Quotes from Naomi Novik

I'm sorry, I said, feeling stupid in the way I'm sorry always feel stupid when you mean it.

It's a bullet-point line in the graduation handbook: As a general rule, regardless of the specific situation in which you find yourself, at every step you must take care to preserve or widen the number of your options.

He turned a cold certain look over them like the sweep of a scythe. "For however many of them will be left," he said.

keep your eyes on him, you wretched vainglorious creature

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 still good people overall, inside their own heads.

You should pack up your statuary and go home.

There are authorities to choose from, Tharkay said, to suit any action, if you like; I prefer to keep the choice a little closer.

and her laugh was like a song that made you want to sing it.

Nothing changed outwardly, and yet in his essentials he felt as wholly altered as if he had been reborn, since the last time he had set foot upon the deck of a ship: a tide coming in, high and fast, which had swept clean the sand.

Do you think I will be able to breathe fire or spit poison?" Temeraire asked. "I am not sure how I could tell; I tried, but I only blew air.

as if truth didn't mean anything without someone to share it with; you could shout truth into the air forever, and spend your life doing it, if someone didn't come and listen.

Now come on. Let's find the baby unicorns and get out of here.

We leave tonight, he continued, very cold and calm, and we take the eggs with us.

he would not neglect what he considered his duty for the sake of being liked.

It made me angry, because being angry was better than being afraid.

And we all get the illusion of a chance. But the only chance they're really giving us is the chance to be useful to them.

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.

Are you just trying to be dense? He glared at me. But I glared right back, indignantly, and then in the tones of someone speaking to a dim pony, he said, I'd want to. If you want, I want. And if you don't want, then-- I don't want. That's the general idea of the thing, I said, getting wary all over again: that sounded alarmingly like he did want. Otherwise it's just stalking. Are you asking?

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 one, I would do nothing forever.

Feiglings!" Eroica bellowed after them at the top of his lungs as they clawed and scattered his wing dragons.

It's a grogler, you brainless cod! I yelled at him. No, it's a hyd-oh shit, it's a grogler, Orion said, and just stood there for a dazed, gaping moment.

Something about the aura of future monstrously dark sorceress must put them off.

if truth didn't mean anything without someone to share it with; you could shout truth into the air forever, and spend your life doing it, if someone didn't come and listen.

But for my part, I did feel very much like i'd just been put against the wall by the most dragonish dinner lady at primary school.