Gavriel Quotes

Weariness, sometimes more than anything else, can bring an end to war. ~ Guy Gavriel Kay

The military preferred - invariably - those who could be readily defined, assigned roles, understood, and controlled. ~ Guy Gavriel Kay

The only way to imagine the sound of that sort of screaming is to think of it as the sound produced when the universe rips itself open to let Death come through ~ Gavriel Savit

We are not gods. We make mistakes. We do not live very long.
Sometimes someone grinds ink, mixes it with water, arranges paper, takes up a brush to record our time, our days, and we are given another life in those words. ~ Guy Gavriel Kay

Normally, her mind was like a busy beach - all day long she would run back and forth, leaving footprints, building small mounds and castles, writing out ideas and diagrams with her fingers in the sand, but when the night tide came in, she would close her eyes and allow each wave of rhythmic breath to wash in and out over her day's accumulation, and before long the beach would be clear and empty, and she would drift off to sleep. ~ Gavriel Savit

In this world, where we find ourselves, we need compassion more than anything, I think, or we are all alone. ~ Guy Gavriel Kay

We worship ... the powers that speak to our souls, if it seems they do. We do so knowing there is more to the world, and the half-world, and perhaps worlds beyond, than we can grasp. We always knew that. We can't even stop children from dying, how would we presume to understand the truth of things? Behind things? Does the presence of one power deny another? [p. 176] ~ Guy Gavriel Kay

Rowan's head was still angled as he asked, "Your mothers were cousins, Prince, but who sired
you?"
Aedion lounged in his chair. "Does it matter?"
"Do you know?" Rowan pressed.
Aedion shrugged. "She never told me - or anyone."
"I'm guessing you have some idea?" Aelin asked.
Rowan said, "He doesn't look familiar to you?"
"He looks like me."
"Yes, but - " He sighed. "You met his father. A few weeks ago. Gavriel ~ Sarah J. Maas

I am afraid to try for more light lest it mean more dark. ~ Guy Gavriel Kay

Tell them I'm like you," Gavriel said as they began to slow down.
Aidan laughed. "I think they can see you're not like us anymore."
"No," he said. "Tell them you know me. That I'm like you, one of you. From the party. Tell them."
"Wait," said Winter. "Wait. Is he saying he wasn't at the party? Did you meet him by the side of the road? Did you pick up a hitchhiker who coincidentally turned out to be a vampire?"
Gavriel fixed his gaze on Winter. "You know me," he said, and a chill went up Tana's spine. "You've known me since outside the rest stop, when I turned and the light hit my face."
"What does he mean?" Midnight asked.
"I don't know," Winter said in an odd voice. "Nothing. ~ Holly Black

Lucien," Gavriel said, "if you're proposing a duel, I believe she gets to pick the weapon. I hope she picks me. ~ Holly Black

Not every man or woman sailing down the river will be a figure of force or significance. Some are merely in the boat with all of us. ~ Guy Gavriel Kay

Daylight was coming outside, but it was not only that: courage cast its own light. ~ Guy Gavriel Kay

Bright star of Eanna, forgive me the manner of this, but you are the harbor of my soul's journeying. ~ Guy Gavriel Kay

You have to be afraid for it to count as bravery. ~ Guy Gavriel Kay

most hated by the dark, for their name is light. ~ Guy Gavriel Kay

I'm happier not pretending I know anything about El Cid in Spain. He's a Spanish national hero. I'd rather invent a character inspired by him but clearly not identical to him. And then I feel liberated creatively. ~ Guy Gavriel Kay

I want readers turning pages until three o'clock in the morning. I want the themes of books to stick around for a reader. I'm always trying to find a way to balance characters and theme. ~ Guy Gavriel Kay

I have been made to realize tonight that there are limits to what I wish to do or see done for any cause. ~ Guy Gavriel Kay

Jelena had begun thinking about such things, how much having a chance to do what you were good at mattered. ~ Guy Gavriel Kay

She had been a solitary child, and then solitary as a woman, drawn into an orbit of her own that took her away from others, even those who would be her friends. ~ Guy Gavriel Kay

