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his hands moved busily among the puppets, choosing, discarding, until they pounced finally on the moon with her crystal eyes and her hands shaped like stars.
'I will be the moon,' Kyel said. 'You must make a wish to me.'
Lydea slid her fingers into the fox's head, with its sly smile and fiery velvet pelt. 'I wish,' she said, 'that you would take your nap.'
'No,' the prince said patiently, 'you must make a true wish. And I will grant it because I am the moon.'
'Then I must make a fox's wish. I wish for an open door to every hen house, and the ability to jump into trees.'
The moon sank onto the blue hillock of Kyel's knee. 'Why?'
'So that I can escape the farmer's dogs when they run after me.'
'Then you should wish,' the prince said promptly, 'that you could jump as high as the moon.'
'A good wish. But there are no hens on the moon, and how would I get back to Ombria?'
The moon rose again, lifted a golden hand. 'On a star.'
The governess smiled. The fox stroked the prince's hair while he shook away the moon and replaced it with the sorceress, who had one amethyst eye and one emerald, and who wore a black cloak that shimmered with ribbons of faint, changing colors.
'I am the sorceress who lives underground,' the prince said. 'Is there really a sorceress who lives underground?'
'So they --' Lydea checked herself, let the fox speak. 'So they say, my lord.'
'How does she live? Does she have a house?'
She paused a
Patricia A. McKillip Quotes: his hands moved busily among
That man would betray his own shadow. And for what? A child's tale.'
'Is it?' Mag looked at her. 'Is it only a tale?'
For a moment, the purple eyes grew dark, black as the little rags of shadows that Mag saw on empty streets or patches of barren ground, attached to nothing, seemingly blown at random from some place adrift in light.
Patricia A. McKillip Quotes: That man would betray his
She is our moon. Our tidal pull. She is the rich deep beneath the sea, the buried treasure, the expression in the owl's eye, the perfume in the wild rose. She is what the water says when it moves.
Patricia A. McKillip Quotes: She is our moon. Our
Oh, yes." He felt the pearls brush down his face again. Dory turned: he met her eyes and let her see the new pearls forming. "Anything that beautiful is terrible. Because it's outside of you. It's not you. You'll do anything to make it part of you. You'd eat it, drown in it, kill it, let it kill you. Anything to stop it from not being you.
Patricia A. McKillip Quotes: Oh, yes.
Night is not something to endure until dawn. It is an element, like wind or fire. Darkness is its own kingdom; it moves to its own laws, and many living things dwell in it.
Patricia A. McKillip Quotes: Night is not something to
The message, which one fall or another of the coin would eventually give him, was how to get himself out of his chamber and into Nepenthe's, so that he could tell her why he had not come to tell her why he had not come.
Patricia A. McKillip Quotes: The message, which one fall
In sixteen years since then, she had changed beyond recognition, and he had not changed by a moment, being the same dispassionate, thin-haired wraith who had picked her up with his bony hands and tucked her into a book bag to add to the acquisitions of the royal library.
Patricia A. McKillip Quotes: In sixteen years since then,
The tutor's eyelids drooped; his thoughts drained out of his face like water seeping into earth.
Patricia A. McKillip Quotes: The tutor's eyelids drooped; his
The giant Grof was hit in one eye by a stone, and that eye turned inward so that it looked into his mind, and he died of what he saw there. -Cyrin
Patricia A. McKillip Quotes: The giant Grof was hit
All I wanted, even when I hated you most, was some poor, barren, parched excuse to love you. But you only gave me riddles.
Patricia A. McKillip Quotes: All I wanted, even when
He gazed intently at a sheet of paper, breath suspended, a word on the quivering point of his pen poised and waiting to fall. Monoliths of books and manuscripts rose around him. All were crammed with words; words packed as solidly as bricks in a wall. Armies of them; marching on from one page to the next without pause.
He forced the pen in his tight grip a hairs'-breadth closer to the paper, so that the word stubbornly clinging to it might yield finally; flow onto the vast emptiness. Point and paper met, kissed, froze.
