R. Lee Smith Quotes

Under no circumstances are you to butter your entire roll and, my God!" she cried suddenly, switching Lan's hand three times in rapid succession. "Never lick your knife!" "Ouch! Fine! Buggering fuck! Leave off with that beshitted thing!" The dead woman let out a sound like the chirping of a bird, staring at her with an indignation that was nearly horror. "Ladies," she sputtered at last. "Ladies do not say bugger or fuck!" "But beshitted's all right?" Lan asked cautiously. "No, it is not!" "You know, I may not be as mannered-up as you are, but in Norwood, it's rude to yell at the table.

Fate is like a storm. You can let it bend you, or you can make it break you. One way or the other, the storm always has its way. Now our storm is beginning, Olivia.

Are you wondering yet why I'm telling you all this?" "Yes," said Olivia. "Very much." "It's to tell you that fate is seldom found in the first place you look for it.

Father, forgive me," he thought, staring into the sky where the light of the sun stared back at him behind the clouds. "Truth does not care if it comforts her. But I do.

Forever. What do you know of forever?" He asked with undisguised contempt. "What do you know of death?

But once that question popped out there, it couldn't be ignored. You couldn't put toothpaste back in the tube; once you'd seen Waldo, you might as well throw the book away.

The bad nights made the good ones impossible to enjoy; the good nights made the bad ones worse.

There is no night, however dark and filled with woe, that is not followed by dawn.

Don't make fun of me," Lan snapped. "I'm illiterate, not stupid! I know there's no B in subtle!

Meoraq swung around and raked his eyes over the whole of them. "Who dares order me to silence?" "I do," said Amber. "Shut up.

Men may perish, but the world will neither celebrate nor mourn. It will go on.' His smile thinned. 'Would you like to know how?'
'No.'
'Animals will swell to fill the void left by men," he told her. 'And over-swell it, perhaps. There will be other extinctions and other recoveries. The sky will clear, but those who see it will not marvel at its many colors. Those ruins will collapse, burying treasures like this-' He waved at the walls. '-and this-' He picked up the spoon from her coffee tray and tossed it down again with a clatter. '-forever, but the world will go on. Years become centuries so easily when no one is there to count them. Centuries become millennia. The forests will reclaim the lands that Men have razed. Rivers will carve canyons across the scars left by this fallen cities. Mountains will rise up, trapping seas to dry under and uncaring sun and leaving the bones of whales to bleach in the newborn deserts for no one to find, no one to be inspired by thoughts of giants and dragons. And still the worlds will go on, and I will go on with it through ages that can only be measured by the coming and going of glaciers. The stars themselves will shift in the heavens and no one will be there to invent names for their new alignments or remember the stories of the old ones, no one but me. In time, the sun itself will begin to cool. Here on Earth, the world goes on and on as its remaining life passes through its last changes and dies away. It will be quiet. And lone

You can make a story mean anything Meoraq. But that's the think with you religious people, isn't it? God is this glorious intangibility, so no proof becomes proof just by how you spin it.

Did you mark that?"
"Most of it."
"Then I have your obedience."
"I didn't exactly plan to go anywhere this morning, " she told him testily. "But, I wasn't lost. I was just hunting. And I wasn't in trouble."
"Human, you are not yet out of trouble.

Strange, how the world could move on even when it had been shaken to its foundations.

The world is filled with fools like S'kot, and worse, with the fools who let them act as wardens over them. They deserve each other. I don't care what they think of me and neither should you.

I don't know humans, but I know fools. And I know the surest way to encourage fools to follow a wicked man is to tell them not to.

People make babies. People make the rules. And then people make up gods so they have someone else to blame when things don't go right." "No,

Aisling tumbled out, his gold eyes going wild about the room to take in all of them. His beak clicked as he worked it in silence. Then, as the breaking of ice may bring a cascade of water from winter's falls, the griffin's voice - no longer that small shrill copy of Taryn's, but his own true voice - poured plaintively from him. "Mom!"
Taryn jerked around, her mouth dropping open.
Aisling bounded toward her and she swept him up into a tight embrace. He clutched at her shoulders with his talons, burying his head under her chin, and cried, "Mom! Yoo…rrrrr…oh…kay!"
"Great gods," Antilles heard himself say and he shot Tonka a startled glance. "He cannot be speaking?!"
The horseman merely smiled. "And why not?" he murmured, resettling himself on his padded bolster. "For has he not been a miracle from the very first?"
"You're talking," Taryn cried, true delight painting itself over the grief that had seemed to mask her since the dawning of this terrible day. She was radiant once more, burning with a joy and a healing light all its own as she hugged her griffin close. "Oh, my fierce prince! My big boy!"
"Yoo…rrrr…Ai-sing," whispered the griffin. His raptor's eyes flicked to Antilles and his naked wings fluttered. "Tilly. Yoo…rrrr…sun-shy?"
Taryn giggled, her face pressed to fur.
"Aye, lad," Antilles said, tossing his broken horn. "My sun and my moon and all my starry skies.

Women are like handfuls of sand. They all rub up under your scales now and then, but the finest ones do put a polish on a man.

Is that sex talk?" she asked uncertainly.
"It is."
"Why don't you just say sex then? It's always chalice and appetite and artifice with you. I never know what the hell you're saying.

One for the Prophet, the wide open eye… Two for his brunt and the sign of the fist… Three for Uyane, the unclad sword… Four for Mykrm, the hammer of his law… Five for Oyan of the ash-stained leaf… Six for Thaliszar and the healing hand…

What do you think of me?

In the end, she realized that anytime you weren't fucking for fun, regardless of what you told yourself, honey, it was hooking.

Yet for all the aggravation of tending them, it was not so terrible an ordeal. He'd never kept a pet before and keeping close to fifty of them all at once in the wildlands was not how any man ought to begin, but he seemed to be having some success at it and he had to admit, he liked having someone to talk to, even if she couldn't talk back.

One person against the world never wins.

And yet, you're here.

I'm not against the world, just you. Make the odds about even, as I see it.

Jesus Christ, really? How did you ever survive living with me as long as you did without having sex every other hour?" "With God's aid alone," he said seriously. "It was a terrible time." "Just

It's one slice of shit-cake after another with me, isn't it? Why did you marry me?"
"God gave you to me."
"Did you keep the receipt?"

- Amber and Meoraq