Quotes from Nicola Griffith

Their friendship grew back, like tree bark growing over a wound. But they did not fight anyone.

Hereswith's eyes were so blue. Sister blue.

They look normal, but they don't feel a goddamn thing, don't know happy from sad from a hole in the ground. They walk around smiling and frowning and pretending to feel shit, and think everyone else out there is pretending, too. No one's real to these guys, you know what I mean? I don't mind telling you, Torvingen, they scare the crap out of me.

Perhaps there was no magic for faling off your own mount and dying alone and unmasked.

Find people. People you know are on your side. Not a priest. Not a slave. Kings die, even overkings. Especially overkings. So find people.

The metal rippled and flowed where it was not rusted.

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

Everything tasted round and ripe. The air was as rich and sweet as cider. Just breathing fed some part of her.

Recklessness killed seers as surely as it killed gesiths.

The woman knelt by Peretur, close enough to touch her on the knee, though she did not.

The world turned, ripened, grew hotter and heavier.

The thought of going alone into the king's tent full of men who had just killed other men made her feel dizzy.

For a moment Peretur could not speak, only sit with sensation flickering up and down her belly and back, like a school of fish swimming in and out of the light.

You'll be well," Hereswith said. "I'll be well. I'm older and I say so. And on your birthday and mine, we'll drink a toast, each to the other, and one day we'll hold hands again.

She wrapped her hands around the wooden bowel. This was real. This was stuff of life.

The first thing that caught her eye was one of J.C. Dahl's huge paintings of fjord light and water. She stood before it and her restlessness dropped away. She became as still as the deep dark of the fjord. I know if I put my hands on her shoulders, they would be soft and relaxed. This was a Julia I had not seen before: distant, analytical, expert.

Peretur blinked, and the strange underwater image of the man lying on stone dissolved into mist. She swayed again, and this time Nimuë steadied her.

Not that I'm sure I want to have a child, you know? We've enough to deal with, with Jink's two. But it would be nice to have the choice. It would make me feel as though I belong.

She could no more stop thinking than stop breathing.

She fell into a waking dream and on clear nights walked for miles on the world and in the woods.

The priests had had a network before Paulinus unraveled it. Hild would reweave it, to her own purpose.

Between her bleeding days, at the waxing of the moon, her senses opened like a night lily.

She started awake at the sound of footsteps, stood more than a sword's length from every gesith and listened and listened and listened, until she thought her ears might start twitching like a cat's.

Peretur did not argue, she did not think of arguing. They were in accord, even though she could no longer see into Nimuë, in that shared moment she felt-and knew Nimuë felt-that they had known each other all their lives.