He sat back, breath spilling abruptly out of him, the pen laden with unformed words dangling now over the floor in his lax fingers. How, he wondered incredulously, did all those books and papers come into existence? In what faceted jewel of amber secreted in what invisible compartment of what hidden casket did others find that one word to begin the sentence, that layered itself into a paragraph, that built itself into a page, that went on to the next page, and on, and on? ~The Bards of Bone Plain
Patricia A. McKillip Quotes: He gazed intently at a
Then you will have to trust me. Beyond logic, beyond reason, beyond hope, trust me.
Patricia A. McKillip Quotes: Then you will have to
The young gentlemen who came calling seemed especially puzzling. They sat in their velvet shirts and their leather boots, nibbling burnt cakes and praising Diamond's mind, and all the while their eyes said other things. Now, their eyes said. Now. Then: Patience, patience. 'You are flowers,' their mouths said, 'You are jewels, you are golden dreams.' Their eyes said: I eat flowers, I burn with dreams, I have a tower without a door in my heart, and I will keep you there ...
Patricia A. McKillip Quotes: The young gentlemen who came
I trust the depths don't leak."
"No."
"Then I'll sleep happily buried in stone.
Patricia A. McKillip Quotes: I trust the depths don't
Imagination is best fed by reality, an odd diet for something nonexistent there are few details of daily life and its broad range of emotional context that can't be transformed into food for the imagination.
Patricia A. McKillip Quotes: Imagination is best fed by
If you speak of this I will tear out your voice and top it down the nearest drain
Patricia A. McKillip Quotes: If you speak of this
Those who fear the imagination condemn it: something childish, they say, something monsterish, misbegotten. Not all of us dream awake. But those of us who do have no choice.
Patricia A. McKillip Quotes: Those who fear the imagination
Winds shook me apart piecemeal, flung a bone here, a bone there. My eyes became snow, my hair turned to ice; I heard it chime against my shoulders like wind-blown glass. If I spoke, words would fall from me like snow, pour out of me like black wind.
Patricia A. McKillip Quotes: Winds shook me apart piecemeal,
Every moment is like a wheel with a hundred spokes in it. We ride always at the hub of the wheel and go forward as it turns. We ignore the array of other moments constantly turning around us. We are surrounded by doorways; we never open them.
Patricia A. McKillip Quotes: Every moment is like a
I made it when I was young, by my standards, after years of playing on various harps. I shaped its pieces out of Ymris oak beside night fires in far, lonely places where I heard no man's voice but my own. I carved on each piece the shapes of leaves, flowers, birds I saw in my wanderings. In An, I searched three months for strings for it. I found them finally; sold my horse for them. They were strung to the broken harp of Ustin of Aum, who died of sorrow over the conquering of Aum. Its strings were tuned to his sorrow, and its wood was split like his heart. I strung my harp with them, matching note for note in the restringing. And then I returned them to my joy." Morgon
Patricia A. McKillip Quotes: I made it when I
She had begun to bake to have her eyes looking at a bowl, a flour bin, an oven, a fire, a face, anything but water. Her hands shaped loaves like scallop shells, like moon shells, like starfish; she ate them as if she ate the sea, to make it part of her, to transform bone to shell and lose herself in it, eyeless, thoughtless, wrapped in memories and anchored on some hoary rock against the currents of the deep.
Patricia A. McKillip Quotes: She had begun to bake
Even I could not guess what misgivings lay behind Perrin's clear eyes. Perhaps none; perhaps he trusted Laurel without question. Perhaps he was right. All I knew is what Laurel's hands said when she spoke Corbet's name. And how often she said it, until it seemed, like the falling of autumn leaves, or the long ribbons of migrating birds, one of the season's changes.
Patricia A. McKillip Quotes: Even I could not guess
Do you become in visible?'
'No. I'm there, if you know how to look. I stand between the place you look at and the place you see. Behind what you expect to see. If you expect to see me, you do. I listen in places where no one expects me to be.
Patricia A. McKillip Quotes: Do you become in visible?'<br>'No.
