Melinda Salisbury Quotes

I can see the things he doesn't say, because they're written all over him.

I've read all of the old stories now – "Red Blood and Dirty Gold", "The Winter Witch", "The Scarlet Varulv" – and I want more. Though I want fantasy – made-up, impossible things – I don't want stories that step out of the pages and into the world around me.

I dream of the man, but it's fragmented: he's there, but he isn't. He's always one room away, in a place with more rooms than seems possible. I run down endless halls, longing for and dreading him being around the corner. I hear him call out for me and the skin on the back of my neck tightens and prickles. I don't know if I'm running to him, or from him.

Forgive me again." He lifts the carafe and refreshes his goblet. "What happened to those two children who laughed at dandelion fuzz?" he says softly. "Are they gone forever, do you think?

And that, my girl, is the secret. Quake all you must on the inside. But on the outside you must be stone. And you never know; with enough practice it might become the truth.

But at least when she has the beast in her she can see me. She can hear me. When she's my mother I'm a ghost to her. Like my father, and my brother, except I'm still alive. I'm still here.

Other people come and go, but family is for ever.

A person can say a lot without speaking.

Why do I matter to you?" I say, my voice breaking.
"You don't."
"Then why are you doing this?"
"Because I can. Because I slept for five hundred years and now I want some sport.

Were you disappointed?"
She takes a deep breath, looking down at her hands. "My heart was. My head wasn't. Most days I'm at war with myself. My head wins, usually. And for that I'm glad.

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I've been waiting for you," he says in his low, ragged voice.
All of him is ragged: his patched cloak; his shabby gloves, the fingertips thin and worn; his scuffed boots. His words always seem to catch on my insides, like a goose grass burr, or a torn fingernail dragged across silk. His voice sticks.

If someone had told me six moons ago, before I watched my life slip through my hands like water, that my mother would be cursed, locked away, and drugged by my own hand, I would have laughed in their face. Then I would have kicked them for the insult and laughed again.

Mysterious boys are not as enjoyable in reality as they are in stories.

What now?" he asks the rat catcher's daughter."What is your command?"
She frowns, then takes the writing stick and paper from him. She writes quickly, and then thrusts the paper towards him. Kiss me, it says. He pulls her into his arms and thinks, Finally. He does not need any further commands from her.

I would have sooner believed in fairy tales coming true.
Of course, we all believe in fairy tales now. The Scarlet Varulv has slunk out of the pages and lives with me in this cottage. The Sleeping Prince has woken and sacked Lormere, an army of alchemy-made golems behind him as he murders his way across the country.
Stories are no longer stories; characters run rampant through the world these days. All I'm waiting for is Mully-No-Hands to knock on the window, begging to come in and warm himself, and my life will be complete.
Actually, no, that's not what I'm waiting for.

Fortune favors the bold." I smile weakly.
"So does death," she counters immediately. "The craven tend to live much longer than the heroic.

That's the problem with fairy tales, they change with the telling.

I am the perfect weapon, I can kill with a single touch.

I was willing to make us into a proper family; I was willing to put the time into it. I've sent your brother to fetch your mother, despite needing him elsewhere, in a bid to make you happy. But I don't have time to play with you any more. Your friends are not the only ones who understand you're replaceable. You're alive only because I permit it, and I am fast running out of patience with you. So tomorrow evening, you will present yourself in the Great Hall an hour after sunset. You will wear something very pretty, and your best smile. And we will dine together, companionably.You will not try to stab me. You will not spit at me, or slap me. You will behave with decorum. In short, sweetling, you will make yourself special to me, or I will remove you from my game board. I need your brother, and I need the philtresmith. But I don't need you. Bear that in mind.

I'm tired of taking people's sins on myself.
I'm tired of running away from everything.
I want to be like Errin. Like Nia. Like Sister Hope. I want to be the girl who fought a golem, the girl who slammed her hands on a table and told a room full of powerful women that I was going to fight, and to hell with them.
I survived the court of Lormere. I survived the journey to Scarron. I survived the Sleeping Prince's raid on the Conclave. I am a survivor.

If I come to you, I want it to be because I am choosing you, for no reason other than that. I don't want for to ever doubt it.

How could there be different Gods, Lief?"

"I don't believe there are any at all," he says quietly. "But I believe there are men and women whose lives are made easier by believing someone is watching over them.

We're to be married. Does it matter if I permit it?"
"To me it does, yes," says Merek. "And I imagine you, like me, appreciate the illusion of having a choice, even when illusion is all it is.

Scarron is the kind of village people are born in and die in. Rarely does anyone leave. Still more rarely does a new face arrive. So unless the girl is in hiding, like Silas was, I should be able to find her easily; she'd be known as the "new one" for the next fifty years if she stayed here.

I'm not free, my lady," he says slowly. "I can no more wander off and do as I will than you can.You think of having choices like people think of flying. They see a hawk soaring and hovering and they tell themselves how nice it would be to fly. But pigeons can fly, and sparrows too. No one imagines being a sparrow though. No one wants that.

I think the worst thing is the way you lose part of yourself." I roll on to my back and stare up at the dark, speckled roof. "There's so much that only Lief knew about me. So many memories that we shared – mostly of things we shouldn't have been doing – but now I'm the last one who remembers them. Times we woke in the night and stole honeycomb from the jars in the kitchen. Times we used to jump into the hay on the farm. No one will ever know me like that again. And what if I forget things? What happens then?

Then he dies. He just dies. One moment his eye is bright and focused and the next… I see him die; I see the change. Indefinable, but something in him is gone, something permanent.

You're here," he says, and his voice is like sunshine, like honey, it's warm and rich and moreish. "I'm so very glad." Where Silas's voice is spikes and edges, every word a warning, this man's voice is smooth, velvety and beckoning.

... but for now it's too great a pleasure to stay in my own cottage, with my own books, and do exactly what I want to do.

I'm a king. My father told me a king can rule through fear, or through love. Fifty years from now, the people will love me. They won't remember this – and those who do will consider it the necessary dark before the dawn. When they have prosperity, and security, and know their place, they will be content and they will love me for it. But until then, I'll rule through fear if I have to.

Enough. I don't have time for this; self-pity's a luxury that I can't afford.
Like bread. Or pride.
Enough, Errin. There's work to do. Get up.

I am not cunning...I'm good at seeing around obstacles is all.

I've learned that being alone and being lonely are not the same thing. Once I was surrounded by people and lonely for it, but now I'm alone and I've never been so content.