Orson Scott Card · 464 pages
Rating: (22.3K votes)
“Eko brushed a tear from her eye, and Immo jeered at her, but father held up a hand. "Never mock a tender heart," he said.”
“We've decided that your birthday present will be a car", said Marion.
Danny was touched. "But the thing I can't figure out is, why would I need a new car?"
"You can't very well gate a girl to the movies, Danny," Leslie replied.
"I think you're overlooking the biggest point here," said Danny. "I don't need a CAR so I can date. I need a GIRL.”
“What could go wrong... Doing some stupid impulsive thing that caused the death of drowthers was practically a family tradition.”
“He knew he could always be smart later, if that turned out to be a better strategy. But once you admitted to being smart, there was no going back.”
“The other four houses yielded jewelry, wallets, credit cards, laptops, iPads and Kindles, even a couple of expensive looking vases....
"You didn't do anything stupid like writing IOUs and signing your name, did you?"
"That's an excellent idea," said Danny. He stepped back through the gate, waited for a count of five, and then returned to Eric. Now Eric was standing, and when he saw Danny he visibly sagged with relief. "What kind of moron are you?"
"The fun-loving kind," said Danny. "I'm not an idiot, of course I didn't sign my name to IOUs."
"Good."
"I signed yours.”
“I was born with more power inside myself than I ever dreamed. But along with it there came no more sense than any other idiotic kid. Somewhere along in here I need to grow up into a man I can stand to live with. A man who doesn't just survive, but deserves to.”
“we have some good ideas here. But the only way to know if they’re workable is to try to make them fail. If we fail to fail, then maybe we’re on the right track.”
“He was always just mad enough to take treaties seriously. Honor, you know. I don't have any.”
“Computers were a kind of magery in themselves, or might as well be - to people who didn't understand them, they were every bit as inscrutable.”
“Love and serve the sources of your strength.”
“And you're the one who thought it was too risky to go through a gate."
"That's why we're such a great team," said Eric, "We're both completely stupid about different things.”
“Danny North grew up surrounded by fairies, ghosts, talking animals, living stones, walking trees, and gods who called up wind and brought down rain, made fire from air and drew iron out of the depths of the earth as easily as ordinary people might draw up water from a well.”
“Or maybe laughter was how they pushed painful memories out of their minds. Perhaps laughter was the only way they could keep from killing each other.”
“He understood all the words, he just had no clue what was going on. The Aunts said what they meant. Or at least they meant what they said.”
“Darlin', said Leslie, 'everybody on earth stays alive day to day solely because everyone they meet decides, every single day, not to kill them...”
“Good, that's settled then,' said Danny. 'Since I'm the idiot who set this all in motion by playing around with the rope-climb in a high school gym, I apologize right now for everything that goes wrong with this. With any luck, I'm the only one who gets zapped in the outself, and everything else goes on like normal for the rest of you. But if terrible things happen, please remember that I meant well, and that I did my best. That is what I promise you”
“He sat upon the hill, a Gatefather who was now but a shadow of himself, and wept. For all his crimes he wept, for all who had died before he could save them, for the mages he had stripped of power even more utterly than he had been stripped today. I held their outselves in my hearthoard for a thousand years, some of them, or more I made myself the thief of hearts, and now I am repaid.”
“Just when he knew he would walk into the sun without hesitation, he had been sent an angel. A slow smile softened his mouth. His angel refused to do anything he told her. She responded far better when he thought to ask.”
“In the painting I saw, in the books I read, I recalled her, for she her had in many ways been the making of me.”
“So we can be friends, right?”
Wait, what?
I stare at her, a frown forming at my mouth.
Did I..? Did I just get Friend-zoned?”
“I thought about how it was impossible to forget, no matter how hard anyone might try.”
“As they walked, the subtle lamplight of a dirigible washed over them. Finley glanced up, watching the light grow closer, slowly descending from the sky in a whirl of propellers as the ship made its way into the London air dock just a few miles away. How amazing it must be to float so high, to travel so quickly.
Dandy followed her gaze, but they didn’t stop walking. “I was up in one of them flyers once,” he told her. “I climbed over the rail and hung on to one of the ropes. Freeing it was. I almost let go.”
She whipped her head around to gape at him. “The fall would kill you.”
He smiled ever so slightly. “Not afore I flew. Worse ways to go.”
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