Kate Elliott Quotes

Never let it be said that I could not talk my way out of any trouble that I could not punch.

We are bound to our ancestors and to those who made us, whether we want to be or not. What matters is what we make of what we are.

The problem with meddling," said Charles under his breath, "is that for every problem you solve, you create two more.

It's the ones who can't let go - of fear or anger, lust or greed, vanity or pride or power - who are most at risk of becoming corrupted.

But in life, every moment can be said to be critical; all is revealed and concealed, created, maintained, and destroyed in the great dance of time.

Are these soldiers really our enemy, or only the worst reflection of our own selves? ... We made them. We have to unmake them, not just defeat or kill them.

That is true. But nevertheless, you are like the prisoners in the cave, your legs and necks shackled by your maps and your walls so that all you can see is the shadows thrown by the fire on the wall of the cave. You think they are the truth, but they are only a shadow of the truth, which lies - " He gestured to the sky and the plain and the distant spiral curl that was the growing city of Sarai. " - out here, under the gaze of the sun and the moon and the stars.

And once you saw the world from three, or five, different roads, the view was never the same. The map changed and altered, and its details became more accurate. The landmarks receded or grew, depending on the angle from which you observed them, and at once, there might be an escarpment from which the astonished traveler would rendezvous with her selves and could suddenly comprehend the land as it truly was.

Now take Prince Temnos to Princess Berenise. We need him in our custody in order to succeed.

Sometimes, when you wished too hard for something, you paid a bitter price.

Naturalists claim that however much the female may be said to love the accoutrements of fashion and furnishings, it is the male who is driven to display himself.

We'll smell of fish forever," I said. "That would be nice.

I'll take Prince Temnos to the Heart Tavern in the Warrens." "Yes, good, that's where Ro took me after I got him out of prison and where I intend to bring anyone from our household who has escaped. I'll meet you there." Without

We are none of us one thing alone and unchanging. We are not static, or at rest. Just as a city or a prince's court or a lineage is many people in one, so is a person many people within one, always unfinished and always like a river's current flowing onward ever changing toward the ocean that is greater than all things combined.

Was it not Democritus of your own country who said, 'Well-ordered behavior consists in obedience to the law, the ruler, and the woman wiser than oneself'? Although in the text I read the words were written as, 'the man wiser,' but I can only suppose the scribe wrote the word wrong or meant it to be 'Elder.

If we prosper only through the suffering or death of another, then that is not prosperity.

Listen, my father had written. Listen to hear if they are telling the truth or only part of the truth, for that is the lesson of history: that the victors tell the tale of their triumph in a manner to grant accolades to themselves and heap blame upon their rivals. Ask yourself if part of the story is being withheld by design or ignorance.

The skin of frozen snow crunched satisfyingly beneath my boots as I smashed each step into the ground just as I planned to smash my foes.

Reason is the measure of all things.

Can we ever see the truth when desire blinds us? Or do we call it the truth because it is what we wish to see?

But the plains do not continue forever, just as happiness and sorrow both eventually come to an end. Their first hint of the highlands was a rough stretch of land pitted with gorges and rugged valleys that were barren of cover and composed of rock as stubborn and sharp and unyielding as a saint. The jaran playfully called it krinye-tom, the little mountains; Tess called it hell and wondered what the big mountains were like.

There's little enough joy, and far too much pain, in a world like this not to appreciate the beauty that comes your way. He

You learn to ride on the path and keep your eyes open so you can see what is there, not what you wish were there ... And then after all you might discover that what is there is what you wished for all along.

First and foremost, any great empire thrives on movement: stable lines of supply, of trade, of information. This movement must be unobstructed for officials on imperial business, and monitored and restricted for others on a scale that varied depending on the necessity of these functions to imperial strength and the likelihood of such restrictions causing dangerous levels of dissent.

We dispute the arbitrary distribution of power and wealth, which is claimed as the natural order, but which is in fact not natural at all but rather artificially created and sustained by ancient privileges.

