Quotes from Kay Kenyon

The student asks: If my redstone necklace had every view of every veil that ever brightened, would I be wise? The master answers: If I had a thousand pieces of a priceless vase, would I be rich?

Tori gazed out on the calm Ancific Ocean across which, incredibly, she would be taking a coach.

We must love all of creation, not only what is common. A god may have the head of an elephant, after all.

He had always thought that death was black nothingness, but he had not counted on being awake for it.

It was always easy to think that happiness and wisdom lay in the shadows, in places that have never yet been seen.

Every man wishes to be king. Her hair snapped about her, buzzing.

3,117 people had lost their lives in the flood. And the king had missed breakfast

The worst kind of poison for despots: truth.

He didn't know which he preferred: the Red, with its fatalistic and pious acceptance of all futures, or the Misery, acknowledging that the more you attracted notice, the worse God dealt with you.

She shrugged. Ownership is a fragile concept.

The awful, ironic, glorious fix for the writing doldrums is to write the next page.

Like a lot of people, she thought love solved everything: just smear it over the problem, and it'll all work out. Then they had the arrogance to pity you if you saw things more rationally.

Even when I'm writing about shape shifters and magical lands, I'm looking into my own heart.

A novel in progress doesn't have a clear, forward process. It's messy, like a beloved, balky child.

The writer's special talent is to empathize with people and imagine their lives. We know them as we write them.

I love storytelling when the writing spins through me like photons on their way to lighting the world.

May the dragon you find be well fed.