Naomi Novik Quotes

I don't want more sense!" I said loudly, beating against the silence of the room. "Not if sense means I'll stop loving anyone. What is there besides people that's worth holding on to?

And yet Praecursoris is not punished the same way, only because it is not practical, and he is needed for breeding?

There were forest depths in her eyes, green and unending.

I recognized that hunger: a devouring thing that would gulp down lives with pleasure and would only pretend to care about law or justice, unless you had some greater power behind you that it couldn't find a way to cheat or break, and that would never, never be satisfied.

The Dragon hissed under his breath with annoyance: how dare a chimaera inconvenience him, coming out of season.

It seems to me that if you wish to apply laws to us, it were only reasonable to consult us on them, and from what you have read to me about Parliament, I do not think any dragons are invited to go there

The cows were all running around their pen in manic terror.

You have not paid for this victory, false one, cheat, and I will give you nothing.

(Temeraire:) "Can one hire a translator to say things properly?"
"Yes; they are called lawyers," Tharkay said, and laughed softly to himself.

I was running wild through the forest of magic, pushing brambles out of my way, heedless of scratches and dirt, paying no attention where I was going.

It's a lie that matches his desire.

I'm not your dear girl, Kasia said, with a bite in her tone that silenced him.

The only thing that had ever done me any good in my father's house was thinking: no one had cared what I wanted, or whether I was happy. I'd had to find my own way to anything I wanted. I'd never been grateful for that before now, when what I wanted was my life.

Would you believe it's harder to find a virgin than a unicorn in New York?

What an unequaled gift for disaster you have.

I stood panting with my hands clenched at my sides, still ringing head-to-foot, and said, "Is that magic enough to put me on the list? Or do you want to see more?"
They stared at me, and in the silence I heard shouts outside in the courtyard, running feet. The guards were looking in with their hands on their sword-hilts, and I realized I'd just shaken the king's castle, in the king's city, and shouted at the highest wizards of the land.

I was back in comfortable plain skirts again, but they looked at me anyway as they went away, not with hostility, but not the way any of them would ever have looked at a woodcutter's girl from Dvernik. It was the way I had looked at Prince Marek, at first. They looked at me and saw someone out of a story, who might ride by and be stared at, but didn't belong in their lives at all.

I do not care if they do not like me," he said. "Maybe then they will let me alone, and I will not have to stay in China." The thought visibly struck him, and his head came up with sudden enthusiasm. "If I were very offensive, do you suppose they would go away now?" he asked. "Laurence, what would be particularly insulting"
Hammond looked like Pandora, the box open and horrors loose upon the world. Laurence was inclined to laugh, but he stifled it out of sympathy.

Didn't he come to - to ask you for some magic?"
"No, he came to enjoy the view of the Wood," the Dragon said. "Of course he came for magic, and I sent him about his business, which is hacking at enemy knights and not meddling in things he scarcely understands.

... she didn't even have time to scream, just gave a startled "Oh!" and was gone,

Enough of that, you damned conspirators, you will have us hanged a great deal sooner than we will.

It seems perfectly plain to me that it is war itself which must be halted, without wanting one side or another defeated in particular.

He coiled himself neatly and waited without fidgeting, as was polite; but at length, when Majestatis showed no signs of waking - after ten minutes, or perhaps five - very nearly five - Temeraire coughed; then he coughed again, a little more emphatically, and Majestatis sighed and said, without opening his eyes, "So you are not leaving, I suppose?"
"Oh," Temeraire said, his ruff prickling, "I thought you were only sleeping, not ignoring me deliberately; I will go at once."
"Well, you might as well stay now," Majestatis said, lifting his head and yawning himself away. "I don't bother to wake up if it isn't important enough to wait for, that's all.

There was a song in this forest, too, but it was a savage song, whispering of madness and tearing and rage.

Darby, sir, but Janus they call me," the seaman said, "on account of a surgeon we shipped in the Sophie, a learned bloke, saying I saw both ways like some old Roman cut-up by that name.

He'd also agreed to be betrothed to the Archduke of Varsha's daughter, a girl of nine who had evidently impressed him a great deal by being able to spit across a garden plot. I was a little dubious about this as a foundation for marriage, but I suppose it wasn't much worse than marrying her because her father might have stirred up rebellion, otherwise.

