“Maybe if I act well enough, I'll come to believe it myself.”
― Garth Nix, quote from Abhorsen
“As for you, Private, if you mention a word of this to anyone, I'll feed you to the cat thing here. Understand?"
"Yum," said Mogget.
"Yes, sir!" mumbled the telephone operator, his hands shaking as he tried to smother the burning wreckage of his switchboard with a fire blanket.”
― Garth Nix, quote from Abhorsen
“Why, Yrael?” it said, as the last of the dark gave way to silver, and the shining sphere of metal sank slowly to the ground. “Why?”
“Life,” said Yrael, who was more Mogget than it ever knew. “Fish and fowl, warm sun and shady trees, the field mice in the wheat, under the cool light of the moon.”
― Garth Nix, quote from Abhorsen
“So I'll do that, and I'll do my best and if my best isn't good enough, at least I will have done everything I could, everything that is in me. I don't have to try to be someone else, someone I could never be.”
― Garth Nix, quote from Abhorsen
“For everyone and everything, there is a time to die. Some do not know it, or would delay it, but its truth cannot be denied. Not when you look into the stars of the ninth gate.”
― Garth Nix, quote from Abhorsen
“Sam picked up his pack, but before he could put it on, Mogget leaped onto it and slid under the top flap. All that could be seen of him were his green eyes and one white-furred ear.
"Remember I advised against this way," he instructed. "Wake me when whatever terrible thing is a about to happen happens, or if it appears I might get wet.”
― Garth Nix, quote from Abhorsen
“Nick shook his head and found to his surprise that he did have tears left after all. He wasn't surprised by a talking cat. The world was crumbling around him and anything could happen.”
― Garth Nix, quote from Abhorsen
“I have never known what to tell anybody. Except that it is better to do something than nothing, even if the cost is great.”
― Garth Nix, quote from Abhorsen
“Time plays tricks between here and home," said Mogget sepulchrally, frightening the life out of the telephone operator.”
― Garth Nix, quote from Abhorsen
“But think of how much worse it would be to sit here, not knowing. Until the Dead choke the Ratterlin and Hedge walks across the dry bed of the river to batter down the door.”
― Garth Nix, quote from Abhorsen
“Just like the Perimeter! It never rains but it pours," declared the Major.”
― Garth Nix, quote from Abhorsen
“Please, Mogget,” whispered Lirael, too soft to be heard by anyone at all. But the white shape did hear. It stopped and turned inwards, to face Orannis, changing from a pillar of fire to a more human shape, but one with skin as bright as a burning star. “I am Yrael,” it said, casting a hand out to throw a line of silver fire into the breaking spell-ring, its voice crackling with force. “I also stand against you.”
― Garth Nix, quote from Abhorsen
“This? It's a feather-coin. I made it.'
'What is it for?'
'It isn't for anything. It's a toy.'
'It's for annoying people,' said Mogget from Sam's pack. 'If you don't put it away, I shall eat it.”
― Garth Nix, quote from Abhorsen
“Together, the bells and Dog sang a song that was more than sound and power. It was the song of the earth, the moon, the stars, the sea, and the sky, of Life and Death and all that was and would be. It was the song of the Charter, the song that had bound Orannis in the long ago, the song that sought to bind the Destroyer once again.”
― Garth Nix, quote from Abhorsen
“I won't let you go! I love you, Dog!'
'There will be other dogs and friends, and loves' whispered the Dog. 'You have found your family, your heritage, and you have earned a high place in the world. I love you too, but my time with you has passed.”
― Garth Nix, quote from Abhorsen
“...I've been thinking that it's as if my ancestors are saying it's all right to make things. That's what I'm meant to do. Make things, and help the Abhorsen and the King. So I'll do that, and I'll do my best, and if my best isn't good enough, at least I will have done everything I could, everything that is in me. I don't have to try to be someone else, someone I could never be.”
― Garth Nix, quote from Abhorsen
“Mogget’s voice. Sam whirled around. “Mogget? Is that you? Where are you?” “Here, and regretting it as per usual,” replied Mogget, and a small white cat sauntered out from behind a fern tree.”