Easier to understand the wind . . . Easier to walk on the surface of the frothing sea, than to remember the hunger to do it. Easier to remember knowledge than ignorance, experience than innocence. Easier to know what you are than remember what you were.
Patricia A. McKillip Quotes: Easier to understand the wind
She was a sweet, warm wind in my heart, a resting place, a place of peace where I could forget so many things . . .
Patricia A. McKillip Quotes: She was a sweet, warm
I don't know you."

"Then why did you do that for me?"

"Because you are so full of wonder. After what I-- After--" He gestured, his eyes hidden; deep lines ran down his cheeks like claw marks. "That seems very precious to me now. How could I not give you such a small thing?
Patricia A. McKillip Quotes: I don't know you.
Lydea found Mag's knowledge astonishing, and had gotten into the habit of taking lessons with the prince. They helped each other study, sometimes with the aid of puppets.
Patricia A. McKillip Quotes: Lydea found Mag's knowledge astonishing,
I thought that all magic has its price.'
'Magic does,' Faey said. 'But let us consider this an exchange of knowledge. I'll tell you what you want to know and you'll tell me why you want to know it.
Patricia A. McKillip Quotes: I thought that all magic
The idea of fairyland fascinates me because it's one of those things, like mermaids and dragons, that doesn't really exist, but everyone knows about it anyway. Fairyland lies only in the eye of the beholder who is usually a fabricator of fantasy. So what good is it, this enchanted, fickle land which in some tales bodes little good to humans and, in others, is the land of peace and perpetual summer where everyone longs to be? Perhaps it's just a glimpse of our deepest wishes and greatest fears, the farthest boundaries of our imaginations. We go there because we can; we come back because we must. What we see there becomes our tales.
Patricia A. McKillip Quotes: The idea of fairyland fascinates
He assumed his stillness like a shield, impervious and impenetrable; she wondered if it hid a total stranger or someone as familiar as to her as his name.
Patricia A. McKillip Quotes: He assumed his stillness like
I had thirty-nine typed pages and a contract stating I would send the completed manuscript in by February 1, 2002. I knew where I wanted the novel to go, but I couldn't seem to shove it past page 39. I couldn't find the point of view I needed to examine the life and motives of a man who wanted to conquer the world. I did the usual: sacrificed small rodents to the moon, offered my soul to demons in exchange for inspiration, did some research. Nobody wanted the rodents or my soul, and the research into ancient conquerors seemed barren. Finally, out of the blue, a young girl stepped into my head, opened her mouth and told me where that part of the story began.
Patricia A. McKillip Quotes: I had thirty-nine typed pages
In that place things begin to wear away even as they are built; the living die a little more each day. The sun is too far away; light slides endlessly into night; fire and love consume themselves; the heart tries to warm itself with ashes.
Patricia A. McKillip Quotes: In that place things begin
A net of words, he said at last, is more powerful than a net of rope.
Patricia A. McKillip Quotes: A net of words, he
He closed his grade book and asked hopefully, "What inspired you? Was it Hawthorne?"
I stared at him. He had to be kidding.
Patricia A. McKillip Quotes: He closed his grade book
But even in the schoolyard I'd been aware of that silence, that reserve in him, as though he'd been raised by foxes and language was his second language.
Patricia A. McKillip Quotes: But even in the schoolyard
There was the gaudy patch of sunflowers beside the west gate of the palace of the Prince of Ombria, that did nothing all day long but turn their golden-haired, thousand-eyed faces to follow the sun.
Patricia A. McKillip Quotes: There was the gaudy patch
Content, it dreams awake, and spins the fabric of tales. There is really nothing to be done with such imagery except to use it: in writing, in art.
Patricia A. McKillip Quotes: Content, it dreams awake, and
That once were urgent and necessary for an orderly world and now were buried away, gathering dust and of no use to anyone.
Patricia A. McKillip Quotes: That once were urgent and
The odd thing about people who had many books was how they always wanted more.
Patricia A. McKillip Quotes: The odd thing about people
Shall I add a man to my collection?
Patricia A. McKillip Quotes: Shall I add a man
Love and anger are like land and sea: They meet at many different places.
Patricia A. McKillip Quotes: Love and anger are like
Her eyes met his. Garner started, feeling the implosion like a silent lightning bolt all through him. Those eyes, as green as river moss, watched him just above the surface of the water. Her pale hair floated all around her like the petals of some extravagant flower. In the next moment he caught his breath. It was not, could not possibly be Damaris, silent as a wild thing, her nose under water, and from what he could see, naked as an eel. A river creature, he realized, his pulse quickening again. Sunning in the shallows, breathing water like air as she gazed at him. He wondered whether, if he spoke, she would vanish with a twist and a ripple, like a fish.
From the short story Knights of the Well
Patricia A. McKillip Quotes: Her eyes met his. Garner
Then, as Mag worried the crock into her basket, trying not to squash goats' eyes and violets, the young man reached across the counter and seized her hand. She gazed at him in wonder. He had thick, moist fingers, and she needed her hand to shift the eyes.
'Mag,' he said huskily. His heavy, earnest face was sheened with sweat and the bluish shadow of his first beard. 'How can you not see how we belong to one another? We've grown up together, like night and day. You are moon to my sun, you are silver to my aspiring gold - You would complete me -'
'Wait,' she pleaded. 'The crock is on the violets.'
'Marry me. Together we would become the marvel we seek, the transmutation of time into eternity -'
She snorted inelegantly, and felt something peculiar flowing through her bones, an unaccustomed panic, a desperate urgency she barely knew words for. He thought he recognized her as human. 'You are mistaken,' she said coldly. 'And from what I've seen of both alchemy and marriage, all the marvels lie in the expectation.
Patricia A. McKillip Quotes: Then, as Mag worried the
I need you to forgive me. And then perhaps I can begin to forgive myself. There is no one but you who can do that either.
Patricia A. McKillip Quotes: I need you to forgive
Once I used my powers. Now I feel like a dancing instructor, reminding the queen whom she is dancing with at this hour and with which foot she should begin.'
'Be thankful,' Gavin advised with a laugh, 'that so far the music is still being played and everyone is trying to dance in harmony.
Patricia A. McKillip Quotes: Once I used my powers.
It's so hard to think in winter. The world seems confined in the space of your heart; you can't see beyond yourself.
Patricia A. McKillip Quotes: It's so hard to think
When you put your hands and mind and heart into the knowing of a thing ... there is no room in you for fear.
Patricia A. McKillip Quotes: When you put your hands
She descended, not through the nearest hole as was her childhood habit, but more sedately down a marble staircase that began life in the upper world as an innocent stairway from a cellar door. Below, Faey complained about her tardiness, but was too busy to press for explanations. A gentleman from the palace had sent a request, with gold, for a method of detecting poison. Mag sighed. It would be a smelly afternoon.
Patricia A. McKillip Quotes: She descended, not through the
Her eyes filled with light, like sea-polished amber, and his throat constricted suddenly, too full of words.
Patricia A. McKillip Quotes: Her eyes filled with light,
Lydea was a blown flame; Lydea was yesterday; Lydea, alone on the streets of Ombria, was already changing into something neither of them would recognize, if she survived to see them again.
Patricia A. McKillip Quotes: Lydea was a blown flame;
Here in Raine, I can walk with the sunlight on my face. I can speak to anyone who speaks to me. I can learn my daughter's language. I can be called the name I was given when I was born.
Here I am no longer my own secret.
Will you let me stay?
Patricia A. McKillip Quotes: Here in Raine, I can
He is not here to help me with this; you must take his place.'
Ducon started to speak, faltered. He stared at her, the bruise on his face suddenly vivid against his pallor, as if she had struck him.
Patricia A. McKillip Quotes: He is not here to
Soon is such a long word.
Patricia A. McKillip Quotes: Soon is such a long
The river narrowed, quickened, its surface trembling like the eyes of dreamers.
Patricia A. McKillip Quotes: The river narrowed, quickened, its
What do you think love is- a thing to startle from the heart like a bird at every shout or blow? You can fly from me, high as you choose into your darkness, but you will see me always beneath you, no matter how far away, with my face turned to you. My heart is in your heart. I gave it to you with my name that night and you are its guardian, to treasure it, or let it whither and die. I do not understand you. I am angry with you. I am hurt and helpless, but nothing will fill the ache of the hollowness in me where your name would echo if I lost you.
Patricia A. McKillip Quotes: What do you think love
As she moved swiftly and noiselessly through the vast palace cellar, odd noises weltered toward her. Voices and echoes of water rippled through the air as if, in some magic chamber, whales and dolphins cavorted among young maidens in great tanks of water. When she reached it, all the fish turned into laundry, stirred and beaten in steaming cauldrons by glum, limp-haired women as wet as mackerels.
Patricia A. McKillip Quotes: As she moved swiftly and
It was no warning, no judgment, simply her name, and she could have wept at the recognition of it.
Patricia A. McKillip Quotes: It was no warning, no
Imagination is the golden-eyed monster that never sleeps. It must be fed; it cannot be ignored.
Patricia A. McKillip Quotes: Imagination is the golden-eyed monster
Morgan," he whispered, "I wish you had not been someone I loved so.
Patricia A. McKillip Quotes: Morgan,
That's the beginning of magic. Let your imagination run and follow it.
Patricia A. McKillip Quotes: That's the beginning of magic.
Now the wood in early morning was utterly silent. She walked carefully through damp leaves, around tangles of bramble and vine, trying not to disturb the stillness. She could not see the sky, only green and shadow woven thickly above her, yelding not a scrap of blue. She breathed soundlessly. So did the wood around her, she felt; it seemed a live thing, alert and watching her, trees trailing whisps of morning mist, their faces hidden, their thoughts seeping into the air like scent. It was, she thought, like being surrounded by unspoken words.
Patricia A. McKillip Quotes: Now the wood in early
It's an odd thing, happiness. Some people take happiness from gold. Or black pearls. And some of us, far more fortunate, take their happiness from periwinkles.
Patricia A. McKillip Quotes: It's an odd thing, happiness.
He ran from her suddenly, swift and quiet like a mountain cat among the high peeks of Eld mountain. She watched him dive in among the trees, and the autumn winds shoke suddenly at his heels. She sad down on a fallen trunk and dropped her head among the knees. A great soft warmth shiled her from the wind, and she looked up and saw into Gules Lyons quiet, golden eyes.
What is it, white one?
She knelt suddenly and flung his arms around the great mane, and burried her face against him.
I wish that I had wings and could fly and fly and never come back.
What has troubled you, Orams powerful child? What can trouble you? What can such a small one as Coren of Sirle say to touch you?
For a long moment she did not answer. And then she said, her fingers tight around the gold tangeled fur.
He has taken my heart and offered it back to me. And I thought he was harmless.
Patricia A. McKillip Quotes: He ran from her suddenly,
Experience teaches us restrictions," the mage reminded him. "They are not dreamed up in some peaceful tower on a mountaintop.
Patricia A. McKillip Quotes: Experience teaches us restrictions,
I write fantasy because it's there. I have no other excuse for sitting down for several hours a day indulging my imagination. Daydreaming. Thinking up imaginary people, impossible places. Imagination is the golden-eyed monster that never sleeps. It must be fed; it cannot be ignored.
Making it tell the same tale over again makes it thin and whining; its scales begin to fall off; its fiery breath becomes a trickle of smoke. It is best fed by reality, an odd diet for something nonexistant; there are few details of daily life and its broad range of emotional context that can't transformed into food for the imagination. It must be visited constantly, or else it begins to become restless and emit strange bellows at embarrassing moments; ignoring it only makes it grown larger and noisier. Content, it dreams awake, and spins the fabric of tales. There is really nothing to be done with such imagery except to use it: in writing, in art. Those who fear the imagination condemn it: something childish, they say, something monsterish, misbegotten. Not all of us dream awake. But those who do have no choice.