I tried to make him a young court-wizard in my mind - he almost looked the part in his fine clothes, pursuing some lovely noblewoman - and there my imagination stumbled. He was a thing of books and alembics to me, library and laboratory.

I'm glad, I said, with an effort, refusing to let my mouth close up with jealousy. It wasn't that I wanted a husband and a baby; I didn't, or rather, I only wanted them the way I wanted to live to a hundred someday, far off, never thinking about the particulars. But they meant life: she was living, and I wasn't.

Laurence could make no real quarrel with the aims, which were natural and just; but England was at war, after all, and he was conscious, as Temeraire was not, of the impudence in demanding concessions from their own Government under such circumstances: very like mutiny. Yet

Did the tsar refuse to marry you?" I asked. I thought the duke might have been angry with her if he had: he hadn't seemed like a man to be satisfied if his plans went awry.

"No," she said. "I am tsarina. For as long as I live." She said it dryly, as if she didn't expect that to last long. "The tsar is a black sorcerer. He is possessed by a demon of flame that wants to devour me."

I laughed; I couldn't help it. It wasn't mirth, it was bitterness. "So the fairy silver brought you a monster of fire for a husband, and me a monster of ice. We should put them in a room together and let them make us both widows.

That Staryk wanted to take her for nothing. He made her give him gold just to live, as if she belonged to him because he was strong enough to kill her. My father was strong enough to kill me but that did not mean I belonged to him. He sold me for six kopeks, for three pigs, for a jug of krupnik. He tried to sell me again and again like I was still his no matter how many times he sold me. And that was how that Staryk thought. He wanted to keep her and make more gold out of her forever, and it did not matter what she wanted, because he was strong.

Well, I would have struck him, but I would have had to get up. You have no notion how difficult it is to arrange skirts when sitting down; it took me five minutes together the first time.

Because my demon told me to" isn't a generally accepted reason,

He settled for writing a letter, in a quiet corner, while Temeraire dictated his own:

"Gentlemen, I am very happy to accept your commission, and we should like to be the eighty-first regiment, if that number is not presently taken. We do not need any rifles, and we have got plenty of powder and shot for our cannons," Laurence wrote with a vivid awareness of the reactions this should produce, "but we are always in need of more cows and picks and sheep, and goats would also do, if a good deal easier to come by. Lloyd and our herdsmen have done very well, and I should to commend them to your attention, but there are a lot of us, and some more herdsmen would be very useful."

"Pepper, put in pepper," another dragon said, craning her head over; she was a middle-weight, yellowish striped with gray, some kind of cross-breed. "And canvas, we must have a lot of canvas - "

"Oh, very well, pepper," Temeraire said, and continuing his list of requests added, "I should very much like Keynes to come here, and also Gong Su, and Emily Roland, who has my talon-sheaths, and the rest of my crew; and also we need some surgeons for the wounded me. Dorset had better come, too, and some of the other dragon-surgeons. You had all better not stay where you are at present - "

"Temeraire, you cannot write so to your superior officers," Laurence said, breaking off.

I wanted to scream, to weep. I wanted to drag my hand across the world and wipe it.

He darted a look at the uncovered basket behind me, saw what I was eating, and glared at me. "That's appalling," he said.
"They're wonderful!" I said. "They're all coming ripe."
"All the better to turn you into a tree," he said.
"I don't want to be a tree yet," I said.

The Magnati have all been summoned for the funeral, and I'll be announcing our betrothal once they're gathered.

Feiglings!" Eroica bellowed after them at the top of his lungs as they clawed and scattered his wing dragons.

His name tasted of fire and wings, of curling smoke, of subtlety and strength and the rasping whisper of scales. He eyed me and said stiffly, Don't land yourself into a boiling-pot, and as difficult as you may find it, try and present a respectable appearance.

As happy as I would be to forgo the very doubtful pleasure of watching you flop about like an exhausted eel over the least cantrip," he bit out, "we've already seen the consequences of leaving you to your own devices.

A crowd of women around me doing the ocean of women's work that never subsided and never changed and always swallowed whatever time you gave it and wanted more, another hungry body of water. I submerged into it like a ritual bath and let it close over my head gladly.

I am sick of the quarrels of nations and kings, and I would not give a ha'pence for any empire other than our valley, if that can content your ambition.

Once we're out of the Wood ... , I said, but my voice died in my throat. I felt odd and sick. Did you ever get out of the Wood, if you'd been in it for twenty years?

I held that last gown of plain undyed wool in my hands, feeling like it was a rope I was clinging to, and then in a burst of defiance I left it on my bead, and pulled myself in the green-and-russet gown.
I couldn't fasten the buttons in the back, so I took the long veil from the headdress, wound it twice around my waist and made a knot, just barely good enough to keep the whole thing from falling off me, and marched downstairs to the kitchens. I didn't even try to keep myself clean this time.

He held his hand out to me across the table.
It was harder to take it this time, to make that deliberate choice, without the useful distraction of desperation.

You speak in ignorant disdain of the foremost nation of the world," Yongxing said, growing angry himself, "like all your country-men, who show no respect for that which is superior, and insult our customs."
"For which I might consider myself as owing you some apology, sir, if you yourself had not so often insulted myself and my own country, or shown respect for any customs other than your own," Laurence said.

They would have devoured my family and picked their teeth with the bones, and never been sorry at all. Better to be turned to ice by the Staryk, who didn't pretend to be a neighbor.

How are you giving it magic?" he said, through his teeth.

"I already found the path!" I said. "I'm just staying on it. Can't you - feel it?" I asked abruptly, and held my hand cupping the flower out towards him; he frowned and put his hands around it, and then he said, "Vadiya rusha ilikad tuhi," and a second illusion laid itself over mine, two roses in the same space - his, predictably, had three rings of perfect petals, and a delicate fragrance.

"Try and match it," he said absently, his fingers moving slightly, and by lurching steps we brought our illusions closer together until it was nearly impossible to tell them one from another, and then he said, "Ah," suddenly, just as I began to glimpse his spell: almost exactly like that strange clockwork on the middle of his table, all shining moving parts. On an impulse I tried to align our workings: I envisioned his like the water-wheel of a mill, and mine the rushing stream driving it around. "What are you - " he began, and then abruptly we had only a single rose, and it began to grow.

And not only the rose: vines were climbing up the bookshelves in every direction, twining themselves around ancient tomes and reaching out the window; the tall slender columns that made the arch of the doorway were lost among rising birches, spreading out long finger-branches; moss and violets were springing up across the floor, delicate ferns unfurling. Flowers were blooming everywhere: flowers I had never seen, s

Little Irina must be a woman grown by now. A beauty, I have heard, surely?' It was more mockery: he had heard nothing of the sort, of course. I had traveled with my father; the court and his advisers knew I was nothing out of the ordinary, and hardly a girl to turn a young tsar's head - if he had been in any danger of turning his head at all, except perhaps all the way round like an owl.

The crew were all of them inclined to cough and sneeze, the boys particularly, and Keynes said, "We ought put them all in the water: to keep the chest warm must be the foremost concern."
Laurence agreed without thinking and was shortly appalled by the sight of Emily bathing with the rest of the young officers, innocent of both clothing and modesty.
"You must not bathe with the others," Laurence said to her urgently, having bundled her out and into a blanket.
"Mustn't I?" she said, gazing up at him damp and bewildered.
"Oh, Christ," Laurence said, under his breath. "No," he told her firmly, "it is not suitable; you are beginning to be a young lady."
"Oh," she said dismissively, "Mother has told me all about that, but I have not started bleeding yet, and anyway I would not like to go to bed with any of them," and a thoroughly routed Laurence feebly fell back on giving her some make-work, and fled to Temeraire's side.

A girl had supposedly disguised herself as a man to fight in her father's stead, had become companion to a military dragon and saved the empire by winning a great battle;

No one had made her talk to me, or be in my company. I couldn't understand why she would have gone to the trouble just to be unpleasant.