― Garth Nix, quote from Abhorsen
“they might refuse the evidence of their own eyes and continue blindly on over the ridge, driven by optimism and hope that finally they would find somewhere to call home.”
― Garth Nix, quote from Abhorsen
“Nick was watching her, too, she realized, as those thoughts clamored in her mind. But not with puzzlement or enmity. He was just looking, tilting his head on the side, with one eye partly closed. “Pardon me,” he said. “I was wondering how you knew Sam. Are you a . . . um . . . a princess? Only, if you’re his fiancée or something, I thought I should know. To . . . ah . . . offer my congratulations, as it were. And I don’t even know your name.”
― Garth Nix, quote from Abhorsen
“Lirael almost apologized, but she held it back. She did feel sorry for Nick. It wasn’t his fault he had been chosen by an ancient spirit of evil to be its avatar. She even felt sort of maternal to him. He needed to be tucked in bed and fed willow-bark tea. That thought led to the idle speculation of what he might look like if he were well. He could be quite handsome, Lirael thought, and then instantly banished the notion. He might be an unwitting enemy, but he was still an enemy.”
― Garth Nix, quote from Abhorsen
“I lied,” said the Dog cheerily. “That’s one of the reasons I’m the Disreputable Dog. Besides,”
― Garth Nix, quote from Abhorsen
“If she had been in a pointing competition, she would have lost points.”
― Garth Nix, quote from Abhorsen
“Lirael didn’t answer either question. She just looked at him, waiting for him to talk. He met her gaze at first, then faltered and looked away. There was something unnerving about her eyes. A toughness he had never seen in the young women he knew from the debutante parties in Corvere. It was partly this that made him talk, and partly a desire to impress her with his knowledge and intelligence.”
― Garth Nix, quote from Abhorsen
“The newspapers next day wrote that "with much hesitation the witness proceeded to recount the treatment she received from Madame DeBeausacq, the details of which are so extremely disgusting and filthy we forbear to give publicity to them." Let me say right now the papers was wrong on them details. The details are of Human Kindness. These judges, these police, these reporters, are squeamish low bloodworms, half of them, consorting with cancan girls. How I know this is because them girls come to me. So do their society mistresses. Also, their wives. I know them, daughters of Judges, sisters of Prosecutors. But these robes of the law did not wish to hear the filthy details of their own sex's duplicity, or dwell on the disgusting filthy things they did THEMSELVES, nor see the fair face of the ones they punish for their own masculine debauchery.”
― Kate Manning, quote from My Notorious Life
“a methodology is only effective when it is practiced consistently.”
― quote from Making Ideas Happen: Overcoming the Obstacles Between Vision and Reality
“I did what I thought was best.'
"And so you kidnapped me,' she said bitterly.
'If you recall I offered you the option of residing with my relatives. You refused.'
'I want to be independent.'
'One doesn't have to be alone to be independent.'
Victoria couldn't think of a suitable rebuttal to that statement, so she remained silent.
'When I marry you,' Robert said softly, 'I want it to be a partnership in every sense of the word. I want to consult you on matters of land management and tenant care. I want us to decide together how to raise our children. I don't know why you are so certain that loving me means losing yourself.”
― Julia Quinn, quote from Everything and the Moon
“He coiled himself neatly and waited without fidgeting, as was polite; but at length, when Majestatis showed no signs of waking—after ten minutes, or perhaps five—very nearly five—Temeraire coughed; then he coughed again, a little more emphatically, and Majestatis sighed and said, without opening his eyes, “So you are not leaving, I suppose?”
“Oh,” Temeraire said, his ruff prickling, “I thought you were only sleeping, not ignoring me deliberately; I will go at once.”
“Well, you might as well stay now,” Majestatis said, lifting his head and yawning himself away. “I don’t bother to wake up if it isn’t important enough to wait for, that’s all.”
― Naomi Novik, quote from Victory of Eagles
“If a society thinks it needs weapons, it must accept killing. If it thinks it needs violent men, it must accept rapine and assault.”
― Sheri S. Tepper, quote from The Visitor
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