Quotes from Sarah Monette

The obligation d'âme meant that his only allegiance was to Felix, making them a separate kingdom of two, with Felix as king and Mildmay as ministers, army, and populace all combined in one. A stormy little kingdom, I thought, with periodic flare-ups of civil war and a magnificently unstable government. And I was glad I wasn't a citizen of it.

It is a rose planted in your heart, and as it's thorns tear you, so does it thrive and flower

Consider the stars. Among them are no passions, no wars. They know neither love nor hatred. Did man but emulate the stars, would not his soul become clear and radiant as they are? But man's spirit draws him like a moth to the ephemera of this world, and in their heat he is consumed entire.

I gave up on cussing - I'd run out of words filthy enough - and just started praying.

I catch a flash of red-gold beneath the surface of the water, and realize that there are koi in the pond, massive, serene, and I wonder: are they dreams of fish, or fish who dream?

Sacred bleeding fuck," I said, because, I mean its one thing to know your crazy hocus brother sees ghosts, and a whole different thing when you find out they're telling him bedtime stories.

So what happens next?' 'Everybody dies, and the people who don't get married.' 'Like any other story, then.'

It occurred to me that it said something very unpleasant about both of us that we saw concern and kindness as attacks.

Felix just sat there, not smirking exactly - or not so as you could call him on it - but clearly happy with how unhappy he'd managed to make all of us.

The dead person is not truly dead until the last person who rememebers them dies.

You know how sometimes you can be going along and do something or say something, and suddenly you *know* yourself? I mean, it's like you're looking at somebody else, and it's just so fucking clear you want to hit something.

Well fuck me sideways 'til I cry

Although Mar would be quite pleased to be consort, Skjaldwulf didn't want to be wolfjarl. He wanted Isolfr, and he would take the damned job that went with it, if he could win it, if that was what it took.

Jonak says to say he send congratulations and well-wishes and all the things he ought—he was so pleased with himself for being an uncle he couldn't sit still to think them out.

You like jealousy. You like knowing people want you.' He wasn't talking about sex, and my heart slowed a little. 'Is it not natural to want to be liked?' 'That ain't what you want. It's like you got to have everybody's heart, and if they don't give it, you rip it out and watch it bleed.'

The ritual worked. That is the most ghastly thing. I hold no particular brief for the rationality of the world, but that this vile obscenity should actually have the power to bring back the dead seems to me not merely a sign that the world is not rational, but that it is in fact entirely insane, a murderous lunatic gibbering in the corner of a padded cell.

The rats we met the size of small dogs and they watched us go by like they'd figured out that what People were for was feeding rats.

He fell away into the column before Isolfr could blink the thought of thanking him into his bleary mind, and Isolfr looked up at Frithulf in supplication. "What was that about?" "Stay pretty," Frithulf advised, through a mouthful of meat. Isolfr would have kicked him if he hadn't been out of reach on the horse.

Was you born this fucking dumb, Milly-Fox, or do you practice every Dixieme?

Beyond the window, snow fell like frozen drops of poison.

If I was really, really lucky, Felix might throw a fireball at me, and I'd get out of the rest of this freakshow.

The river runs through the heart of the city, and braiding around and over and under the river, the city's rail system is a welter of tarnished silver ribbons.

He walked like a conqueror, like a lion. He could not have been more than twenty-two or twenty-three. His eyes were not merely vivid blue; they were intense, blazing, as if they were lit from within, as if this young man was bringing a flame that no one else could feel. His mouth was twisted in a mocking smile. He had known I would look.

As she became more honest with herself, her writing matured, so that one could catch glimpses of what would emerge from its chrysalis as a poet's genius.