Laurence," Granby said at his shoulder, "in the hurry, the ammunition was all laid in its usual place on the left, though we are not carrying the bombs to balance it out; we ought to restow."
"Can you have it done before we engage? Oh, good Lord," Laurence said, realizing. "I do not even know the position of the convoy; do you?" Granby shook his head, embarrassed, and Laurence swallowed his pride and shouted, "Berkley, where are we going?"
A general explosion of mirth ran among the men on Maximus's back. Berkley called back, "Straight to Hell, ha ha!" More laughter, nearly drowning out the coordinates that he bellowed over.

he thought how little the rest of the world should matter to him, when he was secure in the good opinion of those he valued most, and in the knowledge that he was doing his duty.

I'd chosen- not the lesser evil, but the less immediate one.

. . . though if Fanshawe had not spoken in so unbecoming a way, Laurence would have liked to keep Carver out of it, as he knew the boy had a poor head for heights, which struck him as a grave impediment for an aviator.

Gentleness shown once is mercy, shown twice is folly.

You've been inexpressibly lucky," he said finally. "And inexpressibly mad, although in your case the two seem to be the same thing

A power claimed and challenged and thrice carried out is true

Then she'd straightened up and announced in irritation, "I've fallen out of time," before vanishing in a great cloud of smoke.

I grabbed back at him just as incautiously with my hand and my magic both, even as he pressed magic on me from his side as well. His breath huffed out sharply, and our workings caught on one another, magic gushing into them.

A life before you in the moment isn't worth a hundred elsewhere, three months from now.

But she hadn't been able to take root. She'd remembered the wrong things, and forgotten too much. She'd remembered how to kill and how to hate, and she'd forgotten how to grow.

The Magicians brilliantly explores the hidden underbelly of fantasy and easy magic, taking what's simple on the surface and turning it over to show us the complicated writhing mess beneath. It's like seeing the worlds of Narnia and Harry Potter through a 3-D magnifying glass.

Elsie eyed him puzzledly, and then offered, Would you like to see my plate?

Could have devoured the rest of the valley overnight. But a tree isn't a woman; it doesn't bear a single seed. It scatters as many of them as it can, and hopes for some of them to grow.

Lady, though you choose a home in the sunlit world, you are a Staryk queen indeed.

Four years! My heart was glad as birds.

and if they were both outcast for the same reason, they might at least have the pleasure of each other's society for compensation.

I will tell you what we shall do: if ever you need to rescue Catherine, or you Berkley, Maximus, I will help you, and you will do as much for me. Then we do not need to worry, I do not suppose anyone could stop all three of us, at least not before we can escape

I felt argument coiling in my belly.

My mother had enough magic to give me three blessings before she died," I said, and he instinctively bent in to hear it. "The first was wit; the second beauty, and the third - that fools should recognize neither." Irina

And listen to me: what you've done here carries power with it, of a different sort. Don't let Solya take all the credit, and don't be shy of using it.

If I were very offensive, do you suppose they would go away now?

Anger was a fire in a grate, and I'd never had any wood to burn. Until now, it seemed.

It is quite uninteresting; that is why one comes out.
- Temeraire, on being inside an egg

he would not neglect what he considered his duty for the sake of being liked.

Something about that whole process of building the structure of that game turned into a real kind of lightbulb moment for me as a writer.

I will see you bereft of all that you have, of home and happiness and beautiful things. I will see your nation cast down and your allies drawn away. I will see you as alone and friendless and wretched as am I; and then you may live as long as you like, in some dark and lonely corner of the earth, and I shall call myself content.
-Lien, Albino Celestial (Dragon)

Well, I only wish you may all not have your throats slit by Uygurs," Riley said in deep pessimism, giving up, after he had tried once more at dinner to persuade them to remain. . .
"I will not let anyone slit your throats at all," Temeraire said, a little indignantly. "Although I would like to see an Uygur; is that a kind of dragon?"
"A kind of bird, I think," Granby said; Laurence was doubtful, but he did not like to contradict when he was not sure himself.
"Tribesmen," Tharkay said, the next morning.
"Oh." Temeraire was a little disappointed; he had seen people before. "That is not very exciting, but perhaps they are very fierce?" he asked hopefully.
"Have you enough money to buy thirty camels?" Tharkay asked Laurence, after he had finally escaped a lengthy interrogation as to the many other prospective delights of their journey, such as violent sandstorms and frozen mountain passes.

