To treat a person like a carpet, it is necessary that one do the walking, and one allow himself to be walked on.–Shin’a’in saying
If I’m walking on thin ice, I might as well dance my way across.
Fanatics can justify practically any atrocity to themselves. The more untenable their position becomes, the harder they hold to it, and the worse the things they are willing to do to support it.
Some must be warriors, that others may live in peace.
If they projected the fact that they are dangerous any harder, there would be little puddles of “danger” on the floor around them. Look, it’s “danger”, don’t step in it!
There’s a saying in Hardorn,” she continued. “‘You shouldn’t attempt to teach a goat to sing. It will waste your time, hurt your ears, and annoy the goat.’ I can say without fear of contradiction that the goat is getting annoyed.
You marry who you think your beloved is, and then discover who they really are over the years. It’s that discovery that makes a marriage work.
In a calm, clear voice, she suggested that the wyrsa in question could do several highly improbable, athletically difficult and possibly biologically impractical things involving its own mother, a few household implements, and a dead fish.
Sometimes, it seemed, the business of a Witch or a Godmother was not so much using magic as knowing when not to use it.
Truth and trust are the means by which civilization holds off barbarism.
Keth, power brings with it the need to make moral judgments; history proves that. You have no choice but to make those decisions.
I have no place in my life for someone who is sure he can do everything.
Teach what you know, regardless of when you have learned it — teach what you learned yesterday sagely, as if you have known it all your life, and teach what you have known for decades with enthusiasm, as if you learned it only yesterday.
Why, you mean you didn’t get abducted and dragged across country purely to make us a story for us to chew over endlessly?” asked Pip, tossing his shock of tow-colored hair indignantly. “The nerve!
Kethry had once described summoning as being “like balancing on a rooftree while screaming an epic poem in a foreign language at the top of your lungs.
…for a country whose people ceased to believe in magic soon lost much of their ability to imagine and dream, and before long, they ceased to believe–or hope– for anything.
If only. Those must be the two saddest words in the world.
When you want something done, you ask a man. When you want it done quietly and without any fuss, you ask a woman.
Certainly no one has ever died of an unrequited passion—it’s usually the ones that are requited that get people in trouble.
Adventure, yeah. I guess that’s what you call it when everybody comes back alive.
[Harrier] locked eyes with Zanattar. He couldn’t remember another time in his life when he’d been this angry and hadn’t hit something.
She would never truly be her own woman if she allowed fear and old memories to dictate where she would or would not go.
Inexperience can be overcome, ignorance can be enlightened, but prejudice will destroy you.
We’re none of us quite so sure of our place in the world that we can’t be rocked off our feet by bad times. It’s the getting back up again that counts. Not that you fall, but getting back up again counts for more in the long run.
Not forgiving someone is like not pulling a thorn out of your foot just because you weren’t the one to put it there.
Once the blinders are off, it’s rather hard to go back to seeing things the way you used to.
Nevertheless, now that I have met you, I know that all that I am, and all that I have, could not match what you are worth.
We believe that all those who are served should also spend time serving.
Words and love together can more often achieve what magic cannot.
Van, Van, we’re only simple, fallible mortals – we aren’t saints, we aren’t angels – we fall on our faces and make errors and sometimes people die of them – sometimes people we love dearly –
I’m tired of being alone, and fighting my battles alone.
So her safe little world would never be safe again… She knew that the nurturing hand also held the knife, and that was very unsettling.
…Though drowned was just as dead as any other way of dying.
Weapons master is giving me special lessons.” she (Amily) chuckled. ” He calls then How Not To Get Killed lessons.
It’s easy for parents to pull the strings that make one dance…after all, they are the ones who tied those strings in the first place
I’m tired of having to struggle for what seems to come easily to everyone else.
How could we have been afraid of her? She was only dead. It’s the living we fear.
Well, we could have just given him a horse and sent him on his way, but… Ancaladar ate the horse.
Among the dragons, the prohibition against asking direct questions did not exist, and-as Harrier discovered immediately-dragons were even more outrageous gossips than sailors.
Then he heard a wild, high-pitched cackling that made the hair stand up on the back of his neck. It wasn’t sane, that laugh. In fact, it was the laughter of someone who never had more than a nodding acquaintance with sanity.
If it is stupid but it works, it isn’t stupid. (a Shin’a’in saying)
I’m not a legend or a hero, I don’t slay dragons, I don’t do any of the things that a real hero can. But I can make things better, one day at a time, for most of the kingdom.
Jett Gallatin expected trouble in Alsop, Texas—but not zombies.
It’s only gossip if you repeat it. Until then, it’s gathering information.