Guy Gavriel Kay Quotes

“He opened his arms and she moved into the space they made in the world, and laying her head against his chest she permitted herself the almost unimaginable luxury of grief.”

“Even the birds above the lake
Are singing of my love,
And even the flowers along the shore
Are growing for her sake.

All the vines are ripening
And the trees come into bud,
For my love's footsteps passing by
Are summoning the spring.

Rian's stars in the night
Shine more brightly over her,
The god's moon and the goddess's
Guard her with their light.

Even the birds above the lake
Are singing of my love,
And even the flowers along the shore
Are growing for her sake”

“most hated by the dark, for their name is light.”

“I suppose being right will have to compensate me for being poor—the story of my life, I fear.”

“Words were power, words tried to change you, to shape bridges of longing that no one could ever really cross.”

“Devin had never trusted the priests of Eanna in his whole life. They were too shrewd, by far the most subtle of the clergy, by far the most apt to steer events to their own ends, which might lie out of sight, generations away. Servants of a goddess, he supposed, might find it easier to take the longer view of things. But everyone knew that all across the peninsula the clergy of the Triad had their own triple understanding with the Tyrants from abroad: their collective silence, their tacit complicity, bought in exchange for being allowed to preserve the rites that mattered more to them, it seemed, than freedom in the Palm.”

“He didn’t think he would understand the strangeness of life if he lived to be a hundred years old.”

“In this world, where we find ourselves, we need compassion more than anything, I think, or we are all alone.”

“How we remember changes how we have lived.
Time runs both ways. We make stories of our lives.”

“There are kinds of action, for good or ill, that lie so far outside the boundaries of normal behavior that they force us, in acknowledging that they have occurred, