Quotes from Naomi Novik

How far would we have to go to run from winter?

Didn't he come to—to ask you for some magic? No, he came to enjoy the view of the Wood, the Dragon said. Of course he came for magic, and I sent him about his business, which is hacking at enemy knights and not meddling in things he scarcely understands.

In short, he tried to teach me as best he could, and to advise me in my blundering through my new forest, though it was foreign country to him. He did still resent my success, not from jealousy but as a matter of principle: it offended his sense of the proper order of things that my slapdash workings did work, and he scowled as much when I was doing well as when I had made some evident mistake.

If they cannot be woken to a natural affection for their country, such as we feel, it is our fault and not theirs.

I was a glaring blot on the perfection. But I didn't care: I didn't feel I owed him beauty.

You don't actually want to date me, do you? I-- he looked baffled and desperate and then said, If you-- I don't--it's up to you!

my limit for useful spells is somewhere around nine or ten a day. I haven't found a limit for spells of mass destruction. I can learn a hundred of those just by glancing at them, and I never forget any of them.

after supper Laurence would go to sit outside and read to him by the light of a lantern. He had never been a great reader himself, but Temeraire's pleasure in books was so great as to be infectious, and Laurence could not but think with satisfaction of the dragon's likely delight in the new book, which spoke in great detail about gemstones and their mining, despite his own complete lack of interest in the subject.

I am sick of the quarrels of nations and kings, and I would not give a ha'pence for any empire other than our valley, if that can content your ambition.

You start with a clear intention, your destination; you gather up the power; and then you send the power traveling down the road, giving the clearest directions you can, whether it's with words or goop or metal.

One day when I was ten one of out neighbors came to the house and said that the tsar was dead and when I asked what ir meant they said that there would be a new tsar. So I did not really see why a tsar mattered.

You intolerable lunatic," he snarled at me, and then he caught my face between his hands and kissed me.

He just stopped under one particularly laden tree and earnestly began spreading out a ragged blanket for our picnic, while I stood staring down at him, trying to decide if he was litally insane, and whether I liked him enough to pretend he wasn't. I had already liked him enough to drink the horrible tea-stained hot water he'd brought me, so the answer to that was almost certainly yes, but I wasn't sure I liked him enough to picnic in the gym with him.

I wasn't going through. I wasn't going through until everyone was out.

My heart broke, but I was not a young girl anymore, afraid of being trapped behind a door forever. I knew the door was safety, I knew the door would not always be closed, and I did not let her out.

Her beautiful face was blank as an unwritten book.

I'm delighted to report my repaired door slammed shut on his heels beautifully.

All those stories must have ended this same way, with someone tired going home from a field full of death, but no one ever sang this part. Borys

I don't like to be coarse, but if I did, I would be! -Granby commenting on something Rankin has said.

Fear and work weren't all bad, as companions went. They were both better than loneliness, and the deeper fears, the worse ones that I knew would come true: that I wouldn't see my mother and father for ten years, that I'd never live again in my own home, never run wild in the woods again, that whatever strange alchemy acted on the Dragon's girls would soon begin to take hold of me, and make me into someone I wouldn't recognize at the end of it.

because if I was ever going to, I'd have done it already.

Angry, I think. I didn't remember ever being angry before. Anger had always seemed pointless to me, a dog circling after its own tail.

The river flows to the sea, whatever the wind says about it

So he had actually come to my rescue. That was even worse.