Quotes from Emma Bull

Happiness, in the land of Deals, is measured on a sliding scale. What makes you happy? A long white silent car with smoked-glass windows, with a chauffeur and a stocked bar and two beautiful objects of desire in the back seat? An apartment in a nice part of town? A kinder lover? A place to stand that's out of the wind? A brief cessation of pain? It depends on what you have at the moment I ask that question, and what you don't have. Wait a little, just a little. The scale will slide again.

Her coral liptint was faintly luminous; when she pressed her lips together, they made a glowing rosebud in her face.

It's better to be happy than comfortable, if you can't have both.

Her skin was translucent pale, the complexion of the rich. Money made an excellent sunblock.

I don't have to answer to you. For anything." Willy's eyes narrowed. "Okay," Eddi said. "I should be patient. But all three of us just spent the last—however long it was—with people trying to kill us. It frays your temper. So if you want to discuss the night's events, do it. But if you'd rather play B-movie gestapo officer, you can play somewhere else.

It's a cheval, said Mick, huge eyed. ...A mindless, soulless, sexless shell, genderless as a baby doll, she said to me--at me--whoever she was talking to, it wasn't me. She didn't believe I existed.

A crisp new brain without a tenant. A bottle made to be filled by one of us, empty brass waiting to be turned into a bullet. A shiny new horse to be offered to the desperate Horseman in the vain hope that he or she will prefer it over the nearest infantry grunt. A domestic animal bred and broken for one of us to ride.

The origin of my body and my mind didn't matter. I, the part of me that learned, that called on my memories, that knew I'd pulled a plant like this before, that had moved this hand to do it, was fifteen years old and innocent of evil or good. Neutral. From here forward, I was blank tape; what would be recorded there, and when, and why, was up to me.

I don't trust memory, anyway. Why should I? Memories, however undependable, ought to be the stuff on the sand when the tides of experience recedes. As long as they're part of that process, there's something valid about them, something that ties them to real life.

Which means what?" "That the Queen of Faerie recognizes you as a power, and has spoken to you with respect. Others will follow her lead." "Huh. That and a quarter will buy me a gumball.

Coincidence is the word we use when we can't see the levers and pulleys.

Sometimes, she reflected, she dressed for courage, sometimes for success, and sometimes for the consolation of knowing that whatever else went wrong, at least she liked her clothes.

We're all immortal until we die.

She lifted her head. "It's easier," she said, slowly, "to be angry on someone else's behalf than on my own. And yet I find I have a well of anger in me, that I have been filling for years from my own hurts. If I spill it out in defense of another, I can deny it's mine.

It was like him, too, to love her and admit to it before he knew if she loved him. Maybe only mortals expected to barter their hearts.

Coincidence is the word we use when we can't see the levers and pulleys.

To those who see the magical surface of things, you are invisible.' Good grief. Will you still be able to see me?' He met her eyes in a way that made her shiver pleasantly. 'I see you in a great many ways. It would be hard to blind me in all of them.

She has her own glamour, Willy lad. All poets do, all the bards and artists, all the musicians who truly take the music into their own hearts. They all straddle the border of Faerie, and they see into both worlds. Not dependably into either, perhaps, but that uncertainty keeps them honest and at a distance.

Could I make you believe something that wasn't true?' He studied her through his eyelashes. 'You could make me believe anything at all.

Sex without love is like a goddamn business transaction. And sometimes both parties feel as if they got a good deal, but that doesn't make it any less so.

If you were anyone else, I'd tell you it's unbecoming to gloat." But you'd tell me..." That even gloating becomes you. It's a sad thing, an intelligent woman in love.

Here's what I think I'm having trouble with: this is what happiness is. When I was a kid, I thought I'd just get happier and happier as I got older, and have more things to be happy about. I based this theory on observation of select adults. The problem with my results is that I couldn't tell the difference then between happy and fake-happy. Now I know you pretend to be just frigging ecstatic over everything, maybe because you're so glad it's not worse.

The way to get through normal life is to pretend it isn't getting to you. If you let on that you're hurt, the other animals will turn on you and tear you to pieces. Don't attract the attention of predators.

You have to break an omelette to make eggs.