Patricia A. McKillip Quotes: I write fantasy because it's
Watching the day slowly bloom into night. That's how it always seemed to me: not the fading of a withered flower, but the opening of some dark, rich blossom, with unexpected hues and heavy scents.
Patricia A. McKillip Quotes: Watching the day slowly bloom
Something - a flick of color, the faint beat of the earth under my feet, or maybe my name in someone's thoughts - made me lift my eyes.
Patricia A. McKillip Quotes: Something - a flick of
The Shadow of the Emperor
The Hooded One
Who unmasked night
Who laid the stars like paving stones
Who rode the Thunderbolt
Down the star-cobbled path into day
Was Kane,
The Emperor's twin
Silent, as lightning is silent,
Before the thunder speaks.
Patricia A. McKillip Quotes: The Shadow of the Emperor<br
If you have no faith in yourself, then have faith in the things you call truth. You know what must be done. You may not have courage or trust or understanding or the will to do it, but you know what must be done. You can't turn back. There is now answer behind you. You fear what you cannot name. So look at it and find a name for it. Turn your face forward and learn. Do what must be done.
-Deth to Morgon, Prince of Hed-
Patricia A. McKillip Quotes: If you have no faith
She [Kane] and Axis performed the ancient ritual of flinging their toys at one another's heads, and in that moment recognized a common destiny. They became inseparable.
Patricia A. McKillip Quotes: She [Kane] and Axis performed
You were crying. It's a terrible thing, loving the sea."
"Yes," she whispered, her eyes straying to it. Waves gathered and broke invisibly in the dark, reaching toward her, pulling back. They were never silent, they never spoke.
Patricia A. McKillip Quotes: You were crying. It's a
Do you want a half-truth or truth?" "Truth." "Then you will have to trust me." His voice was suddenly softer than the fire sounds, melting into the silence within the stones. "Beyond logic, beyond reason, beyond hope. Trust me." Morgon
Patricia A. McKillip Quotes: Do you want a half-truth
Words, he decided, were inadequate at best, impossible at worst. They meant too many things. Or they meant nothing at all.
Patricia A. McKillip Quotes: Words, he decided, were inadequate
He could pick my heart like a rose and watch it wither in his hand. Sometimes I think he is like that. At other times I think he is as simple and golden and generous as our father's fields. And then I see things in his eyes - things that I have never looked at, and I know that I have walked a short and easy road out of my past, while he has walked a thousand roads to meet me. I know Perrin's past; the same road runs into his future. I don't know Corbet.
Patricia A. McKillip Quotes: He could pick my heart
Men see what they are most afraid of.
Patricia A. McKillip Quotes: Men see what they are
A librarian had found the baby sitting abandoned on the sheer edge of the world; the librarians kept her. That proved shrewd. Nepenthe had drooled on words, talked at them, and tried to eat them until she learned to take them into her eyes instead of her mouth.
Patricia A. McKillip Quotes: A librarian had found the
There was a drop of human blood in her, and in her father ... it brought both of them visions at times, living dreams of the world beyond the wood. Her father had learned to ignore them, for they meant nothing to him. She, still learning words for her own world, did not make such distinctions: Everything was new, everything spoke to her and had a name; she had not yet learned that something could mean nothing.
Patricia A. McKillip Quotes: There was a drop of
And then he left the palace to roam the streets of Ombria, where he painted shadows as he searched for light within them, painted thick, barred doors, as he searched in their hewn, scarred grains for what it was they hid, painted high windowless walls as if, rebuilding them stone by stone on paper, he could dismantle them and finally see the secret life behind the real.
Patricia A. McKillip Quotes: And then he left the
His face, at once beautiful and feral, revealed no more than the lion's face, which says nothing at all as the lion crouches and waits. It speaks only when it springs.
Patricia A. McKillip Quotes: His face, at once beautiful
You can weave your life so long
only so long, and then a thing in the world out of your control will tug at one vital thread and leave you patternless and subdued.
Patricia A. McKillip Quotes: You can weave your life
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