Quotes from Nicola Griffith

If you adjust your conscious filters to the appropriate setting, you can relax and let your subconscious take care of things. It's something I used to be good at.

I want to learn, to wander and ask and think and listen like…like a priest of a prince." "Not gold?" "Gold comes to priests and princes.

I wanted them to learn something unique to them, that came from them, not an artificial overlay that would evaporate in the first flash of fear adrenaline if they were ever threatened.

Peretur tasted the despair in her words; the bone-bleaching fear of her recent life; starving, running, terrified, cold, always hunted, nowhere to rest, even-especially-from her own band.

If Hild thought of sides, she thought of plots, of her mother, of Lindsey, its blood, its stink, and the world began to dissolve into a white hiss so that she wanted to step away from her body and become the marble maid again.

Want on legs," Gwladus said when she saw him. "Though for what, I don't know.

If I chose Kick, she would accept us without reservation and never remind me of this conversation by word or deed; she would close over it like the ocean over a swimmer's head.

Take your joy, then, child, just tell me no more about it, and don't say I didn't warn you.

She looked up, expecting Aoifre. It was Uaithne. She leaned against the fence; her hood was drawn and snow clung to her hair. Her skin was creamy, fresh, with a delicate flush of exertion, and very smooth. Her gloves were tucked under her belt, next to her knife. The carving on the bone handle was smooth with use. She smiled.

Beginnings are delicate times.

She walked on the wave of sound the length of the tables and back up again until she stood before Edwin, on the other side of the board.

What kind of car did Michael Honeycutt, banker, drive? What did he look like, how did he sound? I wanted to see him, to weigh the fabric of his suit, smell his cologne, judge his haircut, watch his body language, listen to the way he shaped his vowels.

For Leifen, a thing is beautiful if she can reach out and put her hand on it any time.

Bishop Rhiel says a book is full of secret signs that tell a story. A god's story. It sounds as though it should be interesting, but it isn't.

For a while she enjoyed a life in which she behaved exactly as she should: a royal maid with no secrets.

The priests looked pinched and cold, though Hild didn't feel the chill.

Sometimes the body acclimitizes so thoroughly that we forget things have ever been different.

No one but her uncle knew that under Fursey's tutelage she could make her letters or that she understood Latin if it was spoken slowly-and even he seemed content to let her learn privately.

If you don't sleep, you don't dream.

My mother's soul was still Norwegian in a way that mine was not.

Her uncle saw plots under every bench but it didn't make him wrong.

His voice was like the cowbells, soft-metalled and dull, but with music buried in it somewhere.

Suddenly she was not sure about anything anymore, and that was frightening. If she did not want to do what she had set out to do, then what did she want? Something had changed. Some part of her was gone.

Until she knew how these newcomers thought and what they wanted, she would keep it that way, keep her dice rolling in her cup. It was foolish to throw before all bets were on the table.