Guy Gavriel Kay 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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

For some moments the two men sat quietly, each wrapped in his own thoughts, then Ivor rose. 'I should speak to Levon about tomorrow's hunt,' he said. 'Sixteen [eltors], I think.'
'At least,' the shaman said in an aggrieved tone. 'I could eat a whole one myself. We haven't feasted in a long time, Ivor.'
Ivor snorted. 'A very long time, you greedy old man. Twelve whole days ... why aren't you fat?'
'Becaues,' the wisest one explained patiently, 'you never have enough food at the feasts. ~ Guy Gavriel Kay

And surely, surely, if we are not simply animals that live to fight, there must be a reason for bloodshed. ~ Guy Gavriel Kay

Branching paths. The turning of days and seasons and years. Life offered you love sometimes, sorrow often. If you were very fortunate, true friendship. Sometimes war came.
You did what you could to shape your own peace, before you crossed over to the night and left the world behind, as all men did, to be forgotten or remembered, as time or love allowed. ~ Guy Gavriel Kay

I have always argued, in a good novel, interesting things happen to interesting people. ~ Guy Gavriel Kay

I say 'as it were' or 'so to speak' too often because puns and double entendres keep insinuating themselves into my consciousness as I'm talking. ~ Guy Gavriel Kay

Unless the perfidious wolves have the temerity to disobey the High King's plans, we should meet Shalhassan's forces by the Latham in mid-wood with the wolves between us. If they aren't,' Diarmuid concluded, 'we blame anyone and everything except the plan. ~ Guy Gavriel Kay

Full moon is falling through the sky.
Cranes fly through clouds.
Wolves howl. I cannot find rest
Because I am powerless
To amend a broken world.
Sima Zian added, I love the man who wrote that, I told you before, but there is so much burden in Chan Du. Duty, assuming all tasks, can betray arrogance. The idea we can know what must be done, and do it properly. We cannot know the future, my friend. It claims so much to imagine we can. And the world is not broken any more than it always, always is. ~ Guy Gavriel Kay

One man sees a riselka: his life forks there.
 Two men see a riselka: one of them shall die.
 Three men see a riselka: one is blessed, one forks, one shall die.

One woman sees a riselka: her path comes clear to her.
 Two women see a riselka: one of them shall bear a child.
 Three women see a riselka: one is blessed, one is clear, one shall bear a child. ~ Guy Gavriel Kay

What I was born to may not be taken from me.' She hesitates. 'It may only be added to. ~ Guy Gavriel Kay

We Cyngael live where the farthest light of Jad falls. The last light of the sun. It needs attending to, my lord, lest it fail. ~ Guy Gavriel Kay

A lot of the time, when we think about the past, there's a slightly smug patronizing attitude that kicks in. We know so much more than our ancestors did. We make it a joke: can you believe that in Tang dynasty China they thought that ghosts of soldiers, if they weren't buried, would live in some limbo forever, floating above the battlefield in their unburied bodies?

There's always the risk, or the reality, of that slight pulling back, for the modern reader, from connecting with or understanding the past. We always have this space between the foolishness, from our point of view, of what they thought of the world, and the correctness of our understanding of it.

What the fantastic lets me do, along with the other things that we've discussed, is make the world be as my characters believe it to be. When I do that, when I make the reader understand it, the reader is there, the ghosts are there above that battlefield. They're actually there. You read a book that takes that matter-of-factly. That's one of the definitions of magic realism, by the way: the world is presented as the characters believe it to be, without any sense that the worldview is quaint.

The strength of this, for me, is enormous, because it removes that smugness from the reader who's willing to go there, to be immersed in it. You accept the way the world is, the way the characters do, because that's what you've got. That's one of the things the fantastic gives me.

Or, I'll ~ Guy Gavriel Kay

An encounter on a springtime road. The random spinning of fortune's wheel. It can sway us, change us, shape or end our days. ~ Guy Gavriel Kay

It's one thing to make war for your country, your family, even in pursuit of glory. It's another to believe that the people you fight are embodiments of evil and must be destroyed for that. I want this peninsula back. I want Esperana great again, but I will not pretend that if we smash Al- Rassan and all it has built we are doing the will of any god I know. ~ Guy Gavriel Kay

Everything you have ever heard about the strangeness of Hollywood is true! ~ Guy Gavriel Kay

Only then, invisible to everyone and with her curtains drawn, did she allow her tears to fall: in love, and for his hurts, and in terrible pride. ~ Guy Gavriel Kay

And in the dark of that room, notorious for the woven patterns of desire it had seen, Ammar ibn Khairan held the woman beloved of the man he'd killed, and offered what small comfort he could. He granted her the courtesy and space of his silence, as she finally permitted herself to weep, mourning the depth of her loss, the appalling disappearance, in an instant, of love in a bitter world. ~ Guy Gavriel Kay

As many have noted, the peril for authors is that our work space is too easily our play space. ~ Guy Gavriel Kay

In summer darkness, stars in her south-facing window, she makes - or accepts - a decision in her heart. There is fear again with it, and sorrow, but also a kind of easing of disquiet and distress, which is what acceptance is said to bring, is it not? ~ Guy Gavriel Kay

Significant consequences can begin very inconsequentially. That's one thing that fascinates me. The other thing that fascinates me is how accident can undermine something that's unfolding, something that might have played out differently otherwise. ~ Guy Gavriel Kay

Words were power, words tried to change you, to shape bridges of longing that no one could ever really cross. ~ Guy Gavriel Kay

I ruefully admit that if the cat is asleep in my chair - which she regards as hers, of course - I tend to leave her there and take the other one. ~ Guy Gavriel Kay

But if you couldn't do everything, did that mean you did nothing? ~ Guy Gavriel Kay

Just now, high above the chaos of Sarantium, it seemed as if there were so many things he wanted to honour or exalt- or take to task, if it came to that, for there was no need for, no justice in, children dying of plague, or young girls being cut into pieces in the forest, or sold in grief for winter grain.
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 that it was right, or bow down as if he were only dust or a brittle leaf blown from an autumn tree, helpless in the wind.
He might be, all men and women might be as helpless as that leaf, but he would not admit it, and he would do something here on the dome that said- or aspired to say- these things, and more. ~ Guy Gavriel Kay

I spent many years writing and directing in radio drama, so I am comfortable with an audience or a microphone, but I do worry about the blurring of an author's public persona with the work itself. A good 'performer' can make a mediocre book sound strong, and a shy author can leave listeners missing the excellence of his or her writing. ~ Guy Gavriel Kay

I had been obsessed with the Arthurian legends all my life, and I knew that that would work its way into any trilogy I wrote. I was fascinated by the Eddas, the Norse and Icelandic legends, Odin on the world tree. ~ Guy Gavriel Kay

I didn't ask to be made a princess."
This time all three of them laugh, although it is gentle enough.
"Who chooses their fate?" It is the third one, the tallest. "Who asks to be born into the times that are theirs?"
"Well, who accepts the world only as it comes to them?" she says, too quickly. ~ Guy Gavriel Kay

If you so much as start to bow or anything like that, Dave, I'll beat you up. I swear I will. ~ Guy Gavriel Kay

EVENTUALLY, MORNING CAME. Morning always comes. There are always losses in the night, a price paid for light. ~ Guy Gavriel Kay

It was, Jelena though, another kind of arrogance to believe you could understand the way the world was made. It could not be done, there was too much. You needed to be open to it, though, to what your life gave you and demanded. ~ Guy Gavriel Kay