Quotes from Naomi Novik

I opened the door expecting to find something really horrible inside, and I did: eight freshmen, all of whom turned and stared at me like a herd of small and especially pitiful deer about to be mown down by a massive lorry.

Well, luck is nothing to sneeze at, either; we would not get very far if luck were against us

She was as deep in the Wood's power as any person can be.

Ilove having existential crises at bedtime, it's so restful. I lay awake for at least an hour after the final bell, staring furiously at the blue flicker of the gaslight by the door.

I ate it all she gave me another piece and when I ate all of that she gave me another with honey. My stomach was so full I could feel it with my hand.

And am I—am I clean?" I asked finally, dreading the answer. "Yes," he said. "No corruption could have hidden from that last spell. If we'd done it sooner, it would have killed you. The shadows would have had to steal the breath from your blood to live.

You could have told me!" I shouted, arms wrapped around my body, still shaking with the horror of it. "I stood all the rest, I could have stood that, too—" "Not if you were corrupted," he said flatly, breaking in. "If you were taken deep, you would have tried to evade it, if I'd told you.

A nation is people as well," Alosha said. "More people than just the few you love best yourself.

He blinked awake at me unguarded for a moment, too startled to be indignant, as if he'd never imagined anyone could barge in on him. He looked so baffled I didn't want to shout at him anymore.

The fire was banked down to glowing coals, and the lamps were out. I went to the bed and drew aside the curtain. Sarkan was sleeping stretched across the bed still in his breeches and his loose shirt; he'd only thrown off his coat. I stood holding the curtain. He blinked awake at me unguarded for a moment, too startled to be indignant, as if he'd never imagined anyone could barge in on him. He looked so baffled I didn't want to shout at him anymore.

The Dragon raised a hand. "Kulkias vizhkias haishimad," he said, and a light shone out of his hand and onto her skin. Where it played over her I saw thick green shadows, mottled like deep layers of leaves on leaves. Something looked at me out of her eyes, its face still and strange and inhuman. I recognized it: what looked out at me was the same thing I had felt in the Wood, trying to find me. There was no trace of Kasia left at all.

But I don't think I can do it alone," I said. I had a feeling the Summoning wasn't really meant to be cast alone: 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.

I turned away and folded my arms on the table and put my head down on them and sobbed. When I lifted my head again, blotchy and tearstained, he was there, sitting near me, looking out of the window, his face bleak. His hands were folded in his lap, the fingers laced, as though he had held himself back from reaching out to touch me. He had laid a handkerchief on the table before me.

I felt as though I were pretending to be grown-up.

Not a hundred feet away the river roared over a cliff's-edge, and were weren't really leaves, even if I'd been careful to forget that.

I thought by then that maybe everything was all right because Panova Mandelstam was a mother. I didn't really understand what mothers were, because mine was in a tree, but I knew they were very good things and you were very angry

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.

There was no eager ache of hunger in my belly from the long day of cooking and cleaning without a pause; there was no joyful noise of too many people crammed in around the table, laughing and reaching for the platters. Looking down at my tiny feast only made me feel more desperately lonely.

It annoyed me more and not less because I didn't have a good reason for being annoyed. I couldn't even come up with anything to say about it.

she was one of them again, one of the actors moving in the stage, as graceful as any of them.

Surely it's not too much to ask a little patience

Naturally I came out designed to be the exact opposite of this paragon, as anyone with a basic understanding of the balancing principle might have expected

The creaking was every song I'd ever heard about war and battle; the horses clopping along, the drumbeat. All those stories must have ended this same way

How exactly have you managed to spend your entire career until now pretending to be a nice person?" (...) "It is not a complex problem to appear nice to people! You identify the most popular targets in each of your classes, learn what they value about themselves, and give them a minimum of three relevant compliments each week. So long as they think you are agreeable, others will follow their lead.