Quotes from Naomi Novik

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.

We're meant to go. We're not meant to stay forever.

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.

I was a glaring blot on the perfection. But I didn't care: I didn't feel I owed him beauty.

I should rather have you than a heap of gold, even if it were very comfortable to sleep on.

I don't want more sense!" I said loudly, beating against the silence of the room. "Not if sense means I'll stop loving anyone. What is there besides people that's worth holding on to?

But she hadn't been able to take root. She'd remembered the wrong things, and forgotten too much. She'd remembered how to kill and how to hate, and she'd forgotten how to grow.

It comes, I suppose," I said thoughtfully, speaking to the air, "of spending too much time alone indoors, and forgetting that living things don't always stay where you put them.

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

I am very tired of this Government, which I have never seen, and which is always insisting that I must do disagreeable things, and does no good to anybody.

There was a song in this forest, too, but it was a savage song, whispering of madness and tearing and rage.

A robber who steals a knife and cuts himself cannot cry out against the woman who kept it sharp.

READER, I RAN the fuck away.

They all had stories. They had mothers or fathers, sisters or lovers. They weren't alone in the world, mattering to no one but themselves. It seemed utterly wrong to treat them like pennies in a purse. I felt the soldiers understood perfectly well that we were making sums out of them-- this many safe to spend, this number too high, as if each one wasn't a whole man.

And more to the point, I was reasonably certain he wasn't going to try and devour my soul. My expectations for a husband had lowered.

I leaned against his side, his irritation oddly comforting. After a moment he grudgingly put his arm around me. The deep quiet was already settling back upon the grove, as if all the fire and rage we'd brought could make only a brief interruption in its peace.

But it was all the same choice, every time. The choice between the one death and all the little ones.

He darted a look at the uncovered basket behind me, saw what I was eating, and glared at me. "That's appalling," he said. "They're wonderful!" I said. "They're all coming ripe." "All the better to turn you into a tree ," he said. "I don't want to be a tree yet," I said.

Magic was singing in me, through me; I felt the murmur of his power singing back that same song.

He would only shrug and look at me expectantly again, waiting for high magic: magic that came only when you made some larger version of yourself with words and promises, and then stepped inside and somehow grew to fill it.

You've been inexpressibly lucky," he said finally. "And inexpressibly mad, although in your case the two seem to be the same thing

I decided that Orion needed to die after the second time he saved my life.