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e25a3dc
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One keeps searching for ease, she did not say, and not finding it, till the memories of no-pain seem only like daydreams.
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Robin McKinley |
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8258e64
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She had had insomnia badly when she was fresh from Home.... She had had only occasional bad nights since then. Bad? she thought. Why bad? I rarely feel much the worse the next day, except for a sort of moral irritability that seems to go with the feeling that I ought to have spent all those silent hours asleep.
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Robin McKinley |
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3afc51d
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There was, too, a reality to her new life that her old life had lacked, and she realized with a shock that she had never truly loved or hated, for she had never seen the world she had been used to living in closely enough for it to evoke passion in her.
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Robin McKinley |
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551ad29
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There was a certain bitter humor to lying awake wishing for something one cannot have, after lying awake not so long ago wishing for the opposite thing that one had just lost. Not a very useful sort of adaptability, this, she thought.
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Robin McKinley |
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304b91e
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Mathin had taught her patience, and she had known all of her life how to be stubborn.
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Robin McKinley |
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d25adda
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My father... raised me to make up my own mind. The way he did this was by yielding to me when I asked, even when I was foolish. I lived through it; and I know my own mind; and he will do what I ask him.
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Robin McKinley |
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36ec401
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She fell asleep, leaning on his chest, and he edged her a little off a particularly painful bruise, leaned his head back against the tree he had propped them up against, and closed his own eyes.
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Robin McKinley |
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79571b2
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She, too, spoke only when the queen or king addressed her first, but she looked searchingly at every supplicant, and her clear face said that she had opinions about everything she heard, and that it was her proud duty to think out those opinions, and make them responsible and coherent.
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Robin McKinley |
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495cf09
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The merrel also knew its wing had not healed. it said.
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freedom
injury
suicide
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Robin McKinley |
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aef89f2
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My capacity for invention is flash hot stark, I thought. Sucker sunshade. Disembodied radar-reconnaissance. Not to mention Bitter Chocolate Death and Killer Zebras. Pity about the rest of me.
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Robin McKinley |
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e1f4629
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And when I looked up and saw you as you were, in no gaudy robes and bearing no solemn goblet - suddenly I had hope.' 'I did not see you looking,' said Mirasol. 'I did no want you to see,' said the Master.'And I looked away quickly, because I knew the hope was false. I knew - I think I knew - that it was not really about hope, it was about looking at you. And so I looked at Horuld, and at his sword, and reminded myself that they were about t..
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Robin McKinley |
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988ac8e
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The lessons she'd been forced to learn were dry spare things, the facts without the sense of them, given in the simplest of language, as if words might disguise the truth or (worse) bring it to life.
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Robin McKinley |
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e1755e8
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Charlie is one of the big good guys in my universe.
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Robin McKinley |
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54d225d
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Slowly, painfully, I let go. It was like prying my own fingers off the edge of the cliff. And that hurt too-particularly the falling part, and not being sure what was at the bottom. But I did know. was what was at the bottom. I was already there.
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grief
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Robin McKinley |
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d6c803d
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I said with perfect honesty, "I have no intention of trying to take these suckers out by myself, no." --
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Robin McKinley |
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c63add8
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at four o'clock in the morning, when the world is full of magic, things may be safely said that may not be uttered at any other time, so long as the person who listens believes in the same kind of magic as the person who speaks.
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Robin McKinley |
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1dd2cb4
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I'd always had a guilty preference for fiction. Since I seemed now to be living fiction, this proved to have been an entirely reasonable choice.
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fiction
life
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Robin McKinley |
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48ea18c
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Say yes, babe, or I'll spill you off over the Wall next time - got it?
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Robin McKinley |
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c0319f8
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She fell in love with him, and he with her; that's a spell if you like.
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Robin McKinley |
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c6b4697
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and again she wished for Sherwood, and the dappled roof of leaves that never weighed upon her. She pulled her scarf closer around her and thought, I would rather live in a hut in the woods; a hut like the one of my first memories, with a clean-swept dirt floor, and a brown-eyed boy watching me from behind his mother's skirts as I watched him from behind mine.
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Robin McKinley |
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d538d1e
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She caught her father one day at breakfast, between ministers with tactical problems and councillors with strategic ones. His face lit up when he saw her, and she made an embarrassed mental note to seek him out more often; he was not a man who had ever been able to enter into a child's games, but she might have noticed before this how wistfully he looked at her. But for perhaps the first time she was recognizing that wistfulness for what it..
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Robin McKinley |
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432c14e
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Oh,' she said, too bone-weary to pretend: 'I would far rather that I love you as I saw yesterday I do than that I had gone on worshiping you as I did not long since.' And she turned away hastily, and did not see that Little John would reach out to her; and half-running, went to Tuck's cottage, where she could pull on her half-dry clothes, and become a proper outlaw again. At least, she thought, fighting back tears, like this I am Cecil, wit..
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Robin McKinley |
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392d331
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You can be a really nasty, selfish little jerk when you're scared enough. I was scared enough.
