“No matter how far I go, I'm still your person. We stand together now.”
― Kendare Blake, quote from One Dark Throne
“But everyone knows that the Breccia Domain is more than an empty hole in the earth. Who knows what happened to the queens who were thrown down into the dark? Into the heart of the island, where the Goddess’s eye is always open. Who knows how she kept those queens or what she turned them into”
― Kendare Blake, quote from One Dark Throne
“Outside in the yard, Arsinoe follows Jules past the chicken coops as she and Camden stretch their sore limbs in the sun. Then she darts off into the woodpile.
“What are you digging for?” Jules asks.
“Nothing.” But Arsinoe returns with a book, brushing bits of bark off the soft green cover. She holds it up and Jules frowns. It is a book of poison plants, lifted discreetly from one of the shelves in Luke’s bookshop.
“You shouldn’t be messing about with that,” Jules says. “And what if someone sees you with it?”
“Then they’ll think I’m trying to get revenge, for what was done to you.”
“That won’t work. Reading a book to out-poison the poisoners? You can’t even poison a poisoner, can you?”
“Say ‘poison’ one more time, Jules.”
― Kendare Blake, quote from One Dark Throne
“The cloth overlay of Billy’s cart clucks, and a brown chicken pokes her head out from under the covering, stepping out of the basket she was riding in.
“There is a chicken in your cart.”
“I know,” Billy snaps, and slaps his napkin across his lap.
“Why is there a chicken in your cart?”
“Because this was supposed to be chicken stew,” he says. “I’ve been hand-feeding this bird for days to be sure it was not poisoned before the fact. And now . . .” He pours Mirabella some water and drinks from her cup. The hen clucks, and Billy tosses down a chunk of bread.
“Now her name is Harriet,” he says quietly.
Mirabella laughs.”
― Kendare Blake, quote from One Dark Throne
“Tommy Stratford and Michael . . . something or other,” she says. “Are you worried I’ll like them better than I like you?”
“That’s just not possible.”
“Why? Because you’re so irresistible?”
“No. Because you don’t like anyone.”
Arsinoe snorts.
“I do like you, Junior.”
“Oh?”
“But I have more important things to think about right now.”
― Kendare Blake, quote from One Dark Throne
“Mirabella’s eyes fill with tears, and Billy quickly wipes his mouth. He scoops strawberry tart onto his fork and holds it out.
“Here,” he says. “You must try this.” As she takes the bite, he uses his thumb to discreetly wipe the tear that falls down her cheek.
“I’m sorry,” he says softly. “I suppose I haven’t even tried to consider your point of view. It was thoughtless of me.”
“It is all right,” Mirabella says. “Does she know that you love her?”
Billy raises his eyebrows.
“Why would she when I didn’t? It wasn’t like I read in books. A thunderclap. Eyes meeting. Tortured glances. With Arsinoe it was more like . . . having cold water poured down your back and learning to enjoy it.”
“And does she love you?”
“I don’t know. I think she might.” He smiles. “I hope she does.”
“I hope so too.” Another tear slides down her cheek, and Billy darts forward to discreetly hide it.
“It is all right,” she says. “They will think I am only crying because of how terrible this strawberry tart is.”
Billy sets down his fork, insulted. Then they both begin to laugh.”
― Kendare Blake, quote from One Dark Throne
“She jogs until she reaches Billy, and falls in step beside him. He glances at her, then back at the ground.
“Is this how it is, then?” she asks after several moments. “One visit to my sister and we are no longer friends?”
He stops at the crest of a hill and squints out at the sun sparkling off the ripples in Sealhead Cove.
“I wish we weren’t. When my father sent me to Rolanth, I swore that I would hate you. That I wouldn’t be a fool like Joseph and get myself stuck in between.” He smiles at her sadly. “Why couldn’t you be wretched? Don’t you have any manners? You should’ve had the courtesy to be terrible. So I could despise you.”
“I am sorry. Shall I start now? Spit in your eye and kick you?”
“That sounds like something Arsinoe would do, actually. So I would find it endearing”
― Kendare Blake, quote from One Dark Throne
“Mirabella is still upright amid everything, and Arsinoe smiles. She does not know how anyone ever expected that she or Katharine could stand against that.”
― Kendare Blake, quote from One Dark Throne
“Jules!” Arsinoe hisses. “Jules, are you down here?”
“Arsinoe!” Jules and Camden scramble up to the bars as Arsinoe runs to them. They embrace her as well as they can with hands and paws. Camden purrs and licks her face.
