Quotes from Naomi Novik

I was running wild through the forest of magic, pushing brambles out of my way, heedless of scratches and dirt, paying no attention where I was going.

I glared at him speechlessly; how dare he put a pet name on me?

including one gentleman who had been introduced as a poet, although Laurence could not believe this had been an accurate translation: more likely the man was a clerk of some sort.

If Napoleon can seek to ascend all the thrones of Europe, I suppose we may go dragging them out from under him

It was exactly what I wanted, only once I was in it, I didn't want it after all.

She was thinner than she had been. The thing ate only sparingly. Enough to keep Kasia alive, not enough to keep me from watching her wear away, her body growing gaunt and her face hollow-cheeked.

I knew it wasn't going to help me. It was a warm kind presence in my hands, but with the kindness of a friend who sits with you in comfort by the fire and can't change what's wrong.

The food wasn't as bad as the Scholomance cafeteria, which was as much as you could really say for it, although they presented it with the confident triumph of someone offering you marvels of the culinary art, complete with heavy white napkins and inconvenient cutlery that repeatedly threatened to fall down and disappear into the crevices of the seat or into spots unreachable except by someone with arms like a flamingo's legs.

We're all greedy, btu children make it easier to be. We feel it's only right to give them everything we can grab, even when you know that anything you feed your own child still comes out of someone else's mouth.

Knowing how to make a potion that will heal the lining of your stomach after you've accidentally drunk some lyesmoke-infused apple juice is its own reward, really.

I didn't want her to need to do things like that. I didn't want her to need a sword.

My darling girl, I love you, have courage, my mother wrote, and keep far away from Orion Lake.

It certainly went quicker to throw money away than to make it

We hadn't taken him prisoner; he'd just followed us out, trailing after us with a puzzled look, like a man who knew he wasn't dreaming, but felt he should have been.

Yes, now I was worrying I'd be turned to the dark side by too much crochet.

I wanted to scream, to weep. I wanted to drag my hand across the world and wipe it.

Oh, Hammond-intolerable, but he will see the job through.

a girl had supposedly disguised herself as a man to fight in her father's stead, had become companion to a military dragon and saved the empire by winning a great battle;

The point being that we still needed a better strategy for graduation than Wait and see if El can keep her big-girl pants on, and here I was whinging on about how nice it would be for me to do something unbelievably stupid instead, like Orion.

I [Miryem] went staggering to all the shelves in the room, looking for anything left to change, and when I didn't find anything after going round three times, I just stood there stupidly for a few more moments, and then I lay down on my mountain of gold like an improbable dragon and fell asleep without meaning to do so.

consistency is the hobgoblin of small minds

he was doing what he was meant for—something so perfectly aligned with his nature that it was as easy as breathing. It made sense suddenly that you'd like it, that it would be everything you wanted to do, if there were something you were this good at, and it rewarded you with endless buckets of mana on top. Your own body would teach you to want it more than anything—want it so much you'd have to learn to want anything else.

My head ached worst of all, some part of me tethered back to the valley, stretched out of recognizable shape and trying to make sense of myself when I was so far from anything I knew.

But just because it's a forty-sixth-order derivative equation or something doesn't mean that I can't work out which side of that equation is the guilty one.