Quotes from Nicola Griffith

If she's to guide kings she'll need subtlety, and all the Anglisic know is blade and blood and boast." Hild said in Irish, "You have not met my mother.

It wasn't her blood. It was the blood of those who had fought over her like mad beasts while she lay stunned.

This one's as pretty as a grass snake, but much more dangerous.

Watch man and woman, her mother had said, put yourself inside them. Imagine what they're thinking.

It was strange, seeing her in clothes I had not bought or lent her, drinking wine she had selected without my advice, without needing me there.

Good surveillence and good books don't mix.

The look she gave me was full of meaning, but I had no idea what it was.

This was the world I belonged to now, this one, where when a living thing died it fed others, where the scents were of mouse drops and sap, not exhaust fumes and cordite, and the air hummed with insects rather than screams and the roar of flame.

The shield on his left arm was matcing red leather stretched over wood and painted with a black snake with golden eyes and tongue; around its edge another snake, this time of armoured scales, glinted in the shimmering tree light.

She was baptised to Christ-their name for the pattern, her path, her wyrd. She was still herself.

Onnen liked Mulstan, Hild could tell. She also knew Onnen liked the way he ran his holdings, though it lacked the fine and sharp efficiency a woman would bring to the housebold. She liked his daughter and his servants and the ease his housefolk felt in the hall. And she leaned in towards him as though she liked his smell. And Mulstan liked her; Hild saw the way his nostrils flared as Onnen laughed at something he said and patted his arm.

Wolf eyes," she whispered, and I could feel her breath on my throat, "so pale and hungry.

The lustre, like the sheen of rum honey or parsnips cooked in butter made her want to put it in her mouth, she put it down reluctantly.

In the glow of the setting sun Cian seemed larger, denser, his eyes more blue.

We shook our heads, like two old soldiers drinking at the veterans' hall and despairing of the youth today.

Angst was for the dark.

Something in her sudden stillness made him look down at her hand, and he nodded, and with one last look turned away with her down the path.

The world can be big, and stink, and it hurts if you fall off, but hey, it's worth trying, mostly, and what doesn't kill you…Well, it doesn't kill you.

Ninety feet over my head the canopy of ash and white basswood shivered the constant mountain breeze; it was never quiet, not even at night. I stood for a while and just listened.

Here on her own turf she looked different: more whole and competent; denser somehow.

I can't tell you what is right," she said, "but I can tell you what is expected by others, and by this child. It doesn't matter what she calls you. Mom or Tante or Aud, if legally you are her mother, somewhere inside she will expect you to behave as one. It doesn't matter if this is likely, or even possible, it is what she will expect.

She had slumped like a bundle of abandoned knitting.

Woden's beard, it was her they were after. The maid.

Peretur had never seen so many beasts living in so small a space; even closed, if she shut her eyes she could hear them, feel them, taste their curiosity.