Catherine Fisher Quotes

Only the man who knows freedom can define his prison.

In the Sapient tongue he said softly, 'Tell
me, Master, did you know Incarceron was tiny?'
'Is it?' Sapphique replied in the same language, his green
eyes as he looked up lit by deep points of flame. 'To you,
perhaps. Not to its Prisoners. Every prison is a universe for
its inmates. And think, Jared Sapiens. Might not the Realm
also be tiny, swinging from the watchchain of some being in
a world even vaster?

Where are the leaders?' Sapphique asked.
'In the fortresses,' the swan replied.
'And the poets?'
'Lost in dreams of other worlds.'
'And the craftsmen?'
'Forging machines to challenge the darkness.'
'And the Wise, who made the world?'
The swan lowered its black neck sadly.
'Dwindled to crones and sorcerers in towers.

I have walked a stair of swords, I have worn a coat of scars. I have vowed with hollow words, I have lied my way to the stars -Songs of Sapphique

Finn smiled ruefully. I'm a Prisoner, old man. Just like you.

She turned to Vetch and he caught her hands as they reached out for him. "I wanted power, I always wanted it, but it's stronger than I am! I can't control the Unworld, Vetch, or the real world either. I can't make it do what I want! The forest is too strong."
Vetch crouched, his narrow face close to hers. "You will, Chloe. I promise you." He glanced at Mac. "Ask him. God gives no one a gift he cannot master. Right, Priest?

Only the man who has known freedom
Can define his prison.

Beyond the Mountains of the Moon, around the curve of the earth, my shadow streched, and within me scratched and crawled small living things,

I was sand and rock. My innards were crusted with gems. My heart was molten.

Master, I'm afraid. I am, truly. This place scares me. At home, I know who I am, what to do. I'm the Warden's daughter, I know where I stand. But this is a dangerous place, full of pitfalls. All my life, I've known it was waiting for me, but now I'm not sure I can face it. They'll want to absorb me, make me one of them, and I won't change. I won't! I want to stay me."
Jared sighed and she saw his dark gaze was fixed on the veiled window.
"Claudia, you're the bravest person I know. And no one will change you. You will rule here, though it won't be easy ...

Or is it that man contains within himself the seeds of evil? That even if he is placed in a paradise perfectly formed for him he will poison it, slowly, with his own jealousies and desires?

He was her enemy, and she hated him because she could not hate him enough.

Rix stroked the Glove. "There was a garden and a tree grew there with golden apples and if you ate one of them, you knew everything. And then Sapphique climbed over the fense and killed the many-headed monster and picked the apple, because he wanted to know, you see. He wanted to know how to Escape."
"Right." She had wriggled back. She was close to his pocked face.
"And a snake came out of the grass and it said, 'Oh go on, eat the apple. I dare you.' And he stopped then with it to his mouth because he knew the snake was Incarceron."
Keiro groaned. "Let me ... "
"Put the Glove away, Rix. Or give it to me."
His fingers caressed its dark scales. "And because if he ate it he would know how small he was. How much of a nothing he was. He would see himself as a speck in the vastness of the Prison."
"So he didn't eat it, right?

He sang his last song. And the words of that have never been written down. But it was sweet and of great beauty, and those that heard it were changed utterly.
Some say it was the song that moves the stars.

The dove will rise above destruction
with a white rose in her beak.
over storm
over tempest.
over time and the ages.
And the petals will fall to the ground like snow.

If it means my death, I don't care, because even death will be a sort of freedom.

Despair is deep. An abyss that swallows dreams. A wall at the world's end. Behind it I await death. Because all our work has come to this.

It is not wise for a mortal man to gaze too long into the darkness. He comes to see strange shapes and cold imaginings. He comes to doubt all that he once held true.

It's safe to tell a secret to one. Risky to tell it to two. To tell it to three is thoughtless folly, everyone else will know.

The Stars.
Jared slept beneath them, uneasy in the rustling leaves.
From the battlements Finn gazed up at them, seeing the impossible distances between galaxies and nebulae, and thinking they were not as wide as the distances between people.
In the study Claudia sensed them, in the sparks and crackles on the screen.
In the prison, Attia dreamt of them, She sat curled on the hard chair, Rix repacking his hidden pockets obsessively with coins and glass discs and hidden handkerchiefs.
A single spark flickered deep in the coin Keiro spun and caught, spun and caught.