I grew up in a bookish family, so I read very widely. I was omnivorous, really. ~ Guy Gavriel Kay

The world could bring you poison in a jewelled cup, or surprising gifts. Sometimes you didn't know which of them it was. ~ Guy Gavriel Kay

The Germans tend to like to blame the Nazi experience on one man who can be scapegoated. If you pile all the blame onto him, you exonerate the German masses from any responsibility. ~ Gavriel David Rosenfeld

How we remember changes how we have lived.
Time runs both ways. We make stories of our lives. ~ Guy Gavriel Kay

What I have learned from studying counterfactual history is that the law of unintended consequences always kicks in no matter how secure you are in your plan. We have to live with the historical record as it is, like it or not. ~ Gavriel David Rosenfeld

And Shalhassan of Cathal realized in that moment, standing between the fair brother and the dark, that he was not going to lead this war after all. ~ Guy Gavriel Kay

Do you know the wish of your heart? - The Darkest Road ~ Guy Gavriel Kay

Memory was talisman and ward for him, gateway and hearth. It was pride and love, shelter from loss: for if something could remembered, it was not wholly lost. Not dead and gone forever. ~ Guy Gavriel Kay

I know love,"
Says the littlest one.
"Love is like a flower."
"Why is love a flower?
Little one tell me."
"Love is a flower
For the sweetness it gives
Before it dies away. ~ Guy Gavriel Kay

Eyyia?" said her husband, and Eliane bet Danel heard the mangling of her name as music.
"You sound like a marsh frog," she said, moving to stand before his chair.
By the flickering light she saw him smile.
"Where have you been," she asked. "My dear. I've needed you so much."
"Eyyia," he tried again, and stood up. His eyes were black hollows. They would always be hollows.
He opened his arms and she moved into the space they made in the world, and laying her head against his chest she permitted herself the almost unimaginable luxury of grief. ~ Guy Gavriel Kay

Americans and British respondents don't want to let the German people off the hook. They make the case that if you get rid of Hitler, some other leader apart from Hitler would have emerged and, because of the structural constant of German nationalism, would have exploited German national feeling and produce the same kind of events no matter what. ~ Gavriel David Rosenfeld

No man ever truly possesses a woman, anyhow," said Gidas moodily. "He has her body for a time if he's lucky, but only the most fleeting glimpse into her soul." Gidas was a poet, or wanted to be. ~ Guy Gavriel Kay

Writing is never, ever easy but I wake up every morning grateful for the gift of being able to do this. ~ Guy Gavriel Kay

We live among mysteries. Love is one, there are others. We must not imagine we understand all there is to know about the world. ~ Guy Gavriel Kay

Ice is for death and endings. ~ Guy Gavriel Kay

Men made wagers with their judgment, their allegiances, their resources. ~ Guy Gavriel Kay

I think that when we're young we often have the sense that what we do when faced with a choice will define our lives forever. This can be untrue, sometimes amusingly so, but not always. ~ Guy Gavriel Kay

Devin wondered how often men did what they did, made the choices of their lives, for reasons that were clean and uncomplicated and easily understood as they were happening ~ Guy Gavriel Kay

I know you two are old and up past your bedtime so ill keep this quick. ~ Sarah J. Maas

The very best way I can make any reader believe in the nuts and bolts of an art form ... is to know the mechanics, to make the characters grounded in convincing detail. ~ Guy Gavriel Kay

Most people experience history as one damn fact after another in high school. But if you can wonder, "Wow, what if the US hadn't gotten involved in World War II?", you can become enthralled by the imaginary possibilities. ~ Gavriel David Rosenfeld

Brightly woven, Diar,' Aileron said. And then dazzled them all with the warmth of his smile. ~ Guy Gavriel Kay

If this was the world as the god-or gods-had made it, then mortal man, this mortal man, could acknowledge that and honour the power and infinite majesty that lay within it, but he would not say it was right, or bow down as if he were only dust or a brittle leaf blown from and autumn tree, helpless in the wind. ~ Guy Gavriel Kay

