Quotes from War for the Oaks

Emma Bull ·  336 pages

Rating: (8.9K votes)


“Sometimes, she reflected, she dressed for courage, sometimes for success, and sometimes for the consolation of knowing that whatever else went wrong, at least she liked her clothes.”
― Emma Bull, quote from War for the Oaks


“I’ve no surety that it is. I know only parts of what I feel; I may be misnaming the whole. You dwell in my mind like a household spirit. All that I think is followed with, ‘I shall tell that thought to Eddi.’ Whatever I see or hear is colored by what I imagine you will say of it. What is amusing is twice so, if you have laughed at it. There is a way you have of turning your head, quickly with a little tilt, that seems more wonderful to me than the practiced movements of dancers. All this, taken together, I’ve come to think of as love, but it may not be.

It is not a comfortable feeling. But I find that, even so, I would wish the same feeling on you. The possibility that I suffer it alone–that frightens me more than all the host of the Unseelie Court.”
― Emma Bull, quote from War for the Oaks


“We're all immortal until we die.”
― Emma Bull, quote from War for the Oaks


“It was like him, too, to love her and admit to it before he knew if she loved him. Maybe only mortals expected to barter their hearts.”
― Emma Bull, quote from War for the Oaks


“She has her own glamour, Willy lad. All poets do, all the bards and artists, all the musicians who truly take the music into their own hearts. They all straddle the border of Faerie, and they see into both worlds. Not dependably into either, perhaps, but that uncertainty keeps them honest and at a distance.”
― Emma Bull, quote from War for the Oaks



“How old are you?'

The question startled him. 'Earth and Air. There are times you are no more comfortable a companion than I am. The answer to that serves no conceivable purpose, and I refuse to give it to you.'

When I was a kid I read Black Beauty. There were horse-drawn cabs in that. Are you that old?'

Older, older, older. I shall not tell you, so you may as well leave off, my primrose.'

She snorted. 'I think that means I should give up. You've started sweet-talking.'

I am torn,' the phouka said, grinning, 'between responding, 'Oh, absolutely!' and 'What do you mean, started?'' He grabbed her hand, dropped a kiss on the knuckles, and loped across the street. Eddi felt the touch of his mouth on her hand for an inexplicably long time.”
― Emma Bull, quote from War for the Oaks


“To those who see the magical surface of things, you are invisible.'

Good grief. Will you still be able to see me?'

He met her eyes in a way that made her shiver pleasantly. 'I see you in a great many ways. It would be hard to blind me in all of them.”
― Emma Bull, quote from War for the Oaks


“Could I make you believe something that wasn't true?'

He studied her through his eyelashes. 'You could make me believe anything at all.”
― Emma Bull, quote from War for the Oaks


“Sex without love is like a goddamn business transaction. And sometimes both parties feel as if they got a good deal, but that doesn't make it any less so.”
― Emma Bull, quote from War for the Oaks


“Every motion she made was slow, as if she’d never before put her arms around a man, and didn’t know for certain where everything fit. When at last they were pressed close, she didn’t think she’d know how to let go when the time came. They summarized the course of passion with kisses: a chaste, half-frightened brush of the lips metamorphosed into something fierce and fast-burning, which in its turn became a more patient, more intimate touch, full of inquiry and shared pleasure.”
― Emma Bull, quote from War for the Oaks



“I’ve told you that I’m a tricksy wight, and I am, my sweet. But there are those in the Seelie Court who would make me seem a very perfect knight.”
― Emma Bull, quote from War for the Oaks


“Fairy tales. That was all she could remember about fairies, and as she tried desperately to recall the ones she'd heard or read, she realized she knew of few with fairies in them. And the two before her were nothing like Rumpelstiltskin or Cinderella's fairy godmother. Elegant Oberon and Titiana, silly Puck--Shakespeare was no help, either. These two, with their changing shapes and their offhand cruelties, had their roots in horror movies.”
― Emma Bull, quote from War for the Oaks


“If the obligations of friendship are constraints, then I am so constrained.”
― Emma Bull, quote from War for the Oaks


“You've run a lot of risks, and gone to a lot of work, and all to turn me into a bullet for your gun. But I'm a bullet that thinks for itself, and I want to know what I'm being shot at.”
― Emma Bull, quote from War for the Oaks


“You're good, did you know that?'

Oh, yes.”
― Emma Bull, quote from War for the Oaks



“We cannot resist the lure of that mortal brilliance. It is its own kind of glamour, that dazzles the senses. And once we have found it, we cannot turn away.”
― Emma Bull, quote from War for the Oaks


“I love you like my own sister. Which is why I won't hesitate to tell you that I don't believe it.”
― Emma Bull, quote from War for the Oaks


“She felt … new, just-made. She felt as if everything she had ever done out of weakness or fear had been undone, and all of her past washed clean.”
― Emma Bull, quote from War for the Oaks


“Those the brownies will not help, must learn to help themselves”
― Emma Bull, quote from War for the Oaks


About the author

Emma Bull
Born place: in The United States
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Popular quotes

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“Tell me something good about your life," I whispered, needing to hear that he wasn't as broken as I thought him to be.
Peter breathed into the handset for about two minutes. I began wondering if he was about to hang up, or had fallen asleep, when he answered. "You."
It was so quiet I almost didn't hear it. And then he hung up before I could ask him to repeat himself.
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