Quotes from Nicola Griffith

She walked alone in the rain, half mad with trying not to remember the soft warmth of Onnen's motherly breast and the smell of her clothes, trying not to think of the glint of firelight on Begu's escaping hair because then she'd remember it always, one more meory to torment her.

Her mother sighed, then smiled a slow, regretful, entirely human smile that made Hild like her.

They both smiled, and Peretur felt a little less lonely, a little less lost.

Her back was very straight as she walked away, despite the fact that, on top of jet lag, she must have been up all night taking charge of my life.

These are tales of the world," she told her. "All the adventure, all the different and new you need.

I stood behind him for nearly a minute-close enough to smell the familar bitter hint of coffee grounds-before he jerked around and whipped off his shades.

Promises were useless in the face of torture.

She felt once again Angharad's breath on her cheek-Red is your colour-and that first cool kiss of the dream lake.

Ghosts grew from the thin grey mist of hollow hills, the damp and drizzle of dusk, the breath of the dead.

Hild found herself listening beyond the hall, beyond the crackle of the fire, beyond the thumping scratch of a dog under the trestle, half expecting to hear an unearthly shriek as the sentry's throat was cut.

I think she knows she's made a terrible, irreversible mistake, but she can't stop because if she did, she'd have to acknowledge the mistake and the fact that people really don't care. They just think she's a freak.

She looked at him, at his sly eyes and stubbled tonsure.

You can never walk away. They'll always find you. You matter for your blood. And your mind." "Which you made." "To keep you safe.

She's subtle and not to be meddled with.

You might have been talking gibberish, but your smile was radiant.

Her back was straight, she moved with enormous, fragile dignity.

Hild was recognized: a tall maid with fathomless eyes, a very big knife and the pig's blood still on her skirts.

You fight not to take or break but to make.

Aud rhymes with shroud.

More and more now she could tell the difference between what was real and what was a mix of memory and nightmare; more and more she felt sure that if she spoke she would be speaking to the living, not ghosts.

The lake was her destiny; her path to it lay through this knight.

Julia stood and they shook hands in that brittle Southern girl-girl squeeze of limp fingers; the one that says, When did they start letting people like you in? Dornan, of course, noticed none of this. His world was full of Tammy, his girl, his fiancée, the light of his life.

You have a bright mind but lack subtlety. I could teach you. And life around Edwin will be interesting-oh, very, very interesting, if I'm any judge, which I am-for the next little while. And I've a mind to meet your mother.

It's easy to lie to people you're leaving.