Quotes from Naomi Novik

if he had been in any danger of turning his head at all, except perhaps all the way round like an owl.

If you deliberately put out a bowl of milk for the little people, or whatever equivalent gesture, they'd come and suck up the tiny bit of mana that came from your intent, and then they'd leave your house alone in order to preserve the regular supply.

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

Lots of us up for first run today," Alfie said, in the bright sort of way that someone might say, Well, looks like rain, doesn't it! when it's sheeting down and you've taken shelter under an awning with five people who've all got knives drawn, and you're quietly reaching into your pocket for a handgun.

could only buy it by giving in sooner, giving in all the time; like Scheherazade, humbly asking my murderous husband to go on sparing me night after night. And

It was their responsibility to do the terrible thing for everyone else. To bear the scars of it like a burden, as if there was something noble in doing something so horrible that most people couldn't stand doing it, for the sake of those squeamish people.

I wanted and didn't want his help. I wanted to stay angry at him a while longer, but I wanted the connection more; I wanted to touch him, wanted the brilliant crisp bite of his magic in my hands. I kept my head down and kept working.

The heavy velvet hangings' deep dark closed us in all around, as if we lay inside his walled heart.

Most of the denizens don't care what the council are doing as long as everything keeps running smoothly from their own perspective, and the only people who get a significant vote anyway are the people who've earned a council seat, either by doing something dramatic or because they've cleverly arranged to be descended from a founding member.

there is a limit to the evil one despot alone can do, and if he is truly vicious he can be overthrown; a hundred corrupt members of Parliament may together do as much injustice or more, and be the less easy to uproot.

Also it was hot as Satan's tit, to put it in the most colorful terms possible

The spell towed me along with them, and I was glad to lose myself inside it. All the horrors of the day didn't vanish, but the Summoning made them only one part of the story, and not the most important part.

I put my fingers up to brush the fine links. Even lying on my skin, it still felt cool to the touch, and when I looked at myself in the mirror, in the glass I was not standing in my father's study. I was in a grove of dark winter trees, under a pale grey sky, and I could almost feel the snow falling onto my skin.

There are men who are wolves inside, and want to eat up other people to fill their bellies. That is what was in your house with you, all your life. But here you are with your brothers, and you are not eaten up, and there is not a wolf inside you. You have fed each other, and you kept the wolf away. That is all we can do for each other in the world, to keep the wolf away. And if there has been food in my house for you, then I am glad, glad with all my heart. I hope there will always be.

I could almost have felt sorry for Jermaine, who'd worn the expression of a person trying to have an important conversation with a brick wall.

The only teachers in here are the maleficaria, and they don't have pets, they have lunch.

Whatever was carrying me dropped me again with an ungraceful thump, and I lay gasping and throat-sore on the earth—the warm earth, lush with soft green grass, though it silvered with frost in a circle around where the Staryk knelt.

Blue shadows stretched out over the snow, cast by a pale thin light shining somewhere behind me, and as my breath rose in quick clouds around my face, the snow crunched: some large creature, picking its way toward the sleigh.

She really did an excellent job of making it seem perfectly ludicrous for me to be living quietly in my own home instead of keeping close tabs on the latest news from international wizarding circles.

Temeraire-- Never fear; I am going; the Son of Heaven will not tolerate delays, and Barham gives me leave. Allegiance will carry us! Pray eat something --L.

You intolerable lunatic," he snarled at me, and then he caught my face between his hands and kissed me.

If you don't want a man dead, don't bludgeon him over the head repeatedly.

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.

What an unequaled gift for disaster you have.