I had forgotten hours and days by then. My arms ached, my back ached, my legs ached. My head ached worst of all, some part of me tethered back to the valley, stretched out of recognizable shape and trying to make sense of myself when I was so far from anything I knew. Even the mountains, my constants, had disappeared. Of course I'd known there were parts of the country with no mountains, but I'd imagined I would still see them somewhere in the distance, like the moon. But every time I looked behind me, they were smaller and smaller, until finally they disappeared with one final gasp of rolling hills.

Hush, sweetheart. You don't have a mother anymore, but let me to speak to you with her voice a minute. Listen. Stepon told us what happened in your house. There are men who are wolves inside, and want to eat up other people to fill their bellies. That it what was in your house with you, all your life. But here you are with your brothers, and you are not eaten up, and there is not a wolf inside you. You have fed each other, and you kept the wolf away. That is all we can do for each other in the world, to keep the wolf away.

and a clean pocket-handkerchief. The

But none of that matters at all." His head raised to stare balefully at me, but I said, incoherent yet convinced, "It's just - a way to go. There isn't only one way to go." I waved at his notes. "You're trying to find a road where there isn't one. It's like - it's gleaning in the woods," I said abruptly. "You have to pick your way through the thickets and the trees, and it's different every time.

I had forgotten to fear him, from too much time spent too close.

Everyone says you love a Dragon-born girl differently as she gets older; you can't help it, knowing you so easily might lose her.

If you really wanted to court me, you'd have to do it by my family's laws, and you'd have to marry me the same way." I said, and folded my arms, knowing that would be the end of it, of course. And I wasn't sorry; I wouldn't be. I wouldn't regret any man who wouldn't do that, no matter what else he was or offered me; that much had lived in my heart all my life, a promise between me and my people, that my children would still be Israel no matter where they lived. Even if in some sneaking corner of my mind I might have thought, once or twice, for only a moment, that it would be worth something to have a husband who'd sooner slit his own throat than ever lie to you or cheat you. But not if he didn't value you at least as high as his pride. I wouldn't hold myself that cheap, to marry a man who'd love me less than everything else he had, even if what he had was a winter kingdom.

Trying to out-guess Bonaparte; the thought makes my blood run cold.

I am beginning to feel the need of a glass of wine to fortify myself against this conversation.

What perfectly sensible advice. It sat in my stomach, an indigestible lump.

Keep your eyes on him, you wretched vainglorious creature,

Her beautiful face was blank as an unwritten book.

Truth didn't mean anything without someone to share it with; you could shout truth into the air forever, and spend your life doing it, if someone didn't come and listen.

He snorted. "He thinks killing a day-old hydra has made him a hero." None of the songs had ever mentioned the Vandalus Hydra being one day old: it diminished the story more than a little.

I wanted to rub handprints through his dust

Let her out!" I screamed at the tree. I beat on its trunk with my muddy fists. "Let her out, or I'll bring you down! Fulmia!" I cried out in rage ...

After a moment, he said, in almost marveling tones, 'Are you deranged?

The single most important technique for making progress is to write ten words. Doesn't matter if you're badly stuck, or your day is completely jam-packed, or you're away from your computer - carry a small paper notebook and write a sentence of description while you're waiting on line at a coffee shop. I think of this as baiting a hook. Even if you have a few days in a row where nothing comes except those ten words, I find that as long as you have to think about the novel enough to write ten words, the chances are that more will come.

You are not wrong," Laurence said. He had assumed as much himself, after all, in his Navy days: had thought the Corps full of wild, devil-may-care libertines, disregarding law and authority as far as they dared, barely kept in check-- to be used for their control over the beasts, and not respected.

"But if we have more liberty than we ought," Laurence said, after a moment, struggling through, "it is because they have not enough: the dragons. They have no stake in victory but our happiness; their daily bread and nation would give them just to have peace and quiet. We are given licence so long as we do what we ought not; so long as we use their affections to keep them obedient and quiet, to ends which serve them not at all-- or which harm."

"How else do you make them care?" Granby said. "If we left off, the French would only run right over us, and take our eggs themselves."

"They care in China," Laurence said, "and in Africa, and they care all the more, that their rational sense is not imposed on, and their hearts put into opposition with their minds. If they cannot be woken to a natural affection for their country, such as we feel, it is our fault, and not theirs.

I do not care if Laurence tells me not to squash you