Quotes from Nicola Griffith

Was it her true nature to take from others her own power?

Ah, she'd forgotten that. Well, the child needed reminding sometimes.

When she climbed out of the car, I saw the difference, the sleekness, her buttocks as ripe as mangoes, her arms and legs plump and muscled.

Hope was something to be feared.

The whole thing has the smell of the uncanny.

Priest or not, I will have you whipped if you try to leave. Who's to stop me, who in all the world? Only the king, and he gives me what I ask. So who is to stop me? No one." "Then I tell you truly you must learn to stop yourself.

Saying what made people in power think well of you was as much a habit for Breguswith as showing her curves was for Gwladus.

You're confusing me." "It's a confusing world.

Sometimes your face looks like something carved a thousand years ago.

Hild wondered how it must feel to have someone you didn't quite trust make prophecies about what mattered most to you in the world.

That was how kings were. If you were of no use, you didn't exist.

Even direct from the hearth it will not burn hand that holds it, and any who drink from it are healed.

Anger isn't a bad thing. It's just a feeling. Learn it. Understand it.

To the south, past the rocks, in the dunes, stood the carved posts of the graveyard. Bebba lay there, it was said, and other queens. Anglisc and British, including Cwenbarh. It was ill luck to linger by the dead, so they walked-they ran, they skipped, they laughed, their dresses kilted up like they were children, bags of bread and beer bouncing, noses streaming-north, to the island.

She breathed in and out, in and out. He breathed as fast as she did. She felt the muscles sliding over his ribs. He smelt of thyme and mead and that iron-and-salt tang that made her nostrils flare.

Hild, always visible, always watched, settled an attentive look on her face and drifted away into the music still cycling through her head. Cool, clear, endless as the sky. Perhaps it would help with any cleansing to come.

She looked like a tear-streaked maid sleepless under the weight on unbearable knowledge. She smiled.

You get the look of a man haunted by guilt. Anyone might believe you're keeping a dreadful secret. Well, there is no secret I know of that can't be helped by food. So for pity's sake come sit, and while we eat we'll talk of what's to be done about Artos.

He held her gaze this time, though it made him sweat, and this time it was she who looked away.

It was stitch-by-stitch work, following a plaid pattern. Child's play. It made her restless and impatient.

Sunshine and musk and dusty violets, but so faint. I breathed again: her skin, and her hair, oh dear god her hair…Tears ran down my face, my neck, dripped on my hands onto her shirt. All I had left of her. So faint. So very faint.

Hild, on the first boat with Eorpald and Edwin, smelt it before she saw it: the old, cold scent of deep, turned dirt; the smell of bones.

She is filled with a light she does not yet understand, my king.

If she had just asked! But no. She pushes me into a corner where there's no choice." "It's what women do: weave the web, pull the strings, herd into the corner. It's their only power. Unless they're seers.