There are kinds of action, for good or ill, that lie so far outside the boundaries of normal behavior that they force us, in acknowledging that they have occurred, to restructure our own understanding of reality. We have to make room for them. ~ Guy Gavriel Kay

Heimthra' was the word used for longing: for home, for the past, for things to be as they once had been. Even the gods were said to know that yearning, from when the worlds were broken. ~ Guy Gavriel Kay

The privacy of pride. ~ Guy Gavriel Kay

Small things change a life. Change lives. ~ Guy Gavriel Kay

Do you always drink from a glass?" she finally exploded.
Gavriel shook his head. "Over my lifetime, I have fed in nearly every way imaginable. Drinking from a glass is tame is comparison."
Meryn started to grin.
"Would you drink from a man?" Gavriel nodded.
"Would you drink in a van?" she asked, her eyes dancing.
"I don't see why not," he replied. Elizabeth stared as Meryn continued.
"Would you drink from an actor?" Again, Gavriel nodded. Laughing, Elizabeth shook her head at Meryn.
"Would you drink on a tractor?" Meryn could barely get the words out she was laughing so hard. Gavriel frowned. "Maybe from a farmer if the need were dire. ~ Alanea Alder

It was Aileron who saw the light blaze in Arthur's face. The Warrior leaped from his horse down into the road and, at the top of his great voice, cried 'Cavall!'

Bracing his legs, he opened wide his arms and was knocked flying, nonetheless, by the wild leap of the dog. Over and over they rolled, the dog yelping in intoxicated delight, the Warrior mock growling in his chest. . . .
This is' asked Aileron with gentle irony, 'your dog? ~ Guy Gavriel Kay

Liu Fang is a truly gifted, world-famous player of the pipa and the guzheng, classical Chinese stringed instruments. ~ Guy Gavriel Kay

He forgot Gavriel and Lorcan as he bolted for her - the gold and red and blue flames utterly hers, this heir of fire. Spying him at last, she smiled faintly. A queen's smile. ~ Sarah J. Maas

We see only glimpses of history, even our own. It is not entirely ours--in memory, in writing it down, in hearing or in reading it. We can reclaim only part of the past. Sometimes it is enough.... ~ Guy Gavriel Kay

I cannot speak for those who come after, or what the world will be. We are not made that way. ~ Guy Gavriel Kay

Originally the premise of killing Hitler was fueled by deep traumatic feelings of wishing and fantasizing that if only things had been different, we could have spared ourselves all kinds of suffering. More recently it's been turned into a comedic trope. As we go forward, tragedy plus time equals comedy. ~ Gavriel David Rosenfeld

This was not a beauty that warmed one. It cut, like a weapon. There was no nuance of gentleness in her, no shading of care, but fair she was, as is the flight of an arrow before it kills. ~ Guy Gavriel Kay

Because," said the swallow man. "A friend is not someone to whom you give the things you need when the world is at war. A friend is someone to whom you give the things that you need when the world is at peace. ~ Gavriel Savit

Do we value privacy in any real way? Thinking about blogs, Twitter, Facebook, MySpace ... all these suggest we value exposure rather more. And instead of challenging this transformation, as they are supposed to - certainly at the more thoughtful edges of the art - novelists are buying into it wholesale. ~ Guy Gavriel Kay

He had a sense - honed by experience - that what he'd contrived might achieve something of the effect he wanted. That, Martinius had always said, was the best any man in this fallible world could expect. [p. 67] ~ Guy Gavriel Kay

They have a friend - " Tana began.
"I have a friend, too," said Gavriel. "And I mean to kill him. ~ Holly Black

When we work with history, to a very great degree we are all guessing. But by using motifs of time and history in a fantasy setting, we are acknowledging that this educated guesswork, invention, fantasy underlie our treatment of the past and its peoples - and we are not claiming a right to do with them as we will. ~ Guy Gavriel Kay

It's the simple truth that mortal men cannot understand why the gods shape events as they do. Why some men and women are cut off in fullest flower, while others live to dwindle into shadows of themselves. Why virtue must sometimes be trampled and evil flourish amidst the beauty of a country garden. Why chance, sheer random chance, plays such an overwhelming role in the life lines and fate lines of men. ~ Guy Gavriel Kay

