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5367783
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Mathin said: "It is best to take your opponent's sash. The kysin mark each blow dealt, but to cut off the other rider's sash is best. This you will do." "Oh," said Harry. "You may, if you wish, unhorse him first," Mathin added as an afterthought. "Thanks," said Harry."
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Robin McKinley |
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1ac5a9f
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I didn't want to know that the monster that lived under your bed when you were a kid not only really is there but used to have a few beers with your dad.
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Robin McKinley |
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e143f00
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Oh, why does compassion weaken us?' It doesn't, really ... Somewhere where it all balances out - don't the philosophers have a name for it, the perfect place, the place where the answers live? - if we could go there, you could see it doesn't. It only looks, a little bit, like it does, from here, like an ant at the foot of an oak tree. He doesn't have a clue that it's a tree; it's the beginning of the wall round the world, to him.
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perspective
philosophy
world
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Robin McKinley |
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253343e
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If you wish, I shall go personally to your City and knock together the heads of Perlith and Galooney.
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luthe
sarcasm
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Robin McKinley |
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a77bdaf
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It wasn't so long ago when all the so-called scientists said that humans were intelligent and that animals weren't, humans were the solitary unchallenged masters of the globe and probably the universe and the only question was whether we were handling our mastery well. (No. Next question.)
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Robin McKinley |
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c0087d6
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We kings do develop a certain ability to recognize objects under our noses.
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observation
royalty
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Robin McKinley |
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2f9e08b
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Then marry me. For I love you, and I do not believe there is anything so wrong with you. You are fair in my eyes and you lie fair on my heart.
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Robin McKinley |
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e70e49d
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Can you trust me, he said. Not will you. Can you. Can I trust him? What do I have to lose?
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Robin McKinley |
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05fcef2
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It doesn't matter if I'm only to be gone four days, as in this case; I take six months' supply of reading material everywhere. Anyone who needs further explication of this eccentricity can find it usefully set out in the first pages of W. Somerset Maugham's story "The Book-Bag."
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bibliomania
travel
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Robin McKinley |
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ab16991
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And none at all has ridden at the king's side since Aerinha, goddess of honor and flame, first taught men to forge their blades. You'd think Aerinha would have had better sense.
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Robin McKinley |
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060ae23
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With the knowledge of her aloneness came a rush of self-declaration: I will not be nothing.
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Robin McKinley |
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5047217
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Tsornin's nostrils showed red, but his ears were as alert as ever, and occasionally he would rub his nose gently against the nape of her neck, just in case she was momentarily not thinking about him.
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Robin McKinley |
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06705be
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Cannot a Beast be tamed?
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beauty
beauty-and-the-beast
romance
tamed
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Robin McKinley |
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a2b0d03
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He looked at her rather as a man looks at a problem that he would very much prefer to do without. She supposed it was a distinction of a sort to be a harassment to a king.
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Robin McKinley |
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6b09c73
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Those single-track military minds never think to ask their cleaning staff for help in giant lethal marauding creature matters.
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Robin McKinley |
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3458b76
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I smiled. "I understand now. But It doesn't matter and you needn't apologize. They have been very kind to me too. Even if we did differ a little about suitable dresses." He considered me a moment, a mischievous light creeping into his eyes, and said: "Was THAT the dress - that night you wouldn't come out of your room?" I grinned and nodded, and we both laughed;"
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Robin McKinley |
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8040654
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It was too important a matter, this talking to people, and listening to them, to do it lightly or often.
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Robin McKinley |
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39fb8ab
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He didn't look insane or inhuman. He did look uncooperative.
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Robin McKinley |
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afd016a
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She laughed at him then, because he sounded like a small boy, not like a very large grown-up Beast with a voice so deep it made the hair on the back of your neck stir when you heard it. 'But vegetables are good for you,' she said, and added caressingly, 'They make you grow up big and strong.' He smiled, showing a great many teeth. 'You see why I wish to eat no more vegetables.
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Robin McKinley |
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17953f3
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Tell me who you are. You need not tell me your name. Names have power, even human ones. Tell me where you live and what you do with your living.
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Robin McKinley |
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ac2e366
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Perhaps it is a human thing, to look upon such beauty and fail to encompass it.
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pegasus
robin-mckinley
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Robin McKinley |
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ffaca51
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What you describe is how it happens to everyone: magic does slide through you, and disappear, and come back later looking like something else. And I'm sorry to tell you this, but where your magic lives will always be a great dark space with scraps you fumble for. You must learn to sniff them out in the dark.
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Robin McKinley |
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b078de1
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All you did was sit there, he said. Why are you so tired? I sat very diligently, she said.
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Robin McKinley |
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c277ead
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Sungold blew impatiently and began to dig a hole with one foot. She booted his elbow with her toe and he stopped, but after a moment he lowered his head and blew again, harder, and she could feel him shifting his weight, considering if she might let him dig just a small hole.
