Quotes from Nicola Griffith

Peretur laughed. Risk. Her whole life was risk. And now, today, with Nimuë at her side-and keeping food down-Peretur feelt she could slay a dragon.

Holding secrets, her mother said, made a man feel mighty.

Excitement is the product of facing something dangerous.

The three women were gracious but remote, dry-eyed players in the royal mummery of Eorpwald and Edwin's grander farewell: the pledges of honor and allegiance between king and overking.

A new Tammy, the tentative beginnings of a new life. But there were still a few threads from the old that needed to be dealt with.

The burning was something to hold on to as her headache threatened to engulf the world.

I imagined Cei as the kind of English rugby player I used to know: mostly kind—if he thinks you're like him; not stupid but lazy and willing to learn only when prodded; and (mostly) just this side of being an asshole but (almost) always very close to the line. Basically, a jerk but with some good points, and useful in a fight. I've spent a lot of time in a lot of pubs with men like Cei.

I was hungry for another viewpoint, to see Julia for the first time.

She loved the firm pressure of Gwladus's hand on her crown, the steady strokes of the brush, and the scent of dried lavender and spicy tansy rising from her skirts.

The lake sometimes has a mind of its own; there's no telling how it might treat you.

The end of the room dripped and glowed an eerie vampire-cavern red. Blood dripped onto the body below, thickly, silently, the drops absorbed by its clothes.

Christ wasn't their god, some muttered, not yet. But most didn't care. They were happy to eat.

When I saw her come in that night with you, I said to myself, Now there's a handful, because I thought she'd be snooty, you see. It was the way she carried her head.

The music was sinuous, insistent. She was moving with it again, swaying silver like a sleeping fish in its current.

It shines and it gleams, but is not what it seems.

Hild used a trick she had learnt from Gwladus, and studied her mother through half-closed eyes while she lowered her head to her apparent task. Breguswith was smiling to herself.

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

My face is my most useful tool. I made it smile.

There is one thing Margaret Thatcher said that I agree with: if you have to tell people you're important, you're not.

She reeked of power: richly dressed, strong-boned, uncanny. She laid her hand on her seax and gave herself a long look. Begu was right. No one would be fool enough to get in the way of this woman. She looked like a pale and unearthly queen.

Most of the women were frank in their assessment of the men, gossiping about which make a good husband, which good sport. Hild mostly listened to the birds.

The loft was as I remembered-rich carpet, polished floors, and stark brick support pillars all brilliantly lit, even with no one at home-only now whenever I looked I saw that unfeeling mind at work, controlling, manipulating, hiding.

Sometimes I think I know you, know who you are deep down, better than you know yourself. You think efficiency is the key to your personality, but it's not. You're a sensualist, a hedonist of the first order. Look at the way you cradle that cup, the way you tilt your face to the sun like a flower." "It's efficient. Absorbing heat means my body doesn't have to create its own." "But it's also delicious.

There was no wind in the hall, no fly to land on Gwenhwyfar's hand and tell Peretur all she needed-and she could read nothing in the queen's carefully judged smile.