Tamsyn Muir Quotes

I pray the tomb is shut forever," recited Harrowhawk, with the curious fervidity she always showed in prayer. " I pray the rock is never rolled away. I pray that which was buried remains buried, insensate, in perpetual rest, with closed eye and stilled brain. I pray it lives, I pray it sleeps ... I pray for the needs of the Emperor All-Giving, the Undying King, His Virtues and his men. I pray for the Second House, the Third, the Fourth, the Fifth; the Sixth, Seventh, and Eighth. I pray for the Ninth House, and I pray for it to be fruitful. I pray for the soldiers and adepts far from home, and all those parts of the Empire that live in unrest and disquiet. Let it be so.

Again, let me say: sorry. It was not my thumb to let them bite off. I admit completely that this was my bad, but these motherfuckers had a hunger that only thumbs could satisfy.

Her adept said: "I'll keep it off you. Nav, show them what the Ninth House does."

Gideon lifted her sword. The construct worked itself free of its last confines of masonry and rotten wood and heaved before them, flexing itself like a butterfly.

"We do bones, motherfucker," she said.

Don't die in a bone. I am your creature, gloom mistress. I serve you with fidelity as big as a mountain, penumbral lady."
Harrow's eyes flickered open. "Stop."
"I am your sworn sword, night boss."
"Fine," said Harrow heavily.
Gideon's mouth was about to round out the words "bone empress" before she realised what had been said.

Gideon marvelled that someone could live in the universe only seventeen years and yet wear black and sneer with such ancient self-assurance.

Today isn't the day when we start to use one another's bodies. Or tomorrow, or ever. We're not barbarians.

She kept looking at Gideon with the screwed-up eyes of someone who had been handed an egg for safekeeping and was surrounded by egg-hunting snakes.

I KISSED YOU AND LATER I WOULD KISS HIM TOO BEFORE I UNDERSTOOD WHAT YOU WERE, AND ALL THREE OF US LIVED TO REGRET IT - BUT WHEN I AM IN HEAVEN I WILL REMEMBER YOUR MOUTH, AND WHEN YOU ROAST DOWN IN HELL I THINK YOU WILL REMEMBER MINE

And instead you rolled a rock over me and turned your back. I spent all that time drowning and surfacing in you, over and over and over, and all because in the end you could not bear to do the one thing I asked you to do. I wanted you to use me, you malign, double-crossing, corpse-obsessed bag of bones, you broken, used-up shithead! I wanted you to live and not die, you imaginary-girlfriend-having asshole! Fuck one flesh, one end, Harrow. I already gave my flesh to you, and I already gave you my end. I gave you my sword. I gave you myself. I did it while knowing I'd do it all again, without hesitation, because all I ever wanted you to do was eat me.

I love a little gall on gall.

Harrow said, with some difficulty: "I cannot conceive of a universe without you in it."
"Yes you can, it's just less great and less hot," said Gideon."
"Fuck you, Nav -

Your heart is a party for five thousand nails,' said Gideon.

I have tried to dismantle you, Gideon Nav! The Ninth House poisoned you, we trod you underfoot - I took you to this killing field as my slave - you refuse to die, and you pity me! Strike me down. You've won. I've lived my whole wretched life at your mercy, yours alone, and God knows I deserve to die at your hand. You are my only friend. I am undone without you.

I intend to take on the habit myself! Cigarettes! On a space station! What a power play.

But Harrowhark - Harrow, who was two hundred dead children; Harrow, who loved something that had not been alive for ten thousand years - Harrowhark Nonagesimus had always so badly wanted to live. She had cost too much to die.

I have lots of fealty in me. I fealt the Emperor with every bone in my body. I fealt hard.

I have spent your life trying to make you regret that you weren't dead, all because - I regretted I wasn't! I ate you alive, and you have the temerity to tell me that you're sorry?

Anyone can learn to fight. Hardly anyone learns to think.

Maybe it's that I find the idea comforting...that thousands of years after you're gone...is when you really live. That your echo is louder than your voice is.

If you do not find yourself a galaxy, it is not so bad to find yourself a star.

Harrowhark's talent had always been in scale, in making a fully realised construct from as little as an arm bone or a pelvis, able to make an army of them from what anyone else would need for one, and in some far-off way Gideon had always known that this would be how she went: gangbanged to death by skeletons.