Quotes from Naomi Novik

But my father's irritation told me otherwise. I had been a disappointment to him from the beginning, my mother having taken an excessive number of years to produce me, and shortly afterwards miscarrying the overdue son and dying with him.

The Magnati have all been summoned for the funeral, and I'll be announcing our betrothal once they're gathered.

you sit inside the soundproofed cocoon, hoping you aren't missing the footsteps of something coming at your back, and read textbooks or work on exercise sheets while disembodied voices whisper to you in whatever language you're studying that day. Usually they tell me horrible gory stories or describe my death in loving detail.

It wasn't that I wanted a husband and a baby; I didn't, or rather, I only wanted them the way I wanted to live to a hundred: someday, far off, never thinking about the particulars. But they meant life: she was living, and I wasn't.

That man with my brother is an envoy

even though dignity matters fuck-all when the monsters under your bed are real.

She says it's too easy to call people evil instead of their choices, and that lets people justify making evil choices, because they convince themselves that it's okay because they're

know what the prophecy says because he translated it for Mum, repeated it a dozen times over trying to persuade her, because he didn't know Mum well enough to understand that the one thing she'll never go for is the lesser evil.

I couldn't help knowing she would have told me off for giving him the least encouragement, in the strongest terms possible for her, and also that she'd be absolutely right: I hadn't any business agreeing to be with someone who told me in all sincerity that I was his only hope of happiness in the world, at least not until he'd sorted his own head out and diversified.

But the world I wanted wasn't the world I lived in, and if I would do nothing until I could repair every terrible thing at once, I would do nothing forever.

The Dragon's tower is a long way in the other direction, a piece of chalk stuck in the base of the western mountains.

Intent doesn't matter, she'd say, when you've really injured someone else. You need to be open to their pain and anger if you're ever to make things whole between you.

CUIDADO CON SU MASCOTA SECRETA».

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 I wasn't old enough to be wise, so I loved her more, not less, because I knew she would be taken from me soon. She

Small hopes were riches to those who until lately had none, and were to be pursued by every means at hand.

and a clean pocket-handkerchief. The

Laurence did not let anger go, but dismissed it to return later; the battle was not over.

I love having existential crises at bedtime, it's so restful.

she's been living alone with a man for ten years, so of course she's ruined, even though the girls all say he never puts a hand on them.

My teeth were already clenched with fury by then, with a new addition of lurking anxiety: was I starting to feel evil? Yes, now I was worrying I'd be turned to the dark side by too much crochet.

To be fair, you're the only person I've ever met who'd come up with the idea of being wildly rude and hostile to the guy who saved your life twenty times," Aadhya said. I glared at her. "Thirteen times! And I've saved his life at least twice." "Catch up already, girl," she said, unrepentantly.

The tea was even offered exactly in the same way that Americans always did it, namely with the faint hint that they didn't really understand why I might like some tea, but they understood that this was the appropriate thing to do.

if people grew milder or kinder with age, he certainly hadn't.