Quotes from Nicola Griffith

Even though your sister is now the overking's peaceweaver, we must show our strength and make our persuasions in person.

It was the kind of kitchen where a lot of family conversations happen.

Albinoni streamed as clear as the sun into the dining room. The old mahogany glowed like bronze. The flatware winked.

Mead produced grater miracles than all the prayers in the world.

Hild was glad to escape the responsibilities she didn't quite understand and roam the moor.

The two reeked of wyrd.

There is no perfect security. There's always something. Always.

Vibration seeped through Ollfoss like the smell of grass after rain, resonating with the pulse of the world, its heartbeat.

She raised her cup to Edwin and wondered how much longer she could help him stay king.

She swung her hair back from her face and eyed me sullenly, now the perfect teenager. Infant to child to teen in one day. With any luck she'd be dead of old age before we reached the clearing.

We'll finish setting up this pattern, but the weaving we'll leave to others. We must bend our minds to our plans.

A woman should judge priests for herself, as she would any other man. When they make demands you think unfair, speak to the king's man at Caer Larat.

That night she dreamt of seawater coursing over her glistening skin, of flying underwater and over it, and woke in the glimmer of dawn with a shivering yearning, delicious and unnameable.

She was glad to be alone, to be free, to be high above the world, where she could see everything coming. She had people to protect.

I thought of all the households in this country that would rejoice at a child's ferocious need to learn, of the fact that this book had been hidden away, and wanted to push Adeline Carpenter's face into the stew to boil along with her dumplings!

A face of many stories, some finished, some beginning.

Most importantly for me, historical accuracy also meant this could not be a story of only straight, white, nondisabled men. Crips, queers, women and other genders, and people of colour are an integral part of the history of Britain—we are embedded at every level of society, present during every change, and part of every problem and its solution. We are here now; we were there then. So we are in this story.

Leifin was obsessed by perfection and possessions. It was an obsession that prevented her from seeing any difference between carving something beautiful and killing another thinking, feeling being for its fur.

You musn't let her treat you as badly as she treats herself.

She would be glad not to attend Edwin. She had her father's hair, more so every day. When her uncle was thinking of power and dynasty, it was best not to come to his attention. And she had a lot to think about.

The child would wake in the night to her mother's dream cries-a man coming to steal her, steal her child, steal her payment-and her mother would not eat, only hunch over the bowel and scry, and follow the girl about with haunted eyes.

She walked in the evening through her domaine, as aware of it as if her own body.

Her bright red lipstick couldn't hide the fatigue in her smile.

Maybe she'd be better suited to a glittering palace, to a great and terrible queen whose eyes are as pale as diamonds, who drinks bloodred wine, and trails a cloak of dark glamour.