“Sometimes justice was all about the small victories.”
― Susan Dennard, quote from Truthwitch
“It wasn’t freedom she wanted. It was belief in something—a prize big enough to run for and to fight for and to keep on reaching toward no matter what.”
― Susan Dennard, quote from Truthwitch
“I hate this. Both the storm and the plan. Why does it have to be ‘we’? Why not just me?"
“Because ‘just me’ isn’t who we are,” Iseult hollered back. “I’ll always follow you, Safi, and you’ll always follow me. Threadsisters to the end.”
― Susan Dennard, quote from Truthwitch
“They aren’t for disguise at all. You just didn’t want to leave behind your favorite book.”
― Susan Dennard, quote from Truthwitch
“If you wanted to, Safiya, you could bend and shape the world.”
― Susan Dennard, quote from Truthwitch
“Where’s your hair?” she shouted. “And what happened to your arm?”
“Cut my hair and got shot with an arrow!”
“Gods below, Iseult! A few hours away and your whole life tumbles through the hell-gates!”
“I might say the same to you,” Iseult shouted back—though it was getting hard to scream and ride. “Four opponents on your tail and a ruined dress!”
― Susan Dennard, quote from Truthwitch
“those who win wars are those who write history.”
― Susan Dennard, quote from Truthwitch
“I guard the light-bringer,
And protect the dark-giver.
I live for the world-starte,
And die for the shadow-ender.
My blood, I offer freely.
My Threads, I offer wholly.
My eternal soul belongs to no one else.
Claim my Aether.
Guide my blade.
From now until the end.”
― Susan Dennard, quote from Truthwitch
“If you were that sort of girl, then…” Merik lifted a hand to her jaw—tentative at first, then more confident when she didn’t pull away. “Then I would start here and move down your throat.” His fingers whispered over her neck, to her collarbone—and Merik was pleased by how punctuated her breaths grew. How much her lips trembled.”
― Susan Dennard, quote from Truthwitch
“Allow me to serve you, Safiya. We have spent too many years apart.” “And I have spent too many hours between meals.” A glare. “Give it to me now, Polly, or I shall castrate you with a fork.”
― Susan Dennard, quote from Truthwitch
“Who the rut is that Nubrevnan Windwitch? And: He should really learn how to button a shirt.”
― Susan Dennard, quote from Truthwitch
“Yes," Safi breathed, swaying into one of the men holding her up. She flashed a grin at him and said, "I'm Safiya fon Hasstrel, and I can do anything.”
― Susan Dennard, quote from Truthwitch
“It was the circle of perfect motion. Of the light-bringer and dark-giver, the world-starter and shadow-ender. Of initiation and completion. It was the symbol of the Cahr Awen. Cahr Awen.”
― Susan Dennard, quote from Truthwitch
“How is that for service? Do you know how many men onboard would kill for the use of a spoon?"
"And do you know," she retorted, "how many men I can kill with a spoon?”
