Quotes from Naomi Novik

And yet Praecursoris is not punished the same way, only because it is not practical, and he is needed for breeding?

I worked very hard after that. I took as much of Da's work as I could. I didn't want to make a row of dead babies and die.

Solya may not be wicked, but he likes to be too clever for everyone's good.

You speak in ignorant disdain of the foremost nation of the world, Yongxing said, growing angry himself, like all your country-men, who show no respect for that which is superior, and insult our customs. For which I might consider myself as owing you some apology, sir, if you yourself had not so often insulted myself and my own country, or shown respect for any customs other than your own, Laurence said.

There are men who are wolves inside, and want to eat up other people to fill their bellies. That it 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 started to murmur my own spell, but I found myself thinking not of roses but of water, and thirsty ground; building underneath his magic instead of trying to overlay it.

He could not help a certain resentment that a conscience seemed to be so very expensive, and yet had no substantial form which one might admire, and display to one's company.

Once down by the shore, only Temeraire went directly into the deep water and began to swim. Maximus came tentatively into the shallows, but went no further than he could stand, and Lily stood on the shore watching, nosing at the water but not going in. Levitas, as was his habit, first wavered on the shore, and then dashed out all at once, splashing and flapping wildly with his eyes tightly shut until he got out to the deeper water and began to paddle enthusiastically.

You refused him," he said to me, almost angrily. "I'm not a fool, to take gifts from monsters," I said. "Where do you think its power comes from? Nothing like that comes without a price." He laughed, a little shrill and sharp. "Yes, the trick is to have someone else pay it for you

We're cannon fodder, and human shields, and useful new blood, and minions, and janitors and maids, and thanks to all the work the losers in here do trying to get into an alliance and an enclave after, the enclave kids get extra sleep and extra food and extra help, more than if it was only them in here. 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.

Little Irina must be a woman grown by now. A beauty, I have heard, surely?' It was more mockery: he had heard nothing of the sort, of course. I had traveled with my father; the court and his advisers knew I was nothing out of the ordinary, and hardly a girl to turn a young tsar's head - if he had been in any danger of turning his head at all, except perhaps all the way round like an owl.

When I say us, what I mean is them. I felt fine. No; I felt like I'd woken up after a long sleep and had a good workout in the fresh air and a really nice stretch and was now contemplating with interest the idea of a hearty lunch. Sitting on edge in a classroom for hours surrounded by fluffy peeping freshmen waiting for one mal to pop out at me: nightmarish. Summoning a river of magma to instantly vaporize twenty-seven carefully designed attacks at once: nothing to it.

I recognized that hunger: a devouring thing that would gulp down lives with pleasure and would only pretend to care about law or justice, unless you had some greater power behind you that it couldn't find a way to cheat or break, and that would never, never be satisfied.

Out ahead of them, Arkady began something very like a marching song, chanting lines answered by the other ferals, their voices ringing out across the sky, each to each. Temeraire added his own to the chorus, and little Iskierka began to scrabble at his neck, demanding, What are they saying? What does it mean? We are flying home, Temeraire said, translating. We are all flying home.

And so does pity lead straight to disaster.

he thought how little the rest of the world should matter to him, when he was secure in the good opinion of those he valued most, and in the knowledge that he was doing his duty.

I'd been trying really hard not to learn their names, but it wasn't going very well

Well, I don't know, yet, the dragonet said, but I mean to find a way: just because the business will be difficult is no excuse for not making the attempt.

More or less, I informed the eldritch horror it had no business existing with so much aggression, that I shoved it entirely out of reality.

No matter how hard you've worked, there's always something to worry about.

Yeah, Aadhya agreed. The school wants you to go maleficer. What could you do if you decided to start using malia? If you had me make a list of the top ten questions I go to great lengths to avoid asking myself, that one would have comprehensively covered items one through nine, and the only reason it wasn't doing for item ten as well was that So how do you feel about Orion Lake had quietly crept onto the bottom of it. But it's a long way from the rest.

me. 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.

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 still good people overall, inside their own heads.

As happy as I would be to forgo the very doubtful pleasure of watching you flop about like an exhausted eel over the least cantrip," he bit out, "we've already seen the consequences of leaving you to your own devices.