of it takes a long time.

Sometimes synchronicity works.

The deeps stretched out before him, chilling his soul and leaving him quailing and courageless in their regard.

The force of will to defy Richard Baines and wrest his own greatest sorcery away from him? I can't even best the man in a verbal jousting match? What think I that I can take control of a sorcery in which I am only the catalyst, the sacrifice?

Prometheans were never shy about appropriating symbols.

The warm night air-her own continued existence shocked her as much as brightness would have if she'd been drowning, and somehow kicked herself into daylight again before the black water could suck her down.

She seemed to him a long spill of dark water, a black surface shattered with ephermal reflections of light.

All things end, but this had been a healthy and happy part of my life, much better than the bit before.

He felt eyes on him. He didn't turn to see if they were Jane's.

We'd prefer to see Faerie driven entirely from the iron world," Jane said, abandoning her pretense of being an observer when the Bunyip stared at her. "And I want Matthew back. Unharmed. He's too useful to be left wandering around uncontrolled.

I didn't know a computer could sound bitter.

Silence is as good as an answer, angel.

What is your agenda, Don Sebastien? What is it you want of me? Of New Amsterdam?

I imagined myself taller, imagined myself angry, and pulled the subtlest glamour I could around me.

It was an old sick power, rich and nauseous and irrestible as any unhallowed love he'd ever known. It ran shivery caresses up the inside of his skin, weighed a stone like desire in his gut and groin.

Footsteps approached, soft and sure. They were not Perceval's, and Rien was surprised to find she knew her sister's tread already.