― Susan Dennard, quote from Truthwitch
“Their other hands flipped up, palm to palm, and Merik’s only consolation as he and the domna slid into the next movement of the dance was that her chest heaved as much as his did. Merik’s right hand gripped the girl’s, and with no small amount of ferocity, he twisted her around to face the same direction as he before wrenching her to his chest. His hand slipped over her stomach, fingers splayed. Her left hand snapped up—and he caught it. Then the real difficulty of the dance began. The skipping of feet in a tide of alternating hops and directions. The writhing of hips countered the movement of their feet like a ship upon stormy seas. The trickling tap of Merik’s fingers down the girl’s arms, her ribs, her waist—like the rain against a ship’s sail. On and on, they moved to the music until they were both sweating. Until they hit the third movement. Merik flipped the girl around to face him once more. Her chest slammed against his—and by the Wells, she was tall. He hadn’t realized just how tall until this precise moment when her eyes stared evenly into his and her panting breaths fought against his own. Then the music swelled once more, her legs twined into his, and he forgot all about who she was or what she was or why he had begun the dance in the first place. Because those eyes of hers were the color of the sky after a storm. Without realizing what he did, his Windwitchery flickered to life. Something in this moment awoke the wilder parts of his power. Each heave of his lungs sent a breeze swirling in. It lifted the girl’s hair. Kicked at her wild skirts. She showed no reaction at all. In fact, she didn’t break her gaze from Merik, and there was a fierceness there—a challenge that sent Merik further beneath the waves of the dance. Of the music. Of those eyes. Each leap backward of her body—a movement like the tidal tug of the sea against the river—led to a violent slam as Merik snatched her back against him. For each leap and slam, the girl added in an extra flourishing beat with her heels. Another challenge that Merik had never seen, yet rose to, rose above. Wind crashed around them like a growing hurricane, and he and this girl were at its eye. And the girl never looked away. Never backed down. Not even when the final measures of the song began—that abrupt shift from the sliding cyclone of strings to the simple plucking bass that follows every storm—did Merik soften how hard he pushed himself against this girl. Figuratively. Literally. Their bodies were flush, their hearts hammering against each other’s rib cages. He walked his fingers down her back, over her shoulders, and out to her hands. The last drops of a harsh rain. The music slowed. She pulled away first, slinking back the required four steps. Merik didn’t look away from her face, and he only distantly noticed that, as she pulled away, his Windwitchery seemed to settle. Her skirts stopped swishing, her hair fluttered back to her shoulders. Then he slid backward four steps and folded his arms over his chest. The music came to a close. And Merik returned to his brain with a sickening certainty that Noden and His Hagfishes laughed at him from the bottom of the sea.”
― Susan Dennard, quote from Truthwitch
“He was good. The best fighter she’d ever faced. But Safi and Iseult were better.”
― Susan Dennard, quote from Truthwitch
“You’re chained up.” A wince pulled at Safi’s eyes. “I upset the Admiral.” “Of course you did.” “It’s not funny.”
― Susan Dennard, quote from Truthwitch
“I’ll strip with you,” Safi offered, grabbing for her shirttails. “If anyone shows up”—the shirt slid over her face, muffled her words—“I’ll dance around and distract them.”
― Susan Dennard, quote from Truthwitch
“Oh, the Bloodwitch named Aeduan was no longer bored. No longer bored at all. And now he had work to do.”
― Susan Dennard, quote from Truthwitch
“he was pleased to find he’d left a trail of muddy boot-prints throughout the house. Sometimes justice was all about the small victories.”
― Susan Dennard, quote from Truthwitch
“Merik turned away, pretending not to hear. Not to care. But the truth was, he did hear and he did care.”
― Susan Dennard, quote from Truthwitch
“I'll be fine, Safi. You forget that I taught you the art of evisceration.'
Safi scoffed, but her Threads flared with with amused pink. 'Is that so, dear Threadsister? Have you already forgotten that it was me they called The Great Eviscerator back in Veñaza City?' Safi flung a dramatic hand high as she twirled toward Ryber.
Now Iseult didn't have to fake a grin. 'Is that what you thought they said?' she called. 'It was actually The Great Vociferator, Safi, because that mouth of yours is so big.”
― Susan Dennard, quote from Truthwitch
“The shanty soon ended, but Ryber kept pounding the drum and hollered, “‘The Maidens North of Lovats!’”—which Merik knew was her favorite song, since she was a maiden from north of Lovats.”
― Susan Dennard, quote from Truthwitch
“Safi was sick of dancing. Literally, she felt ill from all the spinning, and her breath—she’d not had a single moment to catch it since … Merik. Prince Merik. The man who couldn’t dress himself properly had turned out to be royalty.”
― Susan Dennard, quote from Truthwitch
“Of course, the three men in the tavern who’d decided to attack Iseult had never made it back home at all. At least not with intact femurs.”
― Susan Dennard, quote from Truthwitch
“But he could smirk at her—and wave too. A flicker of his right fingers and then a tapping of his right palm.”