“Camden, blegh.” Arsinoe grins and wipes her cheek.
“I might have licked you as well, I’m so happy to see you.” Jules gasps.”
― Kendare Blake, quote from One Dark Throne
“Willa walks past Arsinoe on the way to the kitchen.
“Goose and onion pie tonight.” Willa holds up a small yellow onion and chucks Arsinoe beneath the chin with it.
“Mmm,” Arsinoe replies uncertainly. “Was that . . . one of my favorites?”
“You do not remember?”
“I don’t.” Arsinoe follows her through the sitting room, looking at the paintings and the furniture. It would not have changed much, but nothing feels familiar. “Mirabella remembers everything. If she were here, the sentimental goof would be hugging that chair.”
“Even when she was a girl, Mirabella had far too much dignity to go about hugging chairs. Unlike you.”
― Kendare Blake, quote from One Dark Throne
Kendare Blake
Born place: Seoul
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“Hey, how 'bout those Cubs'"-the bad male impersonation was back-" 'let's play some golf, smoke some cigars. Here's my penis, there's yours-yep, they appear to be about the same size-okay, lets's do some deals.”
― Julie James, quote from Practice Makes Perfect
“Theophilus Hopkins was a moderately famous man. You can look him up in the 1860 Britannica. There are three full columns about his corals and his corallines, his anemones and starfish. It does not have anything very useful about the man. It does not tell you what he was like. You can read it three times over and never guess that he had any particular attitude to Christmas pudding.”
― Peter Carey, quote from Oscar and Lucinda
“For years I had known joy in nothing but victories, and now I felt myself a boy again. When I had wished to climb the Great Keep, it had never occurred to me that the Great Keep itself might wish to climb the sky; I knew better now. But this ship at least was climbing beyond the sky, and I wanted to climb with her.”
― Gene Wolfe, quote from The Urth of the New Sun
“And growth has no end. One part of my life was given over to the service of destruction; it belonged to hate, to enmity, to killing. But life remained in me. And that in itself is enough, of itself almost a purpose and a way. I will work in myself and be ready; I will bestir my hands and my thoughts. I will not take myself very seriously, nor push on when sometimes I should like to be still. There are many things to be built and almost everything to repair; it is enough that I work to dig out again what was buried during the years of shells and machine guns. Not every one need be a pioneer; there is employment for feebler hands, lesser powers. It is there I mean to look for my place. Then the dead will be silenced and the past not pursue me any more; it will assist me instead. How simple it is—but how long it has taken to arrive there! And I might still be wandering in the wilderness, have fallen victim to the wire snares and the detonators, had Ludwig’s death not gone up before us like a rocket, lighting to us the way. We despaired when we saw how that great stream of feeling common to us all—that will to a new life shorn of follies, a life recaptured on the confines of death—did not sweep away before it all survived half-truth and self-interest, so to make a new course for itself, but instead of that merely trickled away in the marshes of forgetfulness, was lost among the bogs of fine phrases, and dribbled away along the ditches of social activities, of cares and occupations. But to-day I know that all life is perhaps only a getting ready, a ferment in the individual, in many cells, in many channels, each for himself; and if the cells and channels of a tree but take up and carry farther the onward urging sap, there will emerge at the last rustling and sunlit branches—crowns of leaves and freedom. I will begin. It will not be that consummation of which we dreamed in our youth and that we expected after the years out there. It will be a road like other roads, with stones and good stretches, with places torn up, with villages and fields—a road of toil. And I shall be alone. Perhaps sometimes I shall find some one to go with me a stage of the journey—but for all of it, probably no one. And I may often have to hump my pack still, when my shoulders are already weary; often hesitate at the crossways and boundaries; often have to leave something behind me, often stumble and fall. But I will get up again and not just lie there; I will go on and not look back. —Perhaps I shall never be really happy again; perhaps the war has destroyed that, and no doubt I shall always be a little inattentive and nowhere quite at home—but I shall probably never be wholly unhappy either—for something will always be there to sustain me, be it merely my own hands, or a tree, or the breathing earth. The”
― Erich Maria Remarque, quote from The Road Back
“...women are elephants and watch the way you say that in front of them because they'll think you're calling them fat and there's no coming back from that moment. But they hoard. They say they don't, but they do. We think that if something's not spoken about again, it goes away. It doesn't. Nothing goes away just like that...”
― Melina Marchetta, quote from The Piper's Son
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The Cinderella Socie...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.
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