Jacqueline Carey Quotes

Jehanne said that it would always be like this. That I would always be young and beautiful in her memory, and she in mine. That I would never grow resentful, never be tempted to betray her. That she would never grow restless and fickle, and see to replace me. So you see, not exactly the sentiments of a great and terrible love affair.

Is the world so cruel, then, that that is all that is required to move a man to risk his life? Kindness?

But to force growth is to kill it.

I cannot blame them, in truth, for desiring ... But they were like children, who have only just begun to grasp the idea of a thing. And like children, they had no notion of laboring to create, but only of having ... and no thought given to the cost, to others, of taking it.

I don't think, before that moment, that he truly grasped the nature of what I was. He knew, of course; had always known, and had been the one person who'd never cared for what, but only who I was. I saw him comprehend it now, and feared. It could change everything between us.

Happiness is the highest form of wisdom.

But Quintilius Rousse's sailors grinned in the saddle, saluting, and rode out in a thunder, horses trampling their own long shadows as they set their heads to the east.

Night breeds its own sort of anticipation.

Nothing spoils idle pleasure like too much awareness

There are those who hold that there is a pattern to all that is said and done in this world, that no thing happens without reason nor out of time. As to that, I cannot speak, for I have seen too many threads cut short to believe it, but of a surety, I have seen too the weft of my fate shuttled on the loom. If there is a pattern, I do not think there is anyone among us who can stand at a great enough distance to discern it; yet I will not say that it is not so.

Grief heals ... unshed tears fester like a canker in the soul.

Spontaneity is the province of youth

The tapestry of history is woven of many threads.

There would be love, and while it was mine, I could cling to it. I could rejoice
in life, in the existence of love. In the existence of people like Phedre and Joscelin. Although the standards they set were impossibly high, still, I could rejoice that such courage and compassion existed in the world. I could hope and aspire.

For every victory," Necthana whispered, her great dark eyes shining with a mother's tears, "there is a price.

I have seen the impossible. I have seen great and terrible wonders, and I tell you, the world is a vaster and stranger place than ever I had reckoned.

It is a human failing, to attribute the best of motives to those we know the least, and the worst to those we love best.

Questions are dangerous because they have answers

couples. Their duties done, they had eyes only for each other, locking glances and smiling deeply; two realms, two rulers, united in love and a shared dream. It

Love as thou wilt. They are fools, who reckon Elua a soft god, fit only for the worship of starry-eyed lovers.

If the greatest danger one faces as a slave is displeasing one's masters, this is the second: pleasing them.

Pain redeems all. It is the awareness of life, a reminder of death.

Why is there ever this perverse cruelty in humankind, that makes us hurt most those we love best?

whatever complicated emotions I felt for him, I didn't want to ruin the moment with my unfortunately stereotypical American ignorance of history and geography.

We forgot, we made errors, argued ambiguities, and twisted meanings to suit our own ends. And in so doing, mayhap we reshaped the gods themselves. Now

Oh love and hate are two sides of the same blade

Hear, hear.' Sister Martha hoisted her water glass. 'Let the rigid stick of self-righteousness be dislodged from her very uptight ass.'
Father Ramon coughed.
'A-fucking-men,' Loup supplied helpfully.

Sidonie, I know you don't remember it, but you once promised to trust me beyond all reason. And I swear to you that all that I am, all that I possess, including this gem-stone, is yours. I need you. I can't do this alone. Forget your memories. Look into your heart. And if you can find somewhere there, some lingering spark of trust that owes naught to reason, I beg you to speak the word written here.

All paths are present, always ... and we can but choose among them.

Mercy and compassion are all the grace left to us.

If I had to fall from Cassiel's grace, at least I know it took a courtesan worthy of Kings to do it.

Without plenty, the wealthy lack compassion for the poor, hoarding without sharing. Without law, the strong bully the weak, stealing by force.

Ray bent his head toward her, and they smiled at each other, a pair of blissful ghouls in love.
I might have felt sorry for them if the continued existence of their relationship didn't necessitate generating incredible amounts of anguish and misery, which I was apparently next in line to provide.

I have always loved fantasy; I think probably stepping through the wardrobe with Lucy in C.S. Lewis's 'Narnia Chronicles' was my first exposure when I was really little.