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Robin McKinley |
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ea01ab7
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My sheets had never been so clean as they had in the past few months. I hardly got them on again before something else happened and I was feverishly ripping them off and stuffing them in the wash with double amounts of soap and all the "extra" buttons pushed: extra wash, extra rinse, extra water, extra spin, extra protection against things that go bump in the night."
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Robin McKinley |
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96e44e7
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The weak grey light that serves as harbinger of red and golden dawn faintly lit my window. I fumbled for a candle, found and lit it, and by its little light saw that the rose floating in the bowl was dying. It had already lost most of its petals, which floated on the water like tiny, un-seaworthy boats, deserted for safer craft. "Dear God," I said. "I must go back at once."
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Robin McKinley |
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733f72c
|
Cigars should be like onions," she said, unfastening the catch and pushing back the pane. "Either the whole company does, or the whole company does not."
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Robin McKinley |
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8d4af26
|
But it was equally clear to her that this was her fate, that she had called its name and it had come to her, and she could do nothing now but own it.
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Robin McKinley |
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e78cab2
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What was new was the fact that, despite my heart doing its fight-or-flight, help-we're-prey-and-HEY-STUPID-THAT'S-A-VAMPIRE number, I was glad to see him. Ridiculous but true. Scary but true.
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Robin McKinley |
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b279b29
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Because she was a princess she had a pegasus.
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Robin McKinley |
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876e360
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Why do you tell me... so much?" Luthe considered her. "I tell you... some you need to know, and some you have earned the right to know, and some it won't hurt you to know--" He stopped.... "Some things I tell you only because I wish to tell them to you."
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Robin McKinley |
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0dd9a0e
|
He grunted; she recognized it as relief that she wasn't going to nag him further about Tor the Just, who probably wasn't that boring if he could hold off the Notherners for nine days and melt a hole in the hills.
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Robin McKinley |
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f23aa41
|
Mice are terribly chatty. They will chat about anything, and if there is nothing to chat about, they will chat about having nothing to chat about. Compared to mice, robins are reserved.
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mice
robins
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Robin McKinley |
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91c7c6e
|
Gonturan] is a true friend, but a friend with thoughts of her own, and the thoughts of others are dangerous.
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friendships
swords
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Robin McKinley |
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bfc4c2d
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She poured the water, arranged some bread near enough the embers to scorch but not catch fire, and looked up at Little John. She was so accustomed to his step, to his bulk, that it took a moment to notice his face; and when she did . . . It was, she thought, rather like the moment it took to realize one had cut one's finger as one stared dumbly at the first drop of blood on the knife-blade. You know it is going to hurt quite a lot in a minu..
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Robin McKinley |
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50effed
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Rosie hated her curly golden hair. When she was old enough to hold minimal conversations, the itsy-bitsy-cutesycoo sort of grown-ups would pull the soft ringlets gently and tell her what a pretty little girl she was. She would stare at this sort of grown-up and say, "I am not pretty. I am intelligent. And brave." The grown-ups usually thought this was darling, which only made her angry, perhaps partly because she was speaking the truth, alt..
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Robin McKinley |
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070eb17
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He was now suddenly hot, as hot as if he'd been in a kitchen baking cinnamon rolls in August. I already knew vampires could sweat, under certain conditions, like being chained to a wall of a house with sunlight coming in through the windows. He was sweating again now. Some of his sweat fell on me. I've always rather liked sweat. On other occasions when I've had a naked, sweating male body up against mine, I've tended to feel that it meant h..
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Robin McKinley |
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99ec4a3
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the touch of evil poisons by the idea of it. Reject the idea, and you've rejected the evil
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Robin McKinley |
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b29f8b6
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One day" she told them, "when you have retired, you will go to live with a family who will love you for your beauty and nothing more, and if you're very lucky there will be children, and the children will pet you and pet you and pet you. Ossin has a list, I think, of such children; he sends his hunting-staff out during the months they are not needed for that work, to look for them, and add names to the list." The fleethounds stared back at ..
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Robin McKinley |
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2f9c92a
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She thought, He's afraid I'll make a mess of it. She was sure she had been careful to think that on the safe, private side of the silent border, but Ebon turned on her and said,
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Robin McKinley |
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bdf3ec3
|
We are all only mortal," said the Master, even more slowly. "We do only what we can do. All the Elemental priests have certain teachings in common: one of them is that everyone, every human, every bird, badger and salamander, every blade of grass and every acorn, is doing the best it can. This is the priests' definition of mortality: the circumstance of doing what one can is that of doing one's best. Only the immortals have the luxury of fu..
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Robin McKinley |
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db76869
|
Tiny fists can hurt quite a lot when they hit you in the face.
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Robin McKinley |
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35057ca
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but with the hours I sometimes kept at the coffeehouse I had to have learned to take naps during the day or die, and I had learned to take naps. Up until five months ago "something or other or die" had always seemed like a plain choice in favor of the something or other."
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humor
naps
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Robin McKinley |
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fc3387d
|
Your attitude is perhaps a little unnecessarily rigorous," suggested Jack."
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Robin McKinley |