Quotes from Storm Constantine

He was able to see, which was certainly a good sign, but the water was murky, filled with debris, so his sight was limited. Ays expanded his mind with a single thought: up. He relaxed, and felt his body ascend, as if drawn by a rope above. His vision became cloudy, sparkling. His lungs screamed for breath. Soon. Soon. Do not give in, do not give up. He reached upwards with his hands, reaching for light, for air.

He is as prickly as a bowl of shards, but he appreciates attractive things.

From the moment I saw them, I'd felt a deep sense of recognition, some tugging within me as if I'd met them before yet forgotten when and how. I was filled with an excitement that eclipsed even the feelings I'd had after meeting Hadith Sarim.

How much Tayven had been like good food: a delight to the senses. People had wanted to gorge on him and they had. But the flavors eventually had become bitter.

He looked up at her, his face that of total vulnerability. He was a boy again, confused because the world had acted against him.

The facts were locked up somewhere; it was felt we no longer needed them, that their starkness might harm the delicate balance of our relationship with this world.

As a child, I had thought the guardian-pursuers to be very real, but as I grew older, I concluded they were simply products of our own imaginations, shaped into being by the trauma of the scrying rite we all undergo at eight years of age. It's not impossible that the scryers conjure them forth from the murk of the soulscape itself anchoring the vigilant images to our conscious minds by an insidiously instilled sense of guilt.

The stories are true in a way. They do steal people. But not in the way we thought.

She looked enchanting, wearing a simple, long black dress, her hair held back with a silky scarf. She had painted her lips with a smudge of pale lipstick and her lashes were spiky with mascara.

Lead her. Guide her. Oh, it will be our privelege, sweet child. I am breathless before the beauty of her naked soul.

The Hanged One is waiting for you! He is hungry for you, Taziel!

No one other than Valraven Palindrake could lead the Magravandian army. He is its heart. He is like Bayard, Leonid's son, who is equally demonic. They deserve each other.

A wall had come between them, a soft wall of Ellony. How could it hurt this much?

Shemyaza sat in the front of the truck, his eyes closed. He was very conscious of Daniel behind him, this strange new Daniel who was as cold and distant as a star.

Just when it seemed he must break through the surface and avail himself of the welcome wine of air, something heavy and dark come plummeting through the water and collided with him.

Once we had crossed the line that separated this unpredictable land from the normal world, I began to understand its symbolic nature. There was a weird beauty in the tumbled shapes beside the old road, and a kind of dignity.

He was conscious of the great weight of the keep above him, its brooding memories, its twisted bitterness in defeat: Old Caradore was insane, driven mad by all it had witnessed.

Cities, you see, are like humankind. They are born, become great and fulfil their potential, or else, in the case of failures, remain as straggling haphazard creations throughout their life span. Then, they die. They are dynamic things, the cities. If they did not live, their people would perish; the relationship between human and city soul is crucial to the well-being of both.

If a body should fall from that window, its flight would be impeded by the stone arms of caryatids and gargoyles, or else impaled. I could see him thinking of his own death, and he was achingly lovely as he did so: the archetype of all the boys ever loved by kings. His hair, unbound, flowed down him like a veil; the colour of dark honey. His eye, in profile, was slightly slanted, its cat-like shape accentuated by a kiss of kohl.

We are trapped on this world, Gimel. From this perspective, this moment of Now, we are trapped here forever. We cannot die, and yet, we do.

In the manner of young males finding themselves in the presence of a superior speciman of their kind, who was clearly a member of a different youth culture to their own, they began to make insulting remarks, which grew even louder as they approached the car.

New cities are born, so old ones must die. That seems logical to me.

Ah, Tayven, we are not together and I am not swooning in your embrace, ready to spill all. I see through your wiles.

It was the cry of someone who'd looked in the abyss, someone who had previously not even known the abyss existed. It was the sound of a soul tearing.