Jacqueline Carey

“If you will not die for us, you cannot ask us to die for you.”

“Stand at the crossroads if you will, but if you'll not choose, I'll move on without you”

“It is my observations, though, that happiness limits the amount of suffering one is willing to inflict upon others”

“It's funny, how one can look back on a sorrow one thought one might well die of at the time, and know that one had not yet reckoned the tenth part of true grief.”

“I lie awake in my bed, clinging to the brightness I have known, fighting back the tide of darkness, the memories of blood and branding and horror, and the legacy of cruelty that runs in my own veins, shaping my own secret vow and wielding it like a brand against the darkness, whispering it to myself, over and over. I will try to be good.”

“Jehanne said that it would always be like this. That I would always be young and beautiful in her memory, and she in mine. That I would never grow resentful, never be tempted to betray her. That she would never grow restless and fickle, and see to replace me. So you see, not exactly the sentiments of a great and terrible love affair.”

“It's the same questions we ask of our existence, and the answer is always the same. The mystery lies not in the question nor the answer, but in the asking and answering themselves, over and over again, and the end is engendered in the beginning.”

“One must gauge one's trust carefully.”

“Spontaneity is the province of youth”

“Those that yield are not always weak”

“We pay for sins we do not remember, and seek to do a will we can scarce fathom. That is what it is, to be a god's chosen.”

“I wish sometimes that the gods would either choose better, or make their wishes clearer”

“Sidonie, I know you don't remember it, but you once promised to trust me beyond all reason. And I swear to you that all that I am, all that I possess, including this gem-stone, is yours. I need you. I can't do this alone. Forget your memories. Look into your heart. And if you can find somewhere there, some lingering spark of trust that owes naught to reason, I beg you to speak the word written here.”

“I preferred a hard truth to a well-meant lie.”

“It is a dangerous thing to bring a dream to life....I have watched my deepest, dearest hopes take shape, and I am not entirely sure I like the shape they have taken.”

“There are those who do not hold that there is any innate goodness to mankind. To them I say, had you lived my life, you would not believe it. I have known the depths to which mortals are capable of descending, and I have seen the heights. I have seen how kindness and compassion may grow in the unlikeliest of places, as the mountain flower forces its way through the stern rock.”

“And having once chosen, never to seek to return to the crossroads of that decision-for even if one chooses wrongly, the choice cannot be unmade.”

“There is no fulfillment that is not made sweeter for the prolonging of desire”

“A little truth seasons a lie like salt.”

“For this too I learned, that a storyteller's tale may end, but history goes on always. These events, so distant in legend, play a part in shaping the very events we witness about us, each and every day.”