Quotes from Marie Brennan

So it has been, again and again throughout my life, as I form connections with people and then lose them to distance and time. I mourn those losses, even when I know my erstwhile friends are safe and happy among their own kin.

He was a man who did not properly exist in any single world, but he seemed to have found a place between them, and that, more than his past, was who he was.

I therefore had only enough fear to make myself terrified — not enough to turn back

It's a wonderful feeling to have one's brain stretched and tested, to know both that one has knowledge, and that one is gaining more.

It is remarkable what children will accept as normal, especially when their experiences have been sufficiently broad.

We stared at each other for a moment, then burst into laughter that must have scared off every nonhuman animal for half a mile around.

Readers of these memoirs, know that I have never been very religious. I am not ashamed of this fact. I have endeavoured to be a good woman nonetheless, and to do good for those around me.

At no point did I form the conscious intention of founding an ad hoc university in my sitting room. It happened, as it were, by accident.

Consider what story you want to tell. Consider what tale should embody the spirit of our age, when people look back on this time. Will it be the tale of domination that some today sought to write? Or will it be the harmony whose passing my ancient brother immortalized in clay and gold?

where the more distant phrasing can lend a veneer of respectability to the otherwise prurient-seeming habit of a naturalist spying on other creatures' intimate lives).

for even the best artwork is a static thing of the eye alone, and words are by their nature linear.

I spoke with the assurance of a young woman who thought her experience with natural history and ad hoc education in other subjects more than qualified her to hold forth on topics she knew nothing about at all. The truth is that any such comparison is far more complicated and doubtful than I presented it that evening; but it is also true that no one in my audience knew any more about it than I did, and most of them knew less. My assertion was therefore allowed to stand unchallenged. For

But rumour is a creature with many heads and no body, and I had no way to hunt it, any more than I could smooth over matters with my new relations.

Some kind of philosophical mission, something that would push back, if only for a moment, against the inescapable nihilism of this place.

Tiresias." He was often where he should not be, even where he could not be.

They chose their battleground: the wasteland on the riverbank, where Julian had first been attacked. They chose their people: seven humans, seven sidhe, with Guardians to protect them. They chose their configuration: Robert and Liesel with Falcon and Shard on the inner circle, and the remaining ten on the outer.

Its Scaled hide was dull brown That fitted in well with our surrounding, and its eyes a disturbing crimson. The low slung body featured powerful legs ending in scythelike claws anda long, flexible tail that moved hypnotically back and forth, like a cat's. Just behind its shoulders a pair of vestigial wings shifted and settled.

The roughness on the under side of the wing comes from tiny scales, which are not present on the upper surface. These cover tiny holes that perforate the wing, and are hinged to form tiny scales, which are not present on the upper surface.

I marked the extraordinary lightness of the thing. It was necessary; the weight of an ordinary bone would never have allowed something so large as a dragon to fly.

I think that was the moment at which I realised I was truly leaving. This is something the gentlemen readers of this memoir may not understand, but the ladies will know it all too well. If they are married, they have been through it already, and if not, I am sure they have devoted some thought to the matter. To marry means to leave one home for another, and often one place for another.

Larger than a pea? Oh, it most certainly was.

I stand and brush the tears from my eyes. The hen is gone, and the harp that was my mother's, and all of our gold; my husband is gone, too. The castle I shared with him is an empty shell now, robbed of everything that mattered—but I have one last use for

I wish it could have been otherwise. But in the end … this is part of our past, whether we are proud to admit it or not. Whatever our place is to be in the world, it must be a place we can claim with honesty, not one we slip into on the basis of a lie.

This edition will also carry a new title. Formerly known as The Draconeia (a name assigned to it by Lord Gleinleigh), it will now be issued under the title Turning Darkness Into Light . It will be available for sale on 13 Nebulis, only one week after the original intended date.