A Natural History of Dragons

But coming to terms with one’s sorrow is one thing; sharing it with strangers is quite another.

I believed myself to be ready then; now, with the hindsight brought by greater age, I see myself for the naive and inexperienced young woman I was. We all begin in such a manner, though. There is no quick route to experience.

Be warned, then: the collected volumes of this series will contain frozen mountains, foetid swamps, hostile foreigners, hostile fellow countrymen, the occasional hostile family member, bad decisions, misadventures in orienteering, diseases of an unromantic sort, and a plenitude of mud.

You may think you see plenty of stars, friend reader, but you are wrong. Night is both blacker and more brilliant than you can imagine, and the sky a glory that puts to shame the most splendid jewels at Renwick's.

If you wish, gentle reader, you may augment your mental tableau with dramatic orchestral accompaniment.

There are proverbs about frying pans and fires that I might have quoted to myself, but I preferred to adapt a different one to my purposes: better the devil that would attack everyone impartially than the devil specifically looking to kill us.

The dragon within my heart stirred, shifting her wings, as if remembering they could be used to fly.

A husband willing to fund a library for his bookish wife is not so easy to obtain; most would see it as a pointless expense. You might, however, find one willing to share his library.

More shouts, and then my father was there, staring down at me in horror: the minor pagan god, appalled at what his worshiper had done.

Just as Manda Lewis's impressions of the world had been informed by her reading-- leading her to expect balls, duels, and conveniently timed thunderstorms out of life-- so, too, had mine; but what I expected was intellectual commerce between equals.

Entomologists trap insects in their killing jars and then pin their corpses to cards, and no one utters a single squeak of protest. For that matter, let a gentleman hunt a tiger for its skin, and everyone applauds his courage. But to shoot a dragon for science? That, for some reason, is cruel.

The hunt for spouses is an activity on a par with fox-hunting or hawking, though the weapons and dramatis personae differ. Just as grizzled old men know the habits of hares and quail, so do elegant society gossips know every titbit about the year’s eligible men and women.

You may think you see plenty of stars, friend reader, but you are wrong. Night is both blacker and more brilliant than you can imagine, and the sky a glory that puts to shame the most splendid jewels at Renwick’s. Up in the mountains, where the air is crisper than the humid atmosphere of Scirland, I beheld a beauty I had never before seen.

Why do chickens have wishbones?" I asked her one day. One of the kitchen maids answered me in the fatuous tones of an adult adressing a child. "To make wishes on them!" (...) "You take one side of it -" "I know what we do with them (...) That's not what chickens have them for, though, or surely the chicken would have wished not to end up in the pot for out supper.

But I know, at least, that you would keep a library on the subject, and I hoped that I might be allowed to read from it.” He regarded me with a bemused expression. “You want me for my library.

I have often found this to be true since, that matters which seem terribly important in the early days of such a journey (what will people back home say?) fade into triviality with the passage of time.