Quotes from A Song for Arbonne

Guy Gavriel Kay ·  512 pages

Rating: (11.1K votes)


“We must be what we are, or we become our enemies. ”
― Guy Gavriel Kay, quote from A Song for Arbonne


“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, quote from A Song for Arbonne


“Even the birds above the lake
Are singing of my love,
And even the flowers along the shore
Are growing for her sake.

All the vines are ripening
And the trees come into bud,
For my love's footsteps passing by
Are summoning the spring.

Rian's stars in the night
Shine more brightly over her,
The god's moon and the goddess's
Guard her with their light.

Even the birds above the lake
Are singing of my love,
And even the flowers along the shore
Are growing for her sake”
― Guy Gavriel Kay, quote from A Song for Arbonne


“Rudel Correze is far from the first to seek to aid me in my passage to Rian. But I find myself still among the living, and I have discovered that I value this world for itself, not merely as a matter for someone's song. I love it for its heady wines and its battles, for the beauty of its women and their generosity and their pride, for the companionship of brave men and clever ones, the promise of spring in the depths of winter and the even surer promise that Rian and Corannos are waiting for us, whatever we may do. And I find now, your highness, long past the fires of my heart's youth and yours, that there is one thing I love more, even more than the music that remains my release from pain.'
'Love, de Talair? This is a word I did not expect to hear from you. I was told you foreswore it more than twenty years ago. The whole world was speaking of that. This much I am certain I remember. My information, so far distant in our cold north, seems to have been wrong in yet another matter. What is the one thing, then, my lord duke? What is it you still love?'
'Arbonne.”
― Guy Gavriel Kay, quote from A Song for Arbonne


“He was still on his feet, and before him was a man who stood in the path of...what? Of a great many things, his own dream of Gorhaut not least of all. Of what his home should be, in the eyes of the world, in the sight of Corannos, in his own soul. He had said this two nights ago, words very like this, King Daufridi of Valensa. He's been asked if he loved his country.
He did. He loved it with a heart that ached like an old man's fingers in rain, hurting for the Gorhaut of his own vision, a land worthy of the god who had chosen it, and of the honour of men. Not a place of scheming wiles, of a degraded, sensuously corrupt king, of people dispossessed of their lands by a cowardly treaty, or of ugly designs under the false, perverted aegis of Corannos for nothing less than annihilation here south of the mountains.”
― Guy Gavriel Kay, quote from A Song for Arbonne



About the author

Guy Gavriel Kay
Born place: in Weyburn, Saskatchewan, Canada
See more on GoodReads

Popular quotes

“Around the outside of the room other beautiful women wearing little or nothing at all flitted between the infatuated, intoxicated men, sometimes luring them away for a private dance. The men would follow obediently, weighed down by lust and credit cards.”
― quote from The Zombie Room


“We have annexed the future into the present, as merely one of those manifold alternatives open to us. Options multiply around us, and we live in an almost infantile world where any demand, any possibility, whether for life-styles, travel, sexual roles and identities, can be satisfied instantly.”
― J.G. Ballard, quote from Crash


“I once read that Martha Stewart never wears a bathrobe. Not that I like Martha Stewart, nobody likes Martha Stewart, I don’t think even Martha Stewart likes Martha Stewart.”
― Elizabeth Berg, quote from Open House


“She was moved to a profound but pleasurable melancholy by the evidence that human life is brief and long survived by the material things it had believed itself to possess.”
― Helen Hooven Santmyer, quote from And Ladies of the Club


“How could something that made a person feel so safe be so BAD?”
― Katie Alender, quote from Bad Girls Don't Die


Interesting books

Devices and Desires
(3.4K)
Devices and Desires
by K.J. Parker
Beyond Words: What Animals Think and Feel
(1.7K)
Beyond Words: What A...
by Carl Safina
The Alice Network
(47.9K)
The Alice Network
by Kate Quinn
The Tournament
(5.9K)
The Tournament
by Matthew Reilly
The Queen of Blood
(4.7K)
The Queen of Blood
by Sarah Beth Durst
The Last of August
(5.6K)
The Last of August
by Brittany Cavallaro

About BookQuoters

BookQuoters is a community of passionate readers who enjoy sharing the most meaningful, memorable and interesting quotes from great books. As the world communicates more and more via texts, memes and sound bytes, short but profound quotes from books have become more relevant and important. For some of us a quote becomes a mantra, a goal or a philosophy by which we live. For all of us, quotes are a great way to remember a book and to carry with us the author’s best ideas.

We thoughtfully gather quotes from our favorite books, both classic and current, and choose the ones that are most thought-provoking. Each quote represents a book that is interesting, well written and has potential to enhance the reader’s life. We also accept submissions from our visitors and will select the quotes we feel are most appealing to the BookQuoters community.

Founded in 2023, BookQuoters has quickly become a large and vibrant community of people who share an affinity for books. Books are seen by some as a throwback to a previous world; conversely, gleaning the main ideas of a book via a quote or a quick summary is typical of the Information Age but is a habit disdained by some diehard readers. We feel that we have the best of both worlds at BookQuoters; we read books cover-to-cover but offer you some of the highlights. We hope you’ll join us.