Anne Elisabeth Stengl Quotes

One conversation! One simple, honest, true conversation, and all your questions would be answered, all your problems solved! Really, man, is it that difficult? Then you'd be free to fall into each other's arms and live your Happily Ever After. Why make it so complicated?
Eanrin

Poets, as you probably are aware, are pretty keen on the emotions, turmoils, and such-like of the soul. Some might even call us empathetic.

Vengeance cannot abide the agony of grace.

If a man has to ask for your trust, it's a sure sign that you should not give it. Trust should be earned inherently, without any verbal demands. Trust is knowing a man's character, knowing truth, and relying on that character and truth even when the odds seem against you.

Tell me, cat-man, why can I understand her?"
"First," said Eanrin with a glower, "you will not call me 'cat-man' again. I am a knight, a poet, and a gentleman, and you will address me as sir or not address me at all.

I'm worthless," Lionheart says. "I couldn't save her. I couldn't redeem my honor." "You never can," the Prince replies. He takes Lionheart by the shoulders and forces him to sit up, to face him. "But do you think my grace insufficient to forgive you?

The heart is a peculiar thing. It sees and interprets details long before the brain has started to think there might be something worth noticing. The brain resents this skill, however, and will often spitefully do all it can to repress what the heart might be whispering.

For nothing you have done could equal the evil that I myself have committed against all who loved and trusted me. No regret you ever know will compare to the despair I knew when I recognized what I had done. And no forgiveness you may yet receive will ever outshine the grace that was extended to me, the vilest of all my Master's servants. No, Lionheart, I can never hate you, for in truth, you and I are alike, and if our deeds were measured against one another, no one could say yours were the worse.

There is a moment that comes into every life when the right word, the right look even, could change the shape of the world forever. The wrong one could as well, though the resulting shape would be different. No word at all, however, and the moment slips by, and things remain unsaid that perhaps should have been said, perhaps shouldn't, and no one can ever know for sure.

Does that look like flowing gold?

What's a Corgar?"
"A goblin."
"As in slavering jaws, gaping eyes, stone hides?"
"The same."
"They don't exist."
"Neither do talking cats.

See! See, she's gone and put her foot in her mouth again! Right in, heel and all.

Sometimes a nemesis can grow dearer to the heart than a friend or even a lover. There is something... 'foundational' in an enemy. Something that reminds one why one continues to live.

That isn't trust; that's foolishness! If a man has asked for your trust, it's a sure sign you should not give it. Trust should be earned inherently, without any verbal demands. Trust is knowing a man's character, knowing truth, and relying on that character and truth even when the odds seem against you. That is trust, my dear, not this leap in the dark ... (King Fidel)

Lionheart glared at the cat, who smiled back. "Can you read my mind?"
"No." The cat sniffed and seemed to smile. "I can smell it. Which is made the easier for the stink your thoughts give off. All this self-pity and moping! *I did what I had to do.* Lick my whiskers, you did. Be a man, and face your actions for what they were!

Fear was not well-known to Sir Eanrin. He generally found it got in the way, so he bypassed the emotion entirely.

Were the world a just place and given into Poet Eanrin's hands to dictate, he would have written things as they ought to be. Lionheart would not have bowed like some wooden puppet and left without another word. He would have acted like a man, taken the silver-eyed queen into his arms, and kissed her! He would have told her all the things in his heart that he did not fully understand yet, because, honestly, who ever understands those things anyway?
But some stories refuse to play themselves out the way poets think they ought.

Her eyes pleaded with him to understand, to try. Under that gaze, Eanrin had no option but to sit and stare at the scribbles in the dust, stare with all the intensity a cat can muster. His pupils dilated until the golden irises were like rings of eclipsed sunfire. Imraldera watched him, chewing her bottom lip and waiting.
At last the cat lashed his tail and raised his whiskered face to her. I'm sorry, my girl. It looks to me like the Greater Stick Bug pursues the Lesser Stick Bug over the back of a giant alligator. Can't make a thing of it otherwise.

In my anger, I slew you twice. I saw you only as the dragon, and I forgot what you were meant to be. Can you forgive me?
Etanun

Hope is such a beautiful dream that dies such a hideous death.

But my head is splitting in two!"
"It's doing a remarkably neat job since I can't see so much as a seam.

Benedict studied her. 'A mirror? What in Lume's name would you need a mirror for?'
'To admire my pretty face, obviously,' she snapped.

I chose to long ago, long before we met. When my father sent me to win you, I loved you already.

She was the sort of person from whom one would expect to receive warm cookies, not plots.

A true name is a powerful thing. Dangerous. Many go through life asleep inside, because no one has ever called their true name. And so, they think themselves safe.

And now all this rot about invisible injuries and interrupting Prince Gervais as he and I don't see what business it is of I can do what I like and I think you're simply and that's that!
Una paused there, wondering if what she'd just said had made a lick of sense. Judging from Prince Aethelbald's face, it hadn't.

No, something far more mysterious has taken Felix. He has heard the unicorn." Like a performer, the cat gave a dramatic pause.
"Um," said Lionheart.
"You have no idea what I'm talking about, have you?"
"No, sorry."
"Mortals," growled the cat.

What, suddenly I am a figure from an ancient bit of nursery nonsense?" He lifted a forepaw and began chewing his toes, the picture of dismissive indifference. "And the next egg you come across you'll ask, 'Tell me, sir, what were you doing up on that wall anyway?'"
"Are you ashamed to answer?"
"I am ashamed of nothing. I am a cat." The cat gracefully placed his paw next to the other, sitting as prim as a perfect statue.

Gently Aethelbald lowered his face to hers and kissed her on her charred and blackened mouth. She closed her eyes and felt she could not bear such exquisite pain or beauty.

For you are mine now. Forever.

An awkward silence followed these bold declarations, because while both parties spoke with passion, one was a dying youth and one a ragged peasant girl with straw in her hair and no shoes. Neither was the stuff of heroes and legends, and both knew it.

Foxbrush sneezed again.
He couldn't help himself. It's not something a fellow likes to do when a stunningly beautiful woman is leaning toward him with an expression on her face like Nidawi's wore. But sneezes are not prey to the wants or wishes of those inflicted with them. He sneezed so violently that he nearly knocked his forehead against Nidawi's exquisite little chin. She leapt back lightly, frowning at first, then shaking the frown into a rain of laughter.

Alistair spoke behind his visor. "You look very pretty."
Mouse looked to Eanrin. "He sounds concerned. What did he say?"
"He said they're never going to believe you're a girl.

Think something; think something on your own. Not what 'they' tell you to think or what 'I' tell you to think. You are Leta of Aiven. I want to hear 'your' thoughts, for they are neither mine nor anyone else's. Only yours. This makes them interesting.

Our Prince does not give his servants hopeless tasks. They sometimes do not follow an expected path, but they are never hopeless.

I wore white peonies in my hair the night I met your father...He said I looked like a Faerie princess.