Quotes from Guy Gavriel Kay

My youngest brother had a wonderful schtick from some time in high school, through to graduating medicine. He had a card in his wallet that read, 'If I am found with amnesia, please give me the following books to read …' And it listed half a dozen books where he longed to recapture that first glorious sense of needing to find out 'what happens next' … the feeling that keeps you up half the night. The feeling that comes before the plot's been learned.

In this world, where we find ourselves, we need compassion more than anything, I think, or we are all alone.

The deeds of men, as footprints in the desert. Nothing under the circling moons is fated to last. Even the sun goes down.

How we remember changes how we have lived. Time runs both ways. We make stories of our lives.

There are kinds of action, for good or ill, that lie so far outside the boundaries of normal behavior that they force us, in acknowledging that they have occurred, to restructure our own understanding of reality. We have to make room for them.

Words were power, words tried to change you, to shape bridges of longing that no one could ever really cross.

One man sees a riselka: his life forks there. Two men see a riselka: one of them shall die. Three men see a riselka: one is blessed, one forks, one shall die. One woman sees a riselka: her path comes clear to her. Two women see a riselka: one of them shall bear a child. Three women see a riselka: one is blessed, one is clear, one shall bear a child.

Ice is for death and endings.

We must be what we are, or we become our enemies.

The world could bring you poison in a jewelled cup, or surprising gifts. Sometimes you didn't know which of them it was.

The heart has its own laws... and the truth is... the truth is that you are the law of mine.

By things so achingly small are lives measured and marred.

A hard truth: that courage can be without meaning or impact, need not be rewarded, or even known. The world has not been made in that way. Perhaps, however, within the self there might come a resonance, the awareness of having done something difficult, of having done . . . something .

We salvage what we can, what truly matters to us, even at the gates of despair.

Full moon is falling through the sky. Cranes fly through clouds. Wolves howl. I cannot find rest Because I am powerless To amend a broken world. Sima Zian added, I love the man who wrote that, I told you before, but there is so much burden in Chan Du. Duty, assuming all tasks, can betray arrogance. The idea we can know what must be done, and do it properly. We cannot know the future, my friend. It claims so much to imagine we can. And the world is not broken any more than it always, always is.

Sometimes you didn't really arrive at a conclusion about your life, you just discovered that you already had.

When I'm all grown up, come what may, I'll build a boat to carry me away

We like to believe, or pretend, we know what we are doing in our lives. It can be a lie. Winds blow, waves carry us, rain drenches a man caught in the open at night, lightning shatters the sky and sometimes his heart, thunder crashes into him bringing the awareness he will die. We stand up, as best we can under that. We move forward as best we can, hoping for light, kindness, mercy, for ourselves and those we love.

Branching paths. The turning of days and seasons and years. Life offered you love sometimes, sorrow often. If you were very fortunate, true friendship. Sometimes war came. You did what you could to shape your own peace, before you crossed over to the night and left the world behind, as all men did, to be forgotten or remembered, as time or love allowed.

Only then, invisible to everyone and with her curtains drawn, did she allow her tears to fall: in love, and for his hurts, and in terrible pride.

Tigana, let my memory of you be like a blade in my soul.

most hated by the dark, for their name is light.

We worship…the powers that speak to our souls, if it seems they do. We do so knowing there is more to the world, and the half-world, and perhaps worlds beyond, than we can grasp. We always knew that. We can't even stop children from dying, how would we presume to understand the truth of things? Behind things? Does the presence of one power deny another? [p. 176]

Do you know the wish of your heart? - The Darkest Road