Quotes from Sharon Shinn

For people who make up stories for a living, that is the ultimate success: knowing that, when the book closes, when the series ends, the adventure is not over. It goes on without the creator, in the minds of the people who love it. You can't stop the signal. Once it's broadcast, it continues on forever, pulsing past star clusters, lighting up new worlds, collecting new fans, till the end of time itself.

You're wasting your time, she wanted to tell them. I don't care about your cars or your properties or your bags of gold. What have you done with your life? What are you going to do with it? That's all that matters.

it was as if that long-healed wound was raw again; all the complex memories crowded once more to the forefront of her mind. An old despair should not feel so new, but a new despair could haul an old one out of hiding.

To some extent, it doesn't matter who we are or where we came from—what kind of family brought us into this world," Josie said softly. "We become who we were meant to be, and all those other influences fall away.

His brown eyes were set back in deep hollows, as though he looked out from a place of shadow on all the verities of the world.

You almost threw it back!' she repeated, and her voice filled with mock horror. 'You foolish boy! Are you always so careless with items of value?' 'No,' he said, abruptly sober. 'I know what matters. And I never throw those things away. I hold on to them as long as I can.

She was not who she wanted to be. And not only did she not know how to make herself over into someone else, she wasn't even sure who she wanted to become.

Now his grin lit his face with a sunny halo.

It is better to bow to the dictates of the wind than to try to chase or chain it.

The debt of friendship is never collected," he interrupted. "And nothing is ever owed.

Last time I was watching her, I left her in her crib and when I came back, she was a puppy. Just for a couple of hours, then she was herself again.' I mean, I almost couldn't speak. I said, 'Did it occur to you to tell me this?' And she said, 'Well, I thought it might be a one-time thing. I didn't want to worry you.

I am your friend. I will not fail you at your darkest hour. For this, more than the prestige, he had always wanted to be a Rider—for this utter, bone-deep sense of commitment to a unit and an ideal.

I was irritable, Kent was taciturn, Damien was withdrawn, and Bryan was downright sullen. It was hard to tell if Roderick had any sort of mood upon him; he did not seem like the type to inflict his humors on his companions.

Why had the counterfeit timbre of his voice rung true to me? What had prompted me to believe a man who spent most of his life dissembling? Why had I, usually so suspicious, become so credulous and simpleminded in his presence? Was it just that I had wanted to hear someone tell me he loved me? Was it just that the words he spoke, the vows he swore, were so freighted with sweetness that they would have seemed true no matter who spoke them?

I could come up with no answer. He had kissed my hand. The forces of gravity came unraveled; there was no cohesion at the core of the world, no order in the universe. Clouds and trees and birds and suns spun around of their own volition, freed from their laws and routines. Bryan had kissed my hand. I could not be rational; and so nothing in the world would make sense again.

I did no such thing as sit there with my mouth open, though I may as well have, since I felt as if my mind was gaping. It had simply never occurred to me to wonder what kind of person I was, what kind of person I wanted to be. I had not envisioned this as something I had any control over, just as I could not alter the round shape of my face or the dense black curl of my hair.

I think we broaden our minds and our experiences if we can learn to embrace things that at one point filled us with revulsion.

If you did leave,' he said. 'If you did simply walk out the doors and stroll down the mountain, leaving behind no word of where you were going or why, I would come looking for you. I would never stop looking for you. I would find you, too.

But what if I say something and you don't like it?' 'Well, that happens between people all the time. And sometimes it turns them awkward with each other, and sometimes it makes them angry, but unless they tell the truth it's all just guessing and mistakes anyway.

I am not like other women. I do not like the things they like or feel the things they feel. And it is better so. I do not want to be like them. I do not want to turn into one of them.

Without an understanding of what a thing really is, it cannot be either uncovered or changed. (Aubrey)

And what is magic after all but a man's power to change the world while it is incapable of changing him? (Aubrey)

She almost laughed. "I think you're a man who gathers up power like a child gathers up wildflowers in the woods."   "Responsibility, maybe," he said. "Not necessarily power."   "Harder to gather handfuls of lake water or rain," she said.   "I know," he said. "I don't expect to be able to harvest you.

With him, I have hope. With you, I have only love. It is not enough. (Lilith) I have love, but no hope. I cannot tell which is worse. (Aubrey)