Quotes from Guy Gavriel Kay

We will pick our way through the shards of broken objects folly leaves behind. And some of what breaks will be very beautiful.

Jelena had begun thinking about such things, how much having a chance to do what you were good at mattered.

Shelter can be hard to find. A place can become our home for reasons we do not understand. We build the memories that turn into what we are, then what we were, as we look back.

A song remembers a home, another conjures fear that home will fall to those who would destroy it. A poet places wine glasses on a fountain's rim under stars. An artist sets his lost wife on a dome . . . amid stars. A dancer lets the music be what she is, until it stops. Someone made the music, someone plays it while she dances.

Even the birds above the lake Are singing of my love, And even the flowers along the shore Are growing for her sake. All the vines are ripening And the trees come into bud, For my love's footsteps passing by Are summoning the spring. Rian's stars in the night Shine more brightly over her, The god's moon and the goddess's Guard her with their light. Even the birds above the lake Are singing of my love, And even the flowers along the shore Are growing for her sake

An encounter on a springtime road. The random spinning of fortune's wheel. It can sway us, change us, shape or end our days.

You're too clever to be a soldier." Then she shook her head. "Don't say it. I know. We need our soldiers to be clever. I do know." "Thank you," he murmured. "You can do all of the conversation. Make it easier for me.

Whichever way the wind blows, it will rain upon the Kindath.

Will there ever be a time when it is not a curse to be born a woman? When we can do no more, than stand by and be extremely brave and watch them die?

He had a sense, through that spring, that his life would be so much better for her presence. He wasn't wrong, but it was equally a truth that the purpose and direction of her life was not to make his better, and in time he even came to understand that.

It was, Jelena though, another kind of arrogance to believe you could understand the way the world was made. It could not be done, there was too much. You needed to be open to it, though, to what your life gave you and demanded.

I am always, endlessly, hoping to be surprised." "Then I wish it for you.

When you didn't say a lot, he thought, you said the important things.

The world didn't allow you clean, clear judgments very often, it seemed to Daiyan. He envied those who thought otherwise, who lived otherwise.

Gardens were an island of order imposed upon the chaos of the world.

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

A writer's brush is a warrior's bow, the letters it shapes are arrows that must hit the mark on the page. The calligrapher is an archer, or a general on a battlefield. Someone wrote that long ago. She feels that way this morning. She is at war.

Ambitions and dreams put you at a drinking table with unexpected companions. Cups were filled and refilled, making you drunk with the illusion of changing the world.

Maybe home for some is always the one they lost.

You have no idea how dearly I wish you were of my blood. My daughter, granddaughter. Will you allow me to take pride in what you are?" -- Sandre to Catriana

The lesson of her days, Dianora thought, was simply this: that love was not enough. Whatever the songs of the troubadours might say. Whatever hope it might seem to offer, love was simply not enough to bridge the chasm in her world.

The privacy of pride.

Alluding and attacking, summoning a courage, embodying a gallantry of defiance that hurt to see, it was so noble and so doomed.

And in the dark of that room, notorious for the woven patterns of desire it had seen, Ammar ibn Khairan held the woman beloved of the man he'd killed, and offered what small comfort he could. He granted her the courtesy and space of his silence, as she finally permitted herself to weep, mourning the depth of her loss, the appalling disappearance, in an instant, of love in a bitter world.