Mette Ivie Harrison · 410 pages
Rating: (11.2K votes)
“You will find yourself, as he did. But that will not mean it is easy. There are few things easy in life that are worth the doing.”
“George stared at the dove. What would she say if she could speak to him? What would she wish for, for her father? For she, too, had been harmed by a man who had meant to show his utmost love for her.
It made George wonder why love was suppose to be such a wonderful thing. As far as he could tell, love was just another excuse for causing pain.”
“A nod at Beatrice who held absolutely still. "She said she would come with me. She insisted on it. She stamped her little foot at me."
He pointed down to her toes as if she were a child yet.
Then he straightened his shoulders. "But I sent her back to the nursery, where she belonged, and told her to play with her dolls instead. As everyone knows, a female on a hunt is a distraction at best and bad luck at worse."
Which explained why Beatrice went into the woods with her hound alone, George thought. She looked now as though she had gone to some other place where she could not hear her father's words and thus could not be hurt by them. George wondered how often she was forced to go to that place.
Did King Helm not see how much she was like him? It seemed she was rejected for any sign of femininity yet also rejected for not showing enough femininity, How could she win?”
“Ugly and ungainly. The least dependable creature you ever met. Just when you think you understand her, she changes. If only I had a son," he said bitterly.
Over and over he disparaged her, and George would have thought that Beatrice would be so used to it, she could not be hurt further. But he saw her neck grow stiffer and stiffer.”
“George put his hand on top of Beatrice's and felt the warmth of both the woman and her hound pulsing through his fingers. "Just because your father does not see your victory does not mean that it is none," he said softly.”
“George was full of hatred. Of his own weakness and stupidity, of his magic, of the stubbornness and the pride of Beatrice and Marit, and, last of all, hatred of Dr. Gharn, who had started it all.
But the hatred swayed to pity. Then to hopelessness. Then back to anger.
Every once in a great while, he felt a moment of peace, usually when he caught a glimpse of Beatrice and Marit together.
He loved them both in different ways. But that could not be.
He turned away, and the cycle began again.”
“Your name?" George asked him directly. He had probably seen the man a dozen times before yet did not know anything about him. King Davit would have no doubt have known half the man's history already.
"Henry."
George took Henry's hand firmly in his own and looked into his eyes. This had to be done delicately, to make sure this Henry did not think him a fool. He tried to think of how his father would do it.
"Thank you, Henry, for your concern. It is a comfort to know I am so well guarded. I will make sure to praise you when next I speak to the lord general. But for now I think there is no need to worry.”
“All living things have an obligation to live as best they can, no matter what pain comes to them.”
“George's hand lifted and fell away again. It seemed an insult to imply that anything so small as a touch could stop the raw feeling in Sir Stephen's suddenly dark and haunted eyes.”
“He is taming chipmunks.” – Cara”
“You will not fight in the shield wall,” my father said.
“No, Father.”
“Only men can stand in the shield wall,” he said, “but you will watch, you will learn, and you will discover that the most dangerous stroke is not the sword or ax that you can see, but the one you cannot see, the blade that comes beneath the shields to bite your ankles.”
“The vast distances that separate the stars are providential. Beings and worlds are quarantined from one another. The quarantine is lifted only for those with sufficient self-knowledge and judgment to have safely traveled from star to star.”
“I learned this, at least, by my experiment; that if one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours. He will put some things behind, will pass an invisible boundary; new, universal, and more liberal laws will begin to establish themselves around and within him; or the old laws be expanded, and interpreted in his favor in a more liberal sense, and he will live with the license of a higher order of beings. In proportion as he simplifies his life, the laws of the universe will appear less complex, and solitude will not be solitude, nor poverty poverty, nor weakness weakness. If you have built castles in the air, your work need not be lost; that is where they should be. Now put the foundations under them.”
“Was it really so far-fetched to think that words had a way of shaping a person's whole life?”
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