That was the problem ... with trusting to the written word ... We were human, mortal and fallible. We forgot, we made errors, argued ambiguities, and twisted meanings to suit our own ends.
And in doing so, mayhap we reshaped the gods themselves.

So you were good enough for the Cullach Gorrym, good enough to marry Dorelei mab Breidaia, good enough to beget Alba a successor, but not good enough for the Queen's daughter?" Urist's lips curled with scorn. The tip of his knife flicked upward. "Well, that's what I think of that, lad." The red yarn parted and fell.

Love is hard, harder than steel and thrice as cruel. It is inexorable as the tides, and life and death alike follow in its wake.

If I'm to be damned for what I've done, I'll be damned in full and not by halves.

The world began in ending, and it will end in beginning.

Genius requires an audience.

As often as not, we forge our own chains. And from those, not even Adonai Himself can free us. We must do it ourselves.

And in so doing, mayhap we reshaped the gods themselves. Now that was a thought made me shudder to the bone. I wondered if it were true, and if it were, what would happen when some deity bent out of true by mortal ambition returned to set the record straight.

When Love cast me out, it was Cruelty who took pity upon me

It is a comfort, in anguish, to be reminded of the scale of one's own troubles against the mighty breadth of the world.

There are others. There will be others. Other heroes, other heroines. Other prophecies to fulfill, other adversaries to despise. There will be stories told and forgotten, and reinvented anew until one day, perhaps, the oldest are remembered, and the beginning may end, and the ending begin.

Garner knowledge, by any means possible

Stupid to speak of blame when the wills of the immortals are involved.

Some chains are forged for us - those are the hardest to bear.

There are patterns which emerge in one's life, circling and returning anew, an endless variation of a theme

For every victory there is a price.

It must sound, I know, as if I had no pity for him; it wasn't true. I was angry because I was terrified. But there are times when a curse is more bracing than an endearment.

I wish sometimes that the gods would either choose better, or make their wishes clearer

To recongnize that the treachery of one member of a house does not taint all born within it

I discovered that we liked each other. But I was fearful of giving free rein to my emotions. Fearful that all those emotions and longings I suppressed would spill forth, rendering me bitter and cruel.

Yes my lord, but questions are dangerous, for they have answers

We knew each other's histories and secrets, hopes and fears and dreams. When you need to get good and drunk, that's the kind of person you want keeping pace with you. "Okay,

It is not wise to meddle with D'Angelines in matters of love.

I thought about what a priest of Elua had told me about love many years ago, the first time I kept his vigil on the Longest Night. You will find it and lose it, again and again. And with each finding and each loss, you will become more than before. What you make of it is yours to choose. It was true.

We may not have demon fathers dangling offers of infernal power before us, but everyone understands what it means to struggle with temptation or resist the urge to give in to our baser natures.

It is passing strange, what a fluid thing is one's own identity.

For the keeping of secrets from adults is oft the only power a child may hope to possess.

Her always is mine

Let the warriors clamor after gods of blood and thunder; love is hard, harder than steel and thrice as cruel.

The night court taught me to serve, and Delauney taught me to think; but from Melisande Shahrizai, I learned how to hate.

There is no fulfillment that is not made sweeter for the prolonging of desire

To have a traitor for an ally is to have an enemy in waiting

That which yields is not always weak.

I lie awake in my bed, clinging to the brightness I have known, fighting back the tide of darkness, the memories of blood and branding and horror, and the legacy of cruelty that runs in my own veins, shaping my own secret vow and wielding it like a brand against the darkness, whispering it to myself, over and over.
I will try to be good.

People believe what they are told.

Profundity fails me." Father Ramon's gaze rested on Loup. "And perhaps that is fitting, since words have never been your strong suit, Loup Garron. I said once that you were neither a leader nor a follower. I think perhaps you're something more rare. A catalyst. A catalyst for change, hope, faith. This group of you, God willing the last of you, have been different. What does it mean to live without fear? What lessons are we to take from your presence among us?" He shook his head. "I don't know. I know only that in your own way, you inspire us.

I had begun to think my ripening body would wither untasted on the vine.