:Paintings are easy to see," he said after a moment. "Open, presented flat to the eye. Words are not easy. Words have to be discovered, deep in their pages, deciphered, translated, read. Words are symbols to be encoded, their letters trees in a forest, enmeshed, their tangled meanings never finally picked apart.

If a speculum is polished sufficiently, it becomes invisible. For it doth reflect all about it, so that the eye sees only that which is shown , not the devyse that showeth it. And if a man becomes hard as diamond, faceted and flawed, he too will show nothing of himself, onlie the fractured images of his world.

Chloe turned to Vetch. The poet said gently, "You see, you do have power. Words give you power, to create or destroy." His eyes flickered to Clare. "Even to forgive ...

How could you betray me, Incarceron? How could you let me fall? I thought I was your son. It seems I am your fool. - Songs of Sapphique

A distant, eerie howl had risen out of the floor, from far beneath. Silent, absolutely still, she waited, and at last it came again, indefinably closer, but muffled, as if layers of stone-rooms, dungeons, cellars-were between her and it. Not human. She crouched down with her ear to the stone slabs. Somewhere down there, unguessable levels below,something prowled.

One thing she realized soon was that the rain here was eternal. The weather must have changed since the Emperor's time, because now the tower loomed constantly in its cloud of drizzle; all the long afternoons rain trickled in runnels and gutters and spouts, spattering through gargoyles of hideous beasts and goblins that spat far down on the heads of hurrying clerks. Always the roofs ran with water; it dripped and plopped and splashed through culverts and drains, or sheeted down, a relentless liquid gurgle that never stopped, until she started to imagine that this was the song the tower sang, through all the throats and mouths and pipes of its endless body.

There is a door we know, a tiny, secret door ...
- legends of sapphique

We are chained hand and foot by protocol, enslaved to a static, empty world where men and women can't read, where the scientific advances of the ages are the preserve of the rich, where artists and poets are doomed to endless repetitions and sterile reworking of past masterpieces. Nothing is new. New does not exist. Nothing changes, nothing grows, evolves, develops. Time has stopped. Progress is forbidden

Understanding's not enough. Understanding's from outside; merely a function of the mind. [ ... ] To enter, that's the secret. To become the bridge, to crawl into its sap, to sway with it, to rot over centuries as its heartwood rots. When you are the bridge you will know what the bridge knows. It takes time. A lifetime. And skill.

Down the endless halls of quilt
My silver thread of tears is split.
My fingerbone the key that broke
My blood the oil that smooth the lock.

Everyone has memories, Finn. Your prophecies are what matter. The visions that descend on you are the great gift and strangeness of the Starseer. They're unique. The people know that, the slaves and the warband, even Jormanric.It's in the way they look at you. Sometimes they fear you.

Shadow turned. Her eyes were wet; she smiled at him wanley. I'll be she loved you.

What use is one key among a billion prisoners?

Sapphique strapped the wings to his arms and flew, over oceans and plains, over glass cities and mountains of gold. Animals fled; people pointed up. He flew so far, he saw the sky above him and the sky said, "Turn back, my son, for you have climbed too high." Sapphique laughed, as he rarely did. "Not this time. This time I beat on you until you open."
But Incarceron was angered, and struck him down.

Underground, the stars are legend.

Shut up!" Finn turned, furious. "Look at you both! The only friends I have in this hell and all you can do is fight over me. Do either of you care about me? Not the seer, the fighter, the fool who takes all the risks, but me, Finn?

Nothing has changed, or will change.
So we must change it.

Because I have dreams and in those dreams I see the stars

He had wanted so hard to Escape, to find the stars. And all he had found was a new prison.

Daring is the thing for a fighting man to be remembered by.

None of us know who we are any more.

They came out. They were children. They wore rags and their skin was livid with sores. Their veins were tubes, their hair wire. Sapphique reached out and touched them.
'You are the ones who will save us,' he said.

I remember a story of a girl in Paradise who ate an apple once. Some wise Sapient gave it to her. Because of it she saw things differently. What had seemed gold coins were dead leaves. Rich clothes were rags of cobweb. And she saw there was a wall around the world, with a locked gate.

I trust you, Jared," she whispered. "I always did. I love you, Master.