Guy Gavriel Kay's 'Tigana' is, in my opinion, one of the best, if not the best fantasy novel ever written. It's beautifully written, the characters are unforgettable, the worldbuilding is exquisite. ~ David B. Coe

We are all shaped by where we grow up, though that shaping takes different forms. I don't think there's any doubt that coming of age in Winnipeg both opened my eyes and made me hungry - if I can subvert all claims to be a real writer by mixing metaphors like that. ~ Guy Gavriel Kay

Why fear death? It is the most beautiful adventure in life. ~ Charles Frahman

For all his frustrations and his chronic sense of being overburdened. He was proud of that; he'd always felt that it was worth doing a task properly if it was worth doing at all. That was part of his problem, of course; that was why he ended up with so much to do. It was also the source of his own particular pride: he knew
and he was certain they knew that there was no one else who could handle details such as these as well as he. ~ Guy Gavriel Kay

I know it's not good for a girl to be without a father these days. But is it any better for a father to be without a daughter? ~ Gavriel Savit

Lie as convincingly as I can and pray she doesn't kill someone important. ~ Robin LaFevers

They did not like each other particularly, would never have called one another friend or even have associated under different circumstances, and wherever they were, an argument seemed to lie only a few seconds' journey from them in any given direction.

But something had begun to grow between them as well--a sort of cooperative understanding--and the moments in which this was most obvious were the moments in which one of the two men would forgo his own strongly held way of being and embrace the other's, as if giving a moment of his life to his opposite in tribute. ~ Gavriel Savit

Gavriel sat stock-still. Inside him roiled such turmoil that he feared that should he move, he would smash every piece of furniture in the room, crack every pane of every window, until there was nothing but shining splinters where the parlor had been.

Instead, he leaned back his head and laughed, a long, cruel laugh that did not seem to belong to the boy Roza had known. It blazed up from deep inside him, from some embers he'd always been careful never to stoke. ~ Holly Black

What man would dare believe that all he planned might come to pass? ~ Guy Gavriel Kay

He gave her one of his old, charming half smiles, a teasing one. "And you kissed a vampire. That's crazy. That's not usually what they do with their mouths, you know. I'm kind of jealous."

"Oh, come on," she said, rolling her eyes. "Like you care what I do. You dumped me, remember?"

"First of all," Aidan said, giving her his most insouciant smile and holding up a single finger, "I never said I was jealous of him. Maybe I was jealous of you for getting all his attention. He's not a bad-looking guy, if you don't mind a side serving of lunatic raving. Good mouth. ~ Holly Black

When I'm all grown up, come what may,
I'll build a boat to carry me away ~ Guy Gavriel Kay

It is an old truth that men and women sometimes miss what they hate as much as what they love. ~ Guy Gavriel Kay

It had taken skill, tact, an ability to choose friends well, and a great deal of luck ~ Guy Gavriel Kay

It was different, though, knowing something in your thoughts and then hearing it confirmed, made real, planted in the world like a tree ~ Guy Gavriel Kay

He had a sense, through that spring, that his life would be so much better for her presence. He wasn't wrong, but it was equally a truth that the purpose and direction of her life was not to make his better, and in time he even came to understand that. ~ Guy Gavriel Kay

There are so many stories, she thinks, and most of them end up lost. ~ Guy Gavriel Kay

In general, the main themes emerge early for each book, even before the storyline and characters, as I research the time and place I want to draw upon. Having said that, every single book so far has offered me surprises en route, and these include motifs that come forward as I am writing. ~ Guy Gavriel Kay

Language. The process of sharing with words seemed such a futile exercise sometimes. ~ Guy Gavriel Kay

He didn't look back but he knew his wife and his brother's wife, all the women of the house, would be flying, as if into battle, to make East Slope as ready as it could ever be for what had arrived. ~ Guy Gavriel Kay

