Quotes from Nicola Griffith

Gwenhwyfar looked at her husband and quivered like a leashed hound with the scent.

A memory of stretching like a dog, the push of feet on turf and flash of teeth flicked across her mind like a leaf on a gust of wind. She tried to catch it back, but it was gone.

I looked at my hands, turned them over in the tarnished shine of streetlights seeping through a crack in the curtains. They were long; strong and competent with nicely shaped nails; hard enough for a palm strike, soft enough to trace gentle arabesques on a taut trembling stomach or along a soft inner thigh. The stains did not show.

You are a seer overwhelmed by vision, not a silly maid who can't hold her drink. You will not hide. You will not hang your head. You will smile. You will eat. You will make a show of drinking your wine. One more sip of this. Good. Now gather your wits.

Her smile was warm, her hand pressure brief but sincere, and her makeup flawless.

You couldn't see her good points for her bad. Ah, now your face is closing up. I haven't seen that face in a while. No doubt you're thinking, He doesn't know the half of it and I'm not going to ruin his image of his fiancée by telling him. Tell me, did she try to seduce you? Yes, I thought so. She tried it with all my other friends who didn't like her." "I-" "Oh, I know, you turned her down.

Tell my mother: They are my people. They are my path. It's where I belong. She'll understand.

Hild nodded, but couldn't say anything. Soft, shocking echoes lapped at her bones and squeezed her insides. Gwladus kept stroking her belly and the echoes began to run into one another like ripples on a pond, and then slowly calmed.

All I have ever wanted is to fight for what is good and clean and bright. All I want is to know who I am and where I belong. And I belong here, lord, as a Companion.

How had she managed to get inside me, slip between my ribs and rest against my heart without me feeling it?

I know police work and death, I understand the intricacies of diplomacy and the strange sharp angles where performance art and outlaws, tattoos and high society meet and mingle. I also knew what she didn't: that stalking a professional killer is not a game, not a hobby you can learn on the weekend. Not when the stakes are your life.

It had to happen. It should happen soon.

His eyes were hooked so deep in their sockets she could not tell at first what colour they were. But she was not looking hard, because she had eyes only for the sword at this side, which drew her so strongly she had to use half her attention to not reach out to the silvery hilt.

The air in her lungs evaporated in a puff she turned to a laugh, and she sat down. Breathed. Smiled.

Efficient punch of button with terrifying red nail followed by professional smile at us.

No one but a lover should ever see such an expression, and then only fleetingly, yet here it was, captured forever.

Julia laughed and picked up the pace and for a while we swung along in the opposite step, hip to hip, her right leg moving out with my left, so I could feel her boot hit the ground, feel it through the soles of my feet, up to my calves, in my pelvis. It didn't last, of course. My legs are longer.

The revolt always begins when the steward wants to be king. A lesson the Franks never seen to learn.

I'm not a vampire. If you invite me in, you can always get rid of me later.

She was smiling, an otter playing in a smoky waterfall. My face ached. It seemed I was smiling, too.

Your bodywoman is no doubt making the household miserable. Fear has made her vicious.

The smile turned the unearthly queen to a haggard and bony youth playing dress-up.

She held out her hands and we hugged. I remembered when she used to engulf me. Now I was an inch or two taller, though her bone and muscle still felt like granite.

Oh, you won't kill yourself, you're too self-centered and you're too stubborn to go mad. So that means you'll have to cope.