Quotes from Naomi Novik

We all have to gamble with our lives in here, we don't get a choice about that; the trick is figuring out when it's worth taking a bet.

Four years! My heart was glad as birds.

And then he shoved me through the gate.

I do not care if Laurence tells me not to squash you

Stop thinking how you can help the people nearest to you. Think about what help you can give best, and look for the nearest person who needs that help.

I had roots, too, but not like that. I could be carefully dug up, and shaken loose, and transplanted into a king's castle, or a tower built of marble—unhappily, perhaps, but I could survive.

When Orion finally got round to dumping me, I wanted to come out of this mess as something more than a school-wide reputation for being a bit of a slapper.

My girl, my brave girl had done this. She had gone and come back bloody and she had brought us back the spring. And she had come back, she had come back, which was worth all the spring and more for me.

You impossible, wretched, nonsensical contradiction, what on earth have you done now?" I

Araminta had generally considered the laws of etiquette as the rules of the chase, and divided them into categories: those which everyone broke, all the time; those which one could not break without being frowned at; and those which caused one to be quietly and permanently left out of every future invitation to the field.

Don't stand there like a cretin," he said. "Take it.

as though the magic had burned off like the liquor on a pudding.

They all claim to have been built by the author of the Golden Stone sutras, this guy named Purochana who some wizard historians believe was the guy of that name who also shows up in the Mahabharata, more or less working for the prince of Gandhara.

he tried sitting next to me once and once only; I stared straight at him with all the murder in my heart and he stopped and took his hand out

They moved out of Jena early the next morning, with Prince Louis and the rest of the advance guard, for the town of Saalfeld

we ought to have gone back up and started at the library, but we didn't, in the same way you know perfectly well you ought to stop reading and go to bed and you'll feel hideously groggy in the morning if you don't, and yet you keep going.

Then she'd straightened up and announced in irritation, "I've fallen out of time," before vanishing in a great cloud of smoke.

Decidí que Orion debía morir cuando me salvó la vida por segunda vez.

magic that came only when you made some larger version of yourself with words and promises, and then stepped inside and somehow grew to fill it.

I hated him and his silence ferociously: I knew he was only letting me convince myself there was nothing to be done.

I'm glad you and Chloe have become friends," in an alarmingly hopeful way that was very clearly only one unfortunate literature assignment away from turning into come live with me and be my love, optionally etched onto metal with little hearts around it.

The Staryk didn't know anything of keeping records: I suppose it was only to be expected from people who didn't take on debts and were used to entire chambers wandering off and having to be called back like cats.

If I could have remembered, at least some of the words would have been wrong: like hearing again a half-remembered favorite tale from childhood and finding it unsatisfying, or at least not as I'd remembered it.

It seems perfectly plain to me that it is war itself which must be halted, without wanting one side or another defeated in particular.