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| Link | Quote | Stars | Tags | Author |
| 90b6fd2 | No, it is just pyrite, but it is very pretty, is it not? I suppose you are one of those hoarding creatures," Laurence said, looking affectionately up at Temeraire; many dragons had an inborn fascination with jewels or precious metals. "I am afraid I am not rich enough a partner for you; I will not be able to give you a heap of gold to sleep on." "I should rather have you than a heap of gold, even if it were very comfortable to sleep on," Te.. | Naomi Novik | ||
| ba795c5 | Now come on. Let's find the baby unicorns and get out of here. | Naomi Novik | ||
| db4b6b9 | though if Fanshawe had not spoken in so unbecoming a way, Laurence would have liked to keep Carver out of it, as he knew the boy had a poor head for heights, . | Naomi Novik | ||
| 6159aa1 | They moved out of Jena early the next morning, with Prince Louis and the rest of the advance guard, for the town of Saalfeld, | Naomi Novik | ||
| 9bc5966 | it offended his sense of the proper order of things that my slapdash workings did work, and he scowled as much when I was doing well as when I had made some evident mistake. | Naomi Novik | ||
| 5fef705 | He made her give him gold just to live, as if she belonged to him because he was strong enough to kill her. My father was strong enough to kill me but that did not mean I belonged to him. | Naomi Novik | ||
| ef6d760 | Oh, Hammond-intolerable, but he will see the job through. | history mission | Naomi Novik | |
| bc909a8 | When they had dismounted, he indulged himself in a shudder of his whole body. "That is more than I undertake to do again!' --this to the admiral, in reproachful tones. "Those two monstrously large beasts! Going right up to them like that and dangling their captains in front of them just as if to say, look what I have got, ha ha! I am all astonishment they did not leap upon me at once. I hope they did not get a clear look at me. If they ever.. | temeraire | Naomi Novik | |
| 6647a6e | He looked at me, baffled and for the first time uncertain, as though he had stumbled into something, unprepared. His long narrow hands were cradled around mine, both of us holding the rose together. Magic was singing in me, through me; I felt the murmur of his power singing back that same song. I was abruptly too hot, and strangely conscious of myself. I pulled my hands free. | Naomi Novik | ||
| f7bb92e | What I mean--what we mean by it is--it's like credit," I said, suddenly thinking of my grandfather. "Gifts, and thanks--we'll accept from someone what they can give then, and make return to them when it's wanted, if we can. And there are some cheats, and some debts aren't paid, but others are paid with interest to make up for it, and we can all do the more for not having to pay as we go." | Naomi Novik | ||
| a984d2e | When they had dismounted, he indulged himself in a shudder of his whole body. "That is more than I undertake to do again!' --this to the admiral, in reproachful tones. "Those two monstrously large beasts! Going right up to them like that and dangling their captains in front of them just as if to say, look what I have got, ha ha! I am all astonishment they did not leap upon me at once. I hope they did not get a clear look at me. If they ever.. | Naomi Novik | ||
| 4a8e95d | magic that came only when you made some larger version of yourself with words and promises, and then stepped inside and somehow grew to fill it. | Naomi Novik | ||
| 69ff944 | she didn't even have time to scream, just gave a startled "Oh!" and was gone," | Naomi Novik | ||
| 63692f3 | But my father's irritation told me otherwise. I had been a disappointment to him from the beginning, my mother having taken an excessive number of years to produce me, and shortly afterwards miscarrying the overdue son and dying with him. | Naomi Novik | ||
| 1f99d7b | The Magnati have all been summoned for the funeral, and I'll be announcing our betrothal once they're gathered. | Naomi Novik | ||
| 6e25523 | including one gentleman who had been introduced as a poet, although Laurence could not believe this had been an accurate translation: more likely the man was a clerk of some sort. | Naomi Novik | ||
| 696cf69 | I knew it wasn't going to help me. It was a warm kind presence in my hands, but with the kindness of a friend who sits with you in comfort by the fire and can't change what's wrong. | Naomi Novik | ||
| 3eab7aa | Laurence did not let anger go, but dismissed it to return later; the battle was not over. | Naomi Novik | ||
| 56f50a8 | I wanted to scream, to weep. I wanted to drag my hand across the world and wipe it. | uprooted | Naomi Novik | |
| edffcba | a girl had supposedly disguised herself as a man to fight in her father's stead, had become companion to a military dragon and saved the empire by winning a great battle; | Naomi Novik | ||
| bc07c07 | I had roots, too, but not like that. I could be carefully dug up, and shaken loose, and transplanted into a king's castle, or a tower built of marble--unhappily, perhaps, but I could survive. | Naomi Novik | ||
| a2f8091 | He turned a cold certain look over them like the sweep of a scythe. "For however many of them will be left," he said." | Naomi Novik | ||
| 8955c32 | If they cannot be woken to a natural affection for their country, such as we feel, it is our fault and not theirs. | patriotism temeraire | Naomi Novik | |
| b61c07a | We leave tonight," he continued, very cold and calm, "and we take the eggs with us." | Naomi Novik | ||
| ea6a3a7 | There were forest depths in her eyes, green and unending. | Naomi Novik | ||
| 60e9cd3 | Feiglings!" Eroica bellowed after them at the top of his lungs as they clawed and scattered his wing dragons." | Naomi Novik | ||
| 2c8392c | No one had ever shouted at me in my life: my mother with her quiet voice, my gentle father. But I found something bitter inside myself, something of that winter blown into my heart: the sound of my mother coughing, and the memory of the story the way they'd told it in the village square so many times, about a girl who made herself a queen with someone else's gold, and never paid her debts. | Naomi Novik | ||
| 2b204af | I recognized that hunger: a devouring thing that would gulp down lives with pleasure and would only pretend to care about law or justice, unless you had some greater power behind you that it couldn't find a way to cheat or break, and that would never, never be satisfied. | corruption greed power wealth | Naomi Novik | |
| e98d88a | You have not paid for this victory, false one, cheat, and I will give you nothing. | Naomi Novik | ||
| d5a9304 | I am sick of the quarrels of nations and kings, and I would not give a ha'pence for any empire other than our valley, if that can content your ambition. | Naomi Novik | ||
| 08ea859 | Then she'd straightened up and announced in irritation, "I've fallen out of time," before vanishing in a great cloud of smoke." | witch | Naomi Novik | |
| 5369728 | If I could have remembered, at least some of the words would have been wrong: like hearing again a half-remembered favorite tale from childhood and finding it unsatisfying, or at least not as I'd remembered it. | Naomi Novik | ||
| e6bbb0e | if people grew milder or kinder with age, he certainly hadn't. | Naomi Novik | ||
| 8f53c8d | That Staryk wanted to take her for nothing. He made her give him gold just to live, as if she belonged to him because he was strong enough to kill her. My father was strong enough to kill me but that did not mean I belonged to him. He sold me for six kopeks, for three pigs, for a jug of krupnik. He tried to sell me again and again like I was still his no matter how many times he sold me. And that was how that Staryk thought. He wanted to ke.. | Naomi Novik | ||
| edadba2 | But the world I wanted wasn't the world I lived in, and if I would do nothing until I could repair every terrible thing at one, I would do nothing forever. | activism courage determination hard-choices | Naomi Novik | |
| da0b4ff | I didn't really understand what mothers were, because mine was in a tree, but I knew they were very good things and you were very angry and sad if you lost them. | Naomi Novik | ||
| 6d45938 | I would have preferred it if she'd slapped me across the face, and laughed at me, so I could hate her. I didn't want to be the good fairy in her story, scattering blessings on her hearth. Where did all those fairies come from, and how rich could they be in joy to spend their days flitting around to more-or-less deserving girls and bestowing wishes on them? The lonely old woman next door who died unlamented and left an empty house to rob, wi.. | Naomi Novik | ||
| 12b31d7 | Whatever was carrying me dropped me again with an ungraceful thump, and I lay gasping and throat-sore on the earth--the warm earth, lush with soft green grass, though it silvered with frost in a circle around where the Staryk knelt. | Naomi Novik | ||
| 47326f3 | Where readers of Murdoch can begin a new novel with a quiet confidence, opening a Burgess book is an exercise in anxiety: what the devil is he up to this time? | Thomas C. Foster | ||
| 9598b0b | Memory. Symbol. Pattern. These are the three items that, more than any other, separate the professorial reader from the rest of the crowd. | Thomas C. Foster | ||
| 83e375d | of his need to assert responsibility for his own life. It may be that Adela does panic in the face of Nothingness, only recovering herself when she takes responsibility by recanting in the witness box. Perhaps it's all about nothing more than her own self-doubts, her own psychological or spiritual difficulties. | Thomas C. Foster | ||
| 7432f31 | And we feel that those characters couldn't be anywhere but where they are, that those characters couldn't say the things they say if they were uprooted and planted in, say, Minnesota or Scotland. | Thomas C. Foster | ||
| c45ba4d | History is story, too. | Thomas C. Foster | ||
| db2464b | Literary works are not democracies. We hold this truth to be self-evident, that all men and women are created equal. We may, but the country of Novels, Etc., doesn't. In that faraway place, no character is created equal. One or two of them get all the breaks; the rest exist to get them to the finish line. | equality heroes literature sidekicks | Thomas C. Foster |