But if the gods only cursed us, then we would hate them. And if they only blessed us, then - well, then we'd care nothing for their laws because we'd respect nothing but our own pleasure.

She had never looked to see what lay beneath the surface, because the surface was easy enough to polish and keep bright.

What is freedom?" he asked bitterly, "and who is truly free? We are all bound by what we are, and where we come from."
"Maybe," I said slowly as I considered the turn my life had taken, the lies I had been told, "because we do not look farther than where we have been told to look. Perhaps it would all be different if we weren't afraid of what we are. Or what we might become.

I believe that there is truth to be found inside every person, but that very few people find it because it is dark inside, and deeply hidden, and the trees grow thickly.

I think that when small-minded people envy and despise, then they will mock, thinking it their only weapon. I am not, I hope, a small-minded person. I will not mock you. I'll tell you straight to your face that I don't trust you and can't trust you...

A man gets used to riding on at the break of day. Comes to think that movement and noise is where life is, when after all there's life in stillness and quiet too.

All people are bound by ties and obligations, and the most binding ties of all are those between kin.

There are no chances." He favored her again with that unreadable look. "You succeed or you fail. Battles are not won by men who refuse to take risks." It

Male or female, what did it matter, really, when the body yearned?

But aren't all of us like a fine weaving? The pattern the world sees often hides the threads." Tess

When acquaintances embrace, one can read the gap between them. When friends, when siblings embrace, no matter how close, there is still an infinitesimal distance, like a layer of molecules, separating them. When a mother hugs her child, they meet. But when lovers embrace, they don't just meet but join. Tess

No one can fall in love at first sight. Love is built over years, not snapped into existence like a flame that can be as easily extinguished.

Narrative gets engineered until we start to believe it has always run that way.

War was so simple, wasn't it? Much simpler than justice.

It is a sad truth, but one acknowledged by any person who can bother to read the law, that the inferior legal status of a woman in Europa means she is best protected by having a powerful family or, lacking that, by finding the strongest protector and marrying him.

Luck is only my lover, not my wife," replied Bahktiaan easily. He drew his saber. "If ever I wed, it will be skill and intelligence."
"Tedious bedfellows," said Sergi.

That reminds me of a song," said Emilia. The women laughed; the men groaned. But the fire was blazing and the night was long, and folk will want entertainment after the tedium of a day's work. Emilia's song detailed the amorous adventures of a water horse who fell in love - if love was the right word - with a series of young women who passed beside the lake in which the creature dwelled and from which he emerged in the form of a good-looking young man of exactly the right sort to catch a young woman's fancy. She had a clear voice and a pleasing timbre, and every local knew the chorus, whose euphemisms about mounting and galloping embarrassed me. We did not sing these sorts of songs in the Barahal house. Rory caught right on and sang the chorus as if born to it. In the laughter and pounding of tables that followed, I said, to no one in particular, "I thought kelpies drowned and then devoured their victims!" The words, innocently spoken, only caused the gathered folk to laugh even

Annoyance and pathos warred in my breast, and after a short struggle, annoyance punched pathos in the snout like the voracious shark it was.

But you will die in any case, Ilyakoria. What good is everlasting fame to a man if he dies unloved?

How can it be men would put up with such an arrangement?'
'Why do some people demand it of women but not of men? It is just another way of doing things. As my father would have said, folk will have their customs according to their nature and their surroundings.

No, no! I'll carry the waste bucket. No one will ever suspect Prince Temnos would do that, will they?" His grin heartens me. We

Coming onstage for her first entrance, Diana felt transported to some ancient scene. They could have been any group of itinerant actors out making their way along the Silk Road, the famous Earth trade route that ran across the mountains and deserts and steppes of Asia, stopping in this medieval oriental city made glorious by its marble colonnades and gentle silk banners. Even

I have to believe he will do as he promised. Yet the truth is that I trust him because of the way he snared my fingers in his. That is the worst reason of all to trust, but my bitter heart will not stop singing its recklessly giddy song.