All this I knew, and yet it was a different thing, to learn it from Delaunay: not stories, but histories. For this too I learned, that a storyteller's tale may end, but history goes on always. These events, so distant in legend, play a part in shaping the very events we witness about us, each and every day. When I understood this, Delaunay said, I might begin to understand.

Truly, it is in loss that we learn a thing's true value.

There's some sort of Soothsayers' Code that prevents soothsayers from soothsaying on a day-to-day basis, when it might, you know, avert this kind of ordinary, everyday tragedy. Something about the laws of causality being broken and the order of creation overturned, resulting in a world run amok, river running backwards, the run rising in the west, cats and dogs getting married ...
I don't know; don't ask me.
I don't pretend to understand ( ... ) But I guess it didn't rise to the standard required to break the Soothsayers' Code since no sooth was said.

Always, he whispered. The gods do not always answer, but they are always listening.

I don't really consider my work, on the whole, 'fringe' in my own mind; science fiction and fantasy have been pretty solidly in the mainstream for a while.

The gods use their chosen hard, but reveal little to them.

Fear and lies fester in darkness. The truth may wound, but it cuts clean.

We are meant to taste of life ... and drink the cup of it to the dregs, bitter and sweet alike.

No two sacrifices are the same, and yet all are, in the end. It is the commitment to belong, wholly, to that which claims one.

I wondered if he could ever understand that it was a blessing, not a sin, to be graced with more than one love.
It could be complicated; of course it could be complicated. And it opened one up to the possibility of more pain and loss.
Still, it was a blessing I would never relinquish. Love, genuine love, was always a cause for joy.

Poetry glories in excess. When it's not extolling the virtues of austerity.

The fact that he might have other things to do with his time than spend it shepherding his master's head-strong, thousand-ducat-a-night anguisette through one of the most unsavory quarters of the City never crossed my mind.

It is human nature, to give in hope of getting.

It is a dangerous thing to bring a dream to life ... I have watched my deepest, dearest hopes take shape, and I am not entirely sure I like the shape they have taken.

Hey, sister buzz-kill," she said languorously to Jen. "What crawled up your ass and died?"
"I don't know," Jen retorted. "What died and crawled up your ass?"
There were times I regretted being an only child. This wasn't one of them.

Well, I was living it, but a shared dream half-lived is a hollow thing

Never before had I used my service to escape any woes that troubled me, but I did that day.

Pain obliterates everything else. In pain, there is only the eternal present.

It is my fate, it seems, to fall privy to rare and splendid vistas in a state of exhaustion too profound to care.

By the way, if you're ever conversing with an actual vampire, do not refer to the House of Shadows as Twilight Manor. There's a reason vampires aren't known for their senses of humour.
If you accidentally do so, I'd say run, but it's probably already too late.

super-size emotions had saved me. God knows, I'd spent enough time wrestling with them, but I'd never thought before about how much of what animates us as human beings - or semi-human beings - depends on our feelings. Without

A pretty sight; it would have surprised me, if my capacity for surprise wasn't flattened.

I wondered if, by the time we'd been together as long as Phèdre and Joscelin, I'd be able to predict her reactions.
I wasn't sure I would.
I wasn't sure I wanted to, either.

Surely if we knew what bitterness fate held in store, we would shrink back in fear and let the cup of life pass us by untasted.

You're as bad as your master," he muttered, scarce audible amid the sea-sounds. "Worse. At least he didn't ply his words from a courtesan's lips.

What is fear but courage's shadow?

All I could do was stare blankly at him.
"Look." He raised both hands, palms outward. "Daisy, I'm sorry. I had no idea."
"You had no idea you had a twin sister?"
"No idea she was coming." He sounded tired.
My tail began lashing back and forth in agitation. "Oh, and where exactly did Emmy pop in from, Sinny dear? Did she drive up from Kalamazoo? Because I don't recall you mentioning a sister. And it sounded a lot like jolly old England, which I don't recall you mentioning, either. Is that something else you put behind you? Or maybe putting on accents is a thing with the Palmer clan. Pip pip, cheerio-

Are you a minor character in my tale, or am I a lesser figure in yours?

I have always thought that the notion of a Republic is a noble one, dating back to the glory days of Hellas, which all D'Angelines regard fondly as the last Golden Era before the coming of Elua. Now, seeing it in action, I was not so sure.