Quotes from Crown Duel

“You, there, girl! Halt!"
Who in the universe ever halts when the enemy tells them to?”
― Sherwood Smith, quote from Crown Duel

“A wager?" I repeated.
"Yes," he said, and gave me a slow smile, bright with challenge. ...
"Stake?" I asked cautiously. He was still smiling, an odd sort of smile, hard to define.
"A kiss." My first reaction was outrage, but then I remembered that I was on my way to Court, and that had to be the kind of thing they did at Court. And if I win I don't have to collect. I hesitated only a moment longer, lured by the thought of open sky, and speed, and winning.
"Done," I said.”
― Sherwood Smith, quote from Crown Duel

“Why is it the songs all end with the good people winning, but in life they don't?"
They don't make songs when the good lose," I muttered. "They make war chants against the bad. So there won't be any songs for us.”
― Sherwood Smith, quote from Crown Duel

“Except. What is normal at any given time? We change just as the seasons change, and each spring brings new growth. So nothing is ever quite the same.”
― Sherwood Smith, quote from Crown Duel

“Because you showed one face to all the rest of the world, and another to me.”
― Sherwood Smith, quote from Crown Duel

“It desolates me to disappoint you, but your brother is not here. Despite two really praiseworthy attempts at rescue."
... The hint of amusement irritated me, and sick and hurt as I was, I simply had to retort something. "Glad... at least... you're desolated.”
― Sherwood Smith, quote from Crown Duel

“One doesn't lose a self, like a pair of gloves or a pine. We learn and change, or we harden into stone.”
― Sherwood Smith, quote from Crown Duel

“If more people recognized the difference between friendship and mere attraction, and how love must partake of both to prosper, I expect there'd be more happy people.”
― Sherwood Smith, quote from Crown Duel

“I had seen ardency in men's eyes, but I had only felt it once. With Flauvic, false and therefore easy to dismiss. I suddenly wished that I could feel it now. No, I did feel it. I did have the same feeling, only I had masked it as restlessness, or as the exhortation to action, or as anger. I thought how wonderful it would be to see that spark now, in the right pair of eyes.”
― Sherwood Smith, quote from Crown Duel

“A horse blanket, Mel?
I remembered what I was wearing. 'It tore in half when Hrani tried washing it. She was going to mend it. This piece was too small for a horse, but it was just right for me.'
Bran laughed a little unsteadly. 'Mel. A horse blanket.”
― Sherwood Smith, quote from Crown Duel

“The more one has, the less one desires.”
― Sherwood Smith, quote from Crown Duel

“Some of it was wrong decisions made for the right reasons, and a little of it was right decisions made for the wrong reasons; but most of what I did was wrong decisions for the wrong reasons.”
― Sherwood Smith, quote from Crown Duel

“Who can ever know what turns the spark into flame? Vidanric's initial interest in me might well have been kindled by the fact that he saw my actions as courageous, but the subsequent discovery of passion, and the companionship of the mind that would sutain it, seemed as full of mystery as it was of felicity. As for me, I really believe that the spark had been there all along, but I had been too ignorant--and too afraid--to recognize it.”
― Sherwood Smith, quote from Crown Duel

“But I'd also learned that the self might want one thing, but that didn't mean it was right.”
― Sherwood Smith, quote from Crown Duel

“If your opponent is better armed and has longer reach, then surprise is your only ally. And then you'd better hope he's half asleep.”
― Sherwood Smith, quote from Crown Duel

“You don't look at the problem all at once, or it's like being caught in a spring flood under a downpour. You tackle the problem in pieces...”
― Sherwood Smith, quote from Crown Duel

“Who in the universe halts when the enemy tells them to?”
― Sherwood Smith, quote from Crown Duel

“But I will never ask anyone from our village-from any village in Tlanth-to risk his or her life unless I'm willing to myself.”
― Sherwood Smith, quote from Crown Duel

“the stubborn little countess—so unlike anyone Vidanric had ever met—trampled her determined, well-meaning way not only over his plans, but his thoughts.”
― Sherwood Smith, quote from Crown Duel

“I’d learned something, all right, about the power of attraction, and Nee was right, it was potent. But I’d also learned that the self might want one thing, but that didn’t mean it was right. Isn’t that why we have minds?”
― Sherwood Smith, quote from Crown Duel

“Suddenly I felt an overwhelming desire to be home. I wanted badly to clean out our castle, and replant Mama’s garden, and walk in the sunny glades, and think, and read, and learn. I no longer wanted to face the world in ignorance, wearing castoff clothing and old horse blankets.”
― Sherwood Smith, quote from Crown Duel

“Except, what is normal at any given time? We change just as the seasons change, and each spring brings new growth. So nothing is ever quite the same. I realize now that what I wanted was comfort, but that, too, does not often come with growth and change.”
― Sherwood Smith, quote from Crown Duel

“You're drunk as four skunks, you idiot.”
― Sherwood Smith, quote from Crown Duel

“I can see her struggling to make what she considers courtly banter, but if she’s ever been kissed before, I’ll eat my hat. I’ll eat your hat, which has more lace on it.”
― Sherwood Smith, quote from Crown Duel

“It is a shame that so few have the time or inclination for scholarship these days. There is much entertainment to be afforded in perusing the mistakes of our forbears.”
― Sherwood Smith, quote from Crown Duel

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Popular quotes

“Snow and soot covered the ancient tree's broken branches and seared bark. It wasn't dead, not quite yet. Here and there tiny shoots of green struggled to emerge, but they weren't doing well. The end was near.
A shadow loomed, and a creature settled into the drifts, and old, wounded thing of the skies, as near death as the tree.
Pinions drooping, it laboriously began building a nest--a place of dying. Stick by stick, it pecked among the ruined wood on the ground, piling the bits higher until it was clear that it was not a nest at all.
It was a pyre.
The bloody, dying thing settled in atop the kindling, and crooned soft music unlike anything ever heard before. A glow began to build, surrounding the beast soon in a rich purple lambience. Blue flames burst forth.
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It was not the creature on the pyre that was reborn, and even in sleep, that surprised Gordon. The great bird was consumed, leaving only bones.
But the tree blossomed, and from its flowering branches things uncurled and drifted off into the air.
He stared in wonderment when he saw that they were balloons, airplanes, and rocket ships. Dreams.
They floated away in all directions, and the air was filled with hope.”
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― Richard Carlson, quote from Don't Sweat the Small Stuff ... and it's all small stuff: Simple Ways to Keep the Little Things from Taking Over Your Life

“But it was not what I wanted to do! I wanted to star in a silent movie and vamp the sheik, take a trip to the South Seas … walk naked in the sand and surf … write a novel about it. Be the Empress of the Galaxy, be discovered by a hero that would ravish me, and take me away on high adventure! Take a interminable motor home trip across the US and find out how the past had become the present. Journey to Europe, speak flawless French, and become the courtesan in the country chalet where all the real people came to party.” She laughed again. “Mostly I did not want be confined to routine … endless routine.”
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“...
'Better is the end of a matter than its beginning.'

– Ecclesiastes 7:8”
― quote from New World Translation of the Holy Scriptures

“From whom but the Devil did this advice come under which you are acting? Those who are urging you to repeat your former wrongdoings against an innocent person are seeking in this not your honour but their own convenience. They are clearly the enemies of your crown and the disturbers of your realm.”
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