Quotes from Nicola Griffith

Uinniau assumed the earnest face all men used when lying to their friends.

Breguswith blazed with triumph. She shrugged with it. Her eyes flashed brighter than the blue-glazed loom weights, brighter than the lapis on her veil band, brighter than the hilt inlay on her edgeless Kentish sword, thrust through her belt, which she used as a weft beater.

Parties are like life-you think that what you see is all there is, until you discover the next layer, a whole other culture that's going on all around you but you never knew existed.

I'm tired to stupidity. My apologies.

All the things that make you you, your clarity and solidity and certainty, come from this. You can actually reach out and touch your past. It's in the wood, in the cold, clear water of the fjord and the hard rock of the mountain. And the wood and the fjord and the mountain are in you, clear and strong and massive." She looked at me then, reached out to trace the line of my cheekbone, my nose, my jaw. "Aud, Aud, Aud.

I have a strange kind of face; people trust me. More than that, they see in my face what they want to be there.

Never say the dangerous thing aloud.

With food before me and sunshine on my skin, the dreams and strange mood faded as they always did.

When your king arrives in a blood-splashed boat and departs in a hurry-leaving behind a favoured kinswoman and her household for whom he demands hospitality, you give it. It doesn't matter that she's only ten. It matters that she's the subject of a prophecy and has the most direct and uncanny gaze of any maid you've ever seen, and that one wrong word to the king would mean being staked out for the ravens.

She was already going to that place, the heart-stopping moment when the world pauses, the resumes as a crystal dream.

How does she feel about leaving her family? But it was always her wyrd.

If Gwladus was here, maybe the lady would smile sometimes. Maybe she wouldn't be so pitiless.

When a woman trespasses amongst the stones of the ancestors, she belongs to the Echraidhe. She becomes Echraidhe. Like horse and herd, she belongs to the tribe. Like me, like you.

Begu was the only person who didn't make her angry. With Begu she didn't have to think.

Eye infections were always worse in winter when everyone crowded together and the fires smoked.

I studied her, one bare foot tucked underneath her, the other swinging back and forth, and remembered the scent of sleepy, naked woman.

She felt depressed and uncertain, not yet ready to be alone with her new and fragile thoughts.

She was the bringer of light. Let them call her hægtes if they must. If she didn't speak her mother and Hereswith might die.

Crystal Gaze is Atlanta's alternative bookshop and personal wellness center, more comfortable with chakras than chokeholds.

In the dim light, surrounded by swirls of sweet hash smoke, she was as clear as a cut-glass figurine.

Self-consciousness, the curse of Western womanhood.

When I was young, it was about winning, about making the other do what I want. But sometime in the last ten years…Well, I changed." She didn't look at Eric, but I got the impression their feet were touching under the table. "Now instead of charging at people, sword drawn, I find it much more enjoyable and productive to run alongside them, learn their stride and rhythm, whether or not we could run together in the long term.

Hild realised her mother had deflected her somehow, as she always did.

From the strange, cold distance in which she had placed herself, Hild wondered what he would do if she said she could see into the realm of the dead. He would believe her. They all believed her, no matter what she said.