It was just like Aleksander to steal even this from him, Gavriel thought. To treat the duel as a joke, to treat him as a joke. Now his only choices were to take aim at a man about to fall over or to bear the shame of crying off. And Aleksander would laugh at him later. I wasn't so very drunk, he would say. And if I was, so what? If you weren't such a milksop, then surely you'd have -

Gavriel raised his pistol and shot his brother through the heart. ~ Holly Black

Growing up? Gavriel, that was last week watching her recover from crashing out of that office window. She fell out of her wheelchair and broke her other arm." Caspian laughed along with his mate.
Gavriel pulled the phone back and stared at it in horror. ~ Alanea Alder

Gavriel smiled at him. "Close the gate, Aedion," was all his father said. And then Gavriel stepped beyond the gates. That golden shield spreading thin. ~ Sarah J. Maas

But courage was not lacking in her heart, though it might be foolhardy and unwise. ~ Guy Gavriel Kay

It is not easy, she thinks, to make your way in the world while insisting on a new path. ~ Guy Gavriel Kay

It had gone far enough, this passiveness, this acceptance, absorbing the designs of others - benign, or otherwise. It was not what he was, or would allow himself to be, under the nine heavens. Perhaps he could declare that, with two swords in his hands. ~ Guy Gavriel Kay

If this is truly the time that will decide, we have no business refusing people who feel the way we do. No right to decide that they must huddle in their homes waiting to see if they are still slaves or not when the summer ends. ~ Guy Gavriel Kay

Everyone knew that all islands were worlds unto themselves, that to come to an island was to come to another world. ~ Guy Gavriel Kay

Truth" when examining events and records of the past was always precarious, uncertain. No man could say for certain how the river of time would have flowed, cresting or receding, bringing floods or gently watering fields, had a single event, or even many, unfolded differently.

It is in the nature of existence under heaven, the dissenting scholars wrote, that we cannot know these things with clarity. We cannot live twice, or watch as moments of the past unfurl, like a courtesan's silk fan. The river flows, the dancers finish their dance. If the music starts again it is starting anew, not repeating itself. ~ Guy Gavriel Kay

In the time periods ​where we tend to know of peoples' lives, two things are required. One is that it is a literate society.

One of the unfairnesses that history imposes upon the present day, in terms of historians and others who are interested in the past, is a huge prejudice in favour of the cultures that wrote things down. The other is that within that literate society, you need to be of a class or social level where things are being written about you. Which is why most writing about history has tended to be about the upper class. There's more material. But it's the unrecorded lives, or the less-often recorded lives, that tend to interest me at least as much as the ones where we have easy access to a lot of information. ~ Guy Gavriel Kay

Catriana sighed. "I'm hard to make friends with," she said at length. "I doubt it's worth your effort. ~ Guy Gavriel Kay

Why did becoming accustomed to something have to render its pleasures stale. ~ Guy Gavriel Kay

Men changed during wars or conflict, sometimes beyond recognition. Tai ~ Guy Gavriel Kay

He didn't think he would understand the strangeness of life if he lived to be a hundred years old. ~ Guy Gavriel Kay

The practice of lying is concerned with attempting to overlay a thin paper substitute atop the world that exists in order that it seem to suit your purposes. But the Swallow Man didn't need the world to suit him. He could make himself suit whatever world it pleased him to agree existed. ~ Gavriel Savit

Praise be to the Weaver and all the gods!' said Shalhassan of Cathal. 'Finally she's done something adult! ~ Guy Gavriel Kay

The first step to get people interested in history is to wonder how things could have been different. ~ Gavriel David Rosenfeld

Is he going to- will he live?"
"No," said Gavriel. "No chance of that. He wants to die, so he will. But not tonight and not because of me."
"Oh," Tana said. "So he's okay? ~ Holly Black

In times of uncertainty, we tend to move away from deterministic world views. And when we try to find moral footing for our actions, we compare ourselves to the foil of all foils, the Nazi period. It's a quest for moral certainty by saying, "Even if we're not doing great these days, at least we're not the Third Reich." Which can be consoling or alarmist. There's always a present-day agenda behind it. ~ Gavriel David Rosenfeld