Stuart Hill · 519 pages
Rating: (2.1K votes)
“Why else is politics the perfect refuge for every liar, cheat, and self-serving toad that was ever born? All you need is a good set of teeth and the ability to smile convincingly with them.
--Cressida”
― Stuart Hill, quote from The Last Battle of the Icemark
“But you are human, and just like the rest of us you have the potential to be both a devil and an angel. There's no such thing as an evil race, just a human race.
--Cressida”
― Stuart Hill, quote from The Last Battle of the Icemark
“I'd never describe even myself as safe when I go into the Magical Realms; no one's safe in there, not even if they're armed and armored with every protective charm on the planet. The place has this habit of changing the rules and pulling the rug from under your feet...."
"Is it carpeted, then?" asked Tharaman.
"What?"
"The Magical Realms, are they carpeted? It's just that you mentioned pulling a rug from somewhere and I just wondered if perhaps..."
"I think it's a figure of speech, my dear," said Krisafitsa. "I do believe it means to be taken by surprise when you least expect it."
"Oh, I see....Odd expression...”
― Stuart Hill, quote from The Last Battle of the Icemark
“Could you please explain to me exactly what the staff is that you carry?"
Cronus proudly held the symbol of his power and authority aloft. "It is the scepter that denotes my control of the Physical Realms. All who defy me should look on it and tremble."
"Oh, I see! Do you know, I thought it was a giant toothpick, or perhaps something you shoved into other parts of you anatomy. I never realized it represented your supposed right to rule," said Her Vampiric Majesty lightly.”
― Stuart Hill, quote from The Last Battle of the Icemark
“Aren't there going to be any refreshments?" Tharamn interrupted. "I always think better with a little snack to keep me going."
"I'm with you there," said Grishmak. "Bring on the nibbles!"
"There aren't any!" Cressida snapped. "This is all far too important, and besides, once you lot start easting, it'll only turn into a party."
"Can't say I have a problem with that myself," said Tharaman. "What about you, Grishy?"
"None at all. Bit of food and fun helps the boring bits along, in my opinion. Let's call a chamberlain and order some grub."
"No!" Cressida insisted. "We all need to concentrate, and I for one find it difficult to think one you and Tharaman start cracking bones and spitting out gristle."
"I never spit out gristle!" said Tharaman in miffed tones. "A terrible wast of protein. It just needs a little extra chewing, that's all."
Thirrin had watched the exchange in silence, but now she sat forward in her chair. "Actually I wouldn't mind a sandwich myself."
Cressida looked at her thunderously.”
― Stuart Hill, quote from The Last Battle of the Icemark
“Better to suffer the loneliness of the cold throne room than endure the isolation to be found within the crowds of facile courtiers.”
― Stuart Hill, quote from The Last Battle of the Icemark
“He’s not so short,” said Ekaterin defensively. “He’s just . . . concentrated.” Her”
― Lois McMaster Bujold, quote from Komarr
“Our lives, our stories, flowed into one another's, were no longer our own, individual, discrete.”
― Salman Rushdie, quote from Shalimar the Clown
“Without the infinite personal God, all a person can do, as Nietzsche points out, is to make systems. In today's speech we would call them gameplans. A person can erect some sort of structure, some type of limited frame in which he lives, shutting himself up in that frame and not looking beyond it.”
― Francis A. Schaeffer, quote from How Should We Then Live? The Rise and Decline of Western Thought and Culture
“Genevieve hunched her shoulders against the storm of sound and fury and struggled to imagine a worse sort of hell. Widdershins, of course, seemed perfectly happy, but Widdershins was weird.”
― quote from Thief's Covenant
“Though frankly… Tarnapol, as he is called, is beginning to seem as imaginary as my Zuckermans anyway, or at least as detached from the memoir-ist – his revelations coming to seem like still another “useful fiction,” and not because I am telling lies. I am trying to keep to the facts. Maybe all I’m saying is that words, being words, only approximate the real thing, and so no matter how close I come, I only come close.”
― Philip Roth, quote from My Life as a Man
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