― Susan Dennard, quote from Truthwitch
“that you have learned how to work a button.”
― Susan Dennard, quote from Truthwitch
“I can feel their Threads waiting.”
― Susan Dennard, quote from Truthwitch
“Each Well was linked to one of the five elements: Aether, Earth, Water, Wind, or Fire.”
― Susan Dennard, quote from Truthwitch
“I think that you are an uptight, pony-owning, trickle-down-economics-loving, Scotch-on-the-rocks-drinking, my-wife-better-take-my-last-name sexist jerk!”
― Julie James, quote from Practice Makes Perfect
“She could marry this man, she knew, and still be captain of her soul.”
― Peter Carey, quote from Oscar and Lucinda
“The instruments you have are the right instruments for you, because you’ve been shaped by them. That’s another law.”
― Gene Wolfe, quote from The Urth of the New Sun
“I have been in many dugouts, Ludwig,” he goes on. “And we were all young men who sat there around one miserable slush lamp, waiting, while the barrage raged overhead like an earthquake. We were none of your inexperienced recruits, either; we knew well enough what we were waiting for and we knew what would come. —But there was more in those faces down in the gloom there than mere calm, more than good humour, more than just readiness to die. There was the will to another future in those hard, set faces; and it was there when they charged, and still there when they died. —We had less to say for ourselves year by year, we shed many things, but that one thing still remained. And now, Ludwig, where is it now? Can’t you see how it is perishing in all this pig’s wash of order, duty, women, routine, punctuality and the rest of it that here they call life? —No, Ludwig, we lived then! And you tell me a thousand times that you hate war, yet I still say, we lived then. We lived, because we were together, and because something burned in us that was more than this whole muck heap here!” He is breathing hard. “It must have been for something, Ludwig! When I first heard there was revolution, for one brief moment I thought: Now the time will be redeemed—now the flood will pour back, tearing down the old things, digging new banks for itself—and, by God, I would have been in it! But the flood broke up into a thousand runnels; the revolution became a mere scramble for jobs, for big jobs and little jobs. It has trickled away, it has been dammed up, it has been drained off into business, into family, and party. —But that will not do me. I’m going where comradeship is still to be found.” Ludwig stands up. His brow is flaming, his eyes blaze. He looks Rahe in the face. “And why is it, Georg? Why is it? Because we were duped, I tell you, duped as even yet we hardly realize; because we were misused, hideously misused. They told us it was for the Fatherland, and meant the schemes of annexation of a greedy industry. —They told us it was for Honour, and meant the quarrels and the will to power of a handful of ambitious diplomats and princes. —They told us it was for the Nation, and meant the need for activity on the part of out-of-work generals!” He takes Rahe by the shoulders and shakes him. “Can’t you see? They stuffed out the word Patriotism with all the twaddle of their fine phrases, with their desire for glory, their will to power, their false romanticism, their stupidity, their greed of business, and then paraded it before us as a shining ideal! And we thought they were sounding a bugle summoning us to a new, a more strenuous, a larger life. Can’t you see, man? But we were making war against ourselves without knowing it! Every shot that struck home, struck one of us! Can’t you see? Then listen and I will bawl it into your ears. The youth of the world rose up in every land, believing that it was fighting for freedom! And in every land they were duped and misused; in every land they have been shot down, they have exterminated each other! Don’t you see now? —There is only one fight, the fight against the lie, the half-truth, compromise, against the old order. But we let ourselves be taken in by their phrases; and instead of fighting against them, we fought for them. We thought it was for the Future. It was against the Future. Our future is dead; for the youth is dead that carried it. We are merely the survivors, the ruins. But the other is alive still—the fat, the full, the well content, that lives on, fatter and fuller, more contented than ever! And why? Because the dissatisfied, the eager, the storm troops have died for it. But think of it! A generation annihilated! A generation of hope, of faith, of will, strength, ability, so hypnotised that they have shot down one another, though over the whole world they all had the same purpose!” His”
― 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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