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fear
scared
self
yourself
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Robin McKinley |
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706395b
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The magic in that country was so thick and tenacious that it settled over the land like chalk-dust and over floors and shelves like sticky plaster-dust. (House-cleaners in that country earned unusually good wages.) If you lived in that country, you had to de-scale your kettle of its encrustation of magic at least once a week, because if you didn't, you might find yourself pouring hissing snakes or pond slime into your teapot instead of wate..
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magic
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Robin McKinley |
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d43c65c
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But the uproar this caused was nothing compared with the uproar when Katronia noticed [Rosie] had also cut her eyelashes. Various negotiations (including, finally, such desperate measures as "supposing you ever want to eat again") eventually produced the grudging promise that, in return for Katronia keeping her hair cut short, she would leave her eyelashes alone."
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negotiation
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Robin McKinley |
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9e3461a
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It was of grey stone, huge block set on block;but it caught the sunlight like a dolphin's back at dawn.
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Robin McKinley |
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c75c713
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It is not a comfortable passion.
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Robin McKinley |
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a891cad
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Little John, watching her standing next to her brother, half-glowering in the old Cecil manner and half-comforted by Robin's words, saw for a moment what it had been like for her as Will's litter sister. Some of what she was good at, and some of what she was bad at, as his pupil, came clear to him in that moment; and something else came clear to him too, but he set it aside so quickly that he allowed himself not to recognize it for what it ..
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Robin McKinley |
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4acf23e
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I don't remember this earlier,' said Tuck. 'No?' said Robin in a neutral voice, and Tuck was too busy to pursue it, but merely bound it up and told him it was time for him, too, to try to sleep. Robin never had to tell anyone of his meeting, weaponless and with an armful of dead branches to break up for firewood, with one of Guy's men. The next day, when the burying began, no one questioned the body of another mercenary.
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Robin McKinley |
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61fbe01
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we may not like it, but we need human friends, because we have human enemies whether we will or nay.
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Robin McKinley |
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29a7e31
|
Don't let the title mislead you," Arlbeth told her. "The king is simply the visible one. I'm so visible, in fact, that most of the important work has to be done by other people." "Nonsense," said Tor. Arlbeth chuckled. "Your loyalty does you honor, but you're in the process of becoming too visible to be effective yourself, so what do you know about it?"
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Robin McKinley |
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2dcf1db
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But their strength is the strength of numbers and of stubbornness and persistence; do not underestimate it.
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Robin McKinley |
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66223ca
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including Rilly, who was beside herself with excitement, and her mother, who was beside herself with Rilly--
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Robin McKinley |
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ce2a082
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Her fingers crawled upwards and touched the outer curve of her breast, and the fingers paused, quaking in fear; but after the moment, despite the panic trying to break out of its shadows and seize her mind, she told her fingers, go on. This is my body. I reclaim my body for myself: for my use, for my understanding, for my kindness and care. Go on. And the fingers walked cautiously on, over the curiously muscleless, faintly ridged flesh, coo..
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Robin McKinley |
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d1c4c7b
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She had not meant to name them, but she could not help herself; and having done so she thought, Let their names be symbols that their lives are worth the keeping. Let them struggle a little the harder, to keep their names.
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fantasy
retelling
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Robin McKinley |
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75052ca
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There was a long pause while she hated everyone impartially: Tor for behaving like a farmer's son whose pet chicken has just been insulted; her father, for being so immovably kingly; and Perlith for being Perlith.
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Robin McKinley |
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16f97e9
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It's kind of interesting you're driving a car big enough for a wolfhound and a mastiff to get in the back of today," I said. "And a greyhound, a dark brown bear, and a brindle utility vehicle," said Jill. "Greyhounds don't take up much room," I said. "They're like dog silhouettes."
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greyhounds
humor
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Robin McKinley |
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82eb836
|
Majid gave me a brief dazzling golden stare and then half-lidded his eyes again. I know when my life is being threatened.
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humor
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Robin McKinley |
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ffa22b3
|
The Pavilion did not burn by lightening," she said. He hesitated again. "It holds the memory of fire," he said at last. "Lightening is young and strong and thoughtless, but it could also wish to visit the site of some particular victory of one of its kind--as a young soldier recently commissioned might visit the scene of some great battle--"
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Robin McKinley |
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6c1c703
|
Stop it. This is me, remember? We've been thrown up by the same puppies. - Ossin
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puppies
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Robin McKinley |
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a844a97
|
I have a mastery of the art of worrying that is a burden to me if I may not use it. --Robin
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Robin McKinley |
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5e2e1c3
|
There's always a nest time,' said the king, 'unfortunately. You just don't know what it's going to be about.
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Robin McKinley |
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6bf7106
|
But he hated to see his people people unhappy--because he was a good king, not because he was a nervous one--
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Robin McKinley |
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9353da6
|
She looked up at once, pierced to the heart by the sorrow in his voice and knowing, from the question and the sorrow together, that he had no notion of what had just happened to her, nor why. From that she pitied him so greatly that she cupped her hands again to hold a little of the salamander's heat, not for serenity but for the warmth of friendship. But as she felt the heat again running through her, she knew at once it bore a different q..
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Robin McKinley |