“Though you thrust a knife at my eyes, I will not flinch.”
― quote from Luck in the Shadows
“You hardly know me. Why do you want me to come with you?"
"Who knows? Perhaps you remind me just a bit of—"
"Someone you used to know?" Alec interjected skeptically.
"Someone I used to be.”
― quote from Luck in the Shadows
“Still clutching each other by the arm, they turned to watch the last stones plummet over the edge.
“I don't know how many times a day I can stand to watch you almost die,” Seregil gasped.
“Twice is my limit,” croaked Alec, sinking to his knees.”
― quote from Luck in the Shadows
“Cursed be the weapon that tastes the blood of a friend.”
― quote from Luck in the Shadows
“They have a saying among them: 'When whores are few, a boy will do.”
― quote from Luck in the Shadows
“A Skalan trader tried to tell me the streets of his cities were paved with gold," Alec went on. "I didn't believe him, though. He was the one who tried to buy me from father. I was only eight or nine. I could never figure out what he wanted me for."
"Really?" Seregil lifted a noncommittal eyebrow.”
― quote from Luck in the Shadows
“But is it an honest living?" Alec persisted, clinging to his last shred of resolve.
"Most of those who employ me are great lords or nobles."
"It sounds like a pretty dangerous line of work," Alec remarked, aware that once again Seregil had side-stepped the question.
"That's the spice of it, though," cried Seregil. "And you can end up rich!"
"Or on the end of a rope?"
Seregil chuckled. "Have it your way.”
― quote from Luck in the Shadows
“At first it was simply that the spells would not come off. Or they would, but with the most unexpected results. He would try to move a small object, a salt cellar; it would overturn. He would try again and the salt would burst into flames. On the third try it might fly at his head, or mine. One day he attempted a simple messenger spell, and in the space of five minutes every spider, centipede, and earwig in the place came swarming in under the door. We began conducting his training outside after that.
“Attempting to levitate, he blew up an entire grove of trees in the park. A simple summoning, butterflies I think, and all the horses went crazy for an hour. Things soon reached such a state that whenever anything unusual happened within the Orëska grounds, we got the blame for it.
“Oh, but it was frustrating! In spite of all the blunders, all the destruction, I knew the power was there. I could feel it, even when he could not. For he did succeed now and then, but so erratically! Poor Seregil was devastated. I saw him brought to tears just trying to light a candle. Then there was the time he turned himself into a brick.”
― quote from Luck in the Shadows
“These are Plenimaran marines, and there's not much most of them aren't capable of, if you take my meaning."
"I don't think I do," said Alec, puzzled by Seregil's tone.
"Then try this. They have a saying among them: 'When whores are few, a boy will do.' Got that?"
"Oh." Alec felt his face go hot.”
― quote from Luck in the Shadows
“Come on, Seregil, let's show him how it's done."
"I'm busy," replied Seregil, working on a tricky bit of fingering.
Moving to stand over him, Micum groweled, "Put away that twopenny toy, you tit-sucking coistril, and show me the length of your blade!"
Seregil laid his harp aside with a sigh. "Dear me, that sounds rather like a challenge-"
Lunging swiftly past Micum, he sprang to his feet and drew his sword, then swung a flat-bladed attack at Micum's forearm.”
― quote from Luck in the Shadows
“I want to come with you, but first you’ve got to give me a few straight answers.” “It’s against my nature, but I’ll try.”
― quote from Luck in the Shadows
“Who is that?” Alec asked, puzzled by the man’s silence. “That’s Rhiri. He’s deaf, mute, and absolutely loyal. Best servant I ever found.”
― quote from Luck in the Shadows
“You can only do a thing for the first time once, and that goes for falling in love.”
― Nevil Shute, quote from Round the Bend
“I learned how to stop crying.
I learned how to hide inside of myself.
I learned how to be somebody else.
I learned how to be cold and numb.”
― Sherman Alexie, quote from Flight
“Her body consented willingly to all that her soul found most abhorrent. As Nicholas had promised, there was a hellish delight in knowing she was damned.”
― Anya Seton, quote from Dragonwyck
“I’ve wed his two empty boots.’ ‘That you havena,’ said Janet, Lady of Buccleuch, lowering her voice not at all in the presence of two hundred twittering Scott relations as they gazed after their vanishing husbands. ‘They aye remember their boots. It’s their empty nightgowns that get fair monotonous.”
― Dorothy Dunnett, quote from The Disorderly Knights
“You both love Tolstoy and Dostoyevsky, Hawthorne and Melville, Flaubert and Stendahl, but at that stage of your life you cannot stomach Henry James, while Gwyn argues that he is the giant of giants, the colossus who makes all other novelists look like pygmies. You are in complete harmony about the greatness of Kafka and Beckett, but when you tell her that Celine belongs in their company, she laughs at you and calls him a fascist maniac. Wallace Stevens yes, but next in line for you is William Carlos Williams, not T.S. Eliot, whose work Gwyn can recite from memory. You defend Keaton, she defends Chaplin, and while you both howl at the sight of the Marx Brothers, your much-adored W.C. Fields cannot coax a single smile from her. Truffaut at his best touches you both, but Gwyn finds Godard pretentious and you don't, and while she lauds Bergman and Antonioni as twin masters of the universe, you reluctantly tell her that you are bored by their films. No conflicts about classical music, with J.S. Bach at the top of the list, but you are becoming increasingly interested in jazz, while Gwyn still clings to the frenzy of rock and roll, which has stopped saying much of anything to you. She likes to dance, and you don't. She laughs more than you do and smokes less. She is a freer, happier person than you are, and whenever you are with her, the world seems brighter and more welcoming, a place where your sullen, introverted self can almost begin to feel at home.”
― Paul Auster, quote from Invisible
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