Quotes from Nicola Griffith

This was for her path, for her freedom, for her life and family. To make her dead da proud. She was strong. She was royal. She would set her will. She would do this.

She shot up like one of the weeds in the barley field and grew tender breast buds.

A spider only has to set at the edge of a puddle to catch the fly that dives to drink. A shrew has only to watch in turn for the spider. For the fly most come to the edge to drink, and the spider must follow the fly. Fate goes ever as it must.

She shines with your reflected wyrd.

Tomorrow I'd start learning this city the way I liked best, by moving through it.

She had wide shoulders, a tight waist flowing into rounded hips, and muscles on her fingers and forearms and neck. I guessed her back was also finely muscled, and her legs. It was muscle that comes from intensive training from an early age, the kind a trapeze artist or free climber or high diver develops. Not something acquired behind a food counter.

In my imagination I smiled back at her, then found I was smiling down at her because she was in a wheelchair.

She had to be the king's fist, a killer. She had asked for this task. It must be done.

The arms that Thenike wrapped around her waist for support were strong and hard. Marghe wanted to lean into them and weep for what she had lost, though she did not know whether the loss was good or bad, or even real.

Despite her best intentions, Hild's voice rose as a question.

Men, I have found, are more generous when their bellies are full.

The dark was many things: the cold, the alien world, the virus, her own fear.

Hild's dreams of birds stolen from their nests by stoats became so evil Onnen threatened to stuff her ears with tallow and threatened to find another sleeping place.

Your body and your mind need to be clear, uncluttered, for what lies ahead.

The rhythms of the household had changed.

She might wear a blade, but she also wears skirts, priest, like you. So she will learn. Teach her. But not about your Christ. There'll be others for that, in time.

Even in the moonlight you'll glitter like barrow wights. They'll see you coming from a mile away.

She had found that people, especially people who spoke a different tongue, would get anxious if they didn't get to have their say in their own way, even if they spoke in a long rush, burying to get their words out.

Marghe could feel the words bubble under her tongue like lava.

When everything shows down and my muscles are hot and strong, and the blood beats in my veins like champagne I feel this vast delight. Everything is beautiful and precious, and so clear. Light gets this bluish tinge and I feel like a hummingbird among elephants, untouchable.

You'd have to be dead to be impervious to that rhythm.

Everything the king does is a lie.

Violence feels good. It's so simple and clear. There's no mistaking the winner. I like it, but I avoid going there, going to the blue place, because I think I could get lost, not find my way back, I wouldn't want to find my back because it's seductive.

Thenike laughed, and Marghe listened to that laugh: rich, smoky, warm, it rolled like breaking waves on a flat beach, as if it could go on forever, changeless.