Quotes About Manipulation

Baines jerked his hands as if tugging reins; the web of light around Will tightened. Will staggered woodenly like jagged marionette.

He plays the white and black pieces both, a double game that defies all understanding.

He had absolutely no objection to using his partner's brooding charisma as a weapon.

Mingan smiled and set Cathoair down, deceptively gentle. The Wolf leaned him against the wall, barely upright…and grabbed his chin in one hand, and the nape of his neck in the other.

His face gives nothing away; Valens plays his games on a dozen levels.

I used to make people like you as servants.

It whetted its killing manipulators one over the other, which looked like a threat but might have been a shrug.

Elena might think she was the saltspider at the center of the web, but Lesa couldn't allow her to recognize all the layers of machinations here.

The whole world is a weapon.

He delighted in Sebastien's jealousy and anger, and always had.

She had controlled him. Down to the breath he drew. He'd thanked her for it, and it hadn't been enough for her. Fair enough. He had, after all, defied her in the end.

Muire's cheeks stung. She didn't want to think of them, or Mingan's obscene pleasure in finally having Strijbjorn under orders and biddable. Nor did she wish to think that the Grey Wolf had gone from hanging his deadly embrace over her, to having his way with this candle-flicker.

There's something about Richard that's hard to get used to, when you've been dealing with the likes of Valens, and I don't know how to describe it. They both delight in tricking people, in holding all the cards.

If it's your fault, you weren't just a helpless dupe, right? But if somebody else tells you that you weren't a helpless dupe, you get angry.

I'm allergic to perfect consensus. It has to be enforced somehow and once you sign the clade contract, they just tune your neurology until you agree. Boom, no conflict.

Coincidence was possible. But what was much more likely was enemy action.

A snake never shares what she knows unless it serves her own purposes.

Much as I'd like to feed her her own superior smile sometimes, I still want the woman to like me. And I want her to like herself enough to keep doing what we need her for. Because, God knows, I haven't got it in me to try.

I kept waiting for her to reach out, to ask, to flirt. To get back to her gaslighting games, to get whatever she wanted from me.

We're looking for a mortal man to seduce and betray. Your speciality.

It did not take a great deal of native genius for Cathoair to figure out that they wanted something from him.

any tool can also be a weapon of oppression as easily as it can be an implement of construction.

I might have her body under control-but she, in her own way, had mine. I was going where she wanted to go, where her friends were waiting for us. And okay, it might be a little embarrassing for her to explain how she wound up handcuffed to a stanchion, but she could probably spin that as part of her master plan to subvert me.

Alienor glanced across at the girls who were still oblivious of their fate as they sat over their game of chess. They had been born to be pieces on a board, but whether pawns or queens depended on the skill with which they played the game, and how clever their opponents were.