Rachel Hartman

“There are melodies that speak as eloquently as words, that flow logically and inevitably from a single, pure emotion.”

“The truth may not be told. Here is an acceptable lie.”

“There are two sacred causes in this world,” he said, holding up his pinkie and ring ringer. “Chance and necessity. By chance I was there to help when you had need.”

“And I realized a wondrous truth: that knowledge could be our treasure, that there were things humankind knew that we did not, that our conquest need not comprise taking and killing, but could consist of our mutual conquest of ignorance and distrust.”

“I scrupulously hide every legitimate reason for people to hate me, and it turns out they don’t need legitimate reasons. Heaven has fashioned a knife of irony to stab me with.”

“He didn’t wear his heart on his sleeve, exactly, but he did keep it in a place where I could see it.”

“Peaches and Cheese”:The vagabond sun winks down through the trees,While lilacs, like memories, waft on the breeze,My friend, I was born for days such as these,To inhale perfume,And cut through the gloom,And feast like a king upon peaches and cheese!I’ll travel this wide world and go where I please,Can’t stop my wand’ring, it’s like a disease.My only regret as I cross the high seas:What I leave behind,Though I hope to find,My own golden city of peaches and cheese!”

“Orma had given me a timepiece that emitted blasphemy-inducing chirps at whatever early hour I specified.”

“I’m attracting small children,” Orma muttered, twisting his hat in his hands. “Shoo it away, will you?”

“I was inclined to leave love unspoken.”

“I spent that many years thinking I was alone. Then you prance into my life, nearly giving me a paroxysm, and now you deign to tell me there are more.”

“Fond and protective equals love? I wasn't sure whether to laugh or cry.”

“How dare the world be beautiful when I was so horrifying?”

“The resolve written in his eyes said no, but I could see exactly where I would have to push, and how hard, to break that resolve. It would be shockingly easy, but I found I did not wish it. ... Some part of him would break, along with his resolve, and I did not see a way to make it whole again. The jagged edge of it would stab at him all his life.”

“I heard you, sought you, and have found you. I have reached for you, across space and sense and the laws of nature. I do not know how.”

“Always I hev my fists and my war pipes!”

“He looked at me again and his eyes shone in the lamplight, or with the inner light of delighted anticipation.His enthusiasm made him beautiful.”

“I'm awestruck that you had warm cabbages sitting around.”

“I mistook you for a metaphor.”

“For a fleeting instant, in the sad curve of his shoulders, I saw what Comonot could not: the core of decency; the weight he had carried so long; the endless struggle to do right in the wake of this irreversible wrong; the grieving husband and frightened father; the author of all those love songs. For the first time, I understood.”

“Orma moved a pile of books off a stool for me but seated himself directly on another stack. This habit of his never ceased to amuse me. Dragons no longer hoarded gold; Comonot's reforms had outlawed it. For Orma and his generation, knowledge was treasure. As dragons through the ages had done, he gathered it and then he sat on it.”

“He was impugning my virtue. I ought to have been offended, but for some reason the idea tickled me. That could be my next career: instrument of torture! Seducing prisoners, and then revealing my dragon scales! They would confess out of sheer horror.”

“...it's as if I have just solved Skivver's predictive equations, or even better, as if I have intuited the One Equation, seen the numbers behind the moon and the stars, behind mountains and history, art and death and yearning, as if my comprehension is large enough that it can encompass universes, from the beginning to the end of time.”

“Sir James waved a gnarled hand. "They're nothing but feral file clerks, dragons. They used to alphabetize the coins in their hoards.”

“The borderlands of madness used to have much sterner signage around them than they do now.”

“Walk with an open heart, and you will hear the call. You will see your task shining before you, like a star.”

“I was just chased through St. Willibald’s, and you know why? Because I was kind to a quig. I scrupulously hide every legitimate reason for people to hate me, and then it turns out they don’t need legitimate reasons. Heaven has fashioned a knife of irony to stab me with.”

“Art is a conversation we are all invited to and are all worthy to participate in. Yes, great works can be intimidating, but no one else in the world has what you have—your voice, your eyes, your feeling and perspective. Other people have written great books, but no one else will ever write YOUR book. It's worth writing. That is the belief that carries me through.”

“An aged monk led me to the infirmary. "He's got the place to himself. Once the other invalids learned there was a dragon coming they miraculously got well! The lame could walk and the blind decided they didn't really need to see. He's a panacea.”

“For future reference: do not underestimate the seductive power of math.”

“I rose to standing, like Lars upon the barbican, the dark city spread at my feet. Lights twinkled in tavern windows, bobbed at the Wolfstoot Bridge construction. Once I had been suspended over this vast space, hanging and helpless, at a dragon’s mercy. Once I had feared that telling the truth would be like falling, that love would be like hitting the ground, but here I was, my feet firmly planted, standing on my own. We were all monsters and bastards, and we were all beautiful.”

“You, of all people, understand the burden of having to prove that you are good enough to exist, that you are worth all the grief your mother caused everyone. Bastard equals monster in our hearts’ respective lexicons; that’s why you always had such insight into it.”

“He’s got the place to himself. Once the other invalids learned there was a dragon coming, they miraculously got well! The lame could walk and the blind decided they didn’t really need to see. He’s a panacea.”

“Please, Orma, I’ve already gotten you in so much trouble—” “That I can’t possibly get into more. Take it.” He wouldn’t stop glaring at me until I’d put the earring back on its cord. “You are all that’s left of Linn. Her own people won’t even say her name. I—I value your continued existence.” I could not speak; he had pierced me to my very heart.”

“You’re not a villain,” I said. Or else we were two villains in a pod.”

“I had felt the shot coming; I hadn’t realized the bow was loaded with this very quarrel, perfectly calibrated to hit him hardest. What part of me had been studying him, stockpiling knowledge as ammunition?”

“Metaphor is awkward, but emotion, by its nature, leaves you no more scalable approach.”

“Claude rubs the back of his neck and wrinkles his nose, about to tell me he was never sad. I believe this is called bravado and is not limited to lawyers, or even men, although that combination makes it almost unavoidable.”

“My own survival required me to counterbalance interesting with invisible.”

“Keeping my smile raised like a shield between us, I curtsied and quit the room.”

“I saw the void beneath the surface of the world; it threatened to pull me under.”

“I was half lawyer; I always noticed the loopholes.”

“I barely noticed loneliness anymore; it was my normal condition, by necessity if not by nature.”

“I was drawn to his aloofness, the way cats gravitate toward people who’d rather avoid them.”

“Music is only work when someone else makes you do it.”

“Your lies didn't stop me loving you; your truth hasn't stopped me either.”

“Who will kiss you? Who will rock you to sleep?" His voice was slow, drowsy."You never did," I said, trying to tease him. "You were more father to me than my father, but you never did that.""Someone should. Someone should love you. I will bite him if he will not.”

“A feeling rose in me, and I just let it, because what harm could it do? It only had another thirty-two adagio bars of life in this world. Twenty-four. Sixteen. Eight more bars in which I love you. Three. Two. One.”

“If I could keep a single moment for all time, that would be the one. I became the very air; I was full of stars.”

“He looked up at the reddening sky and said with a self-deprecating laugh, "You put me to shame, Seraphina. Your bravery always has.""It's not bravery; it's bullheaded bumbling."He shook his head, staring off into the middle distance. "I know courage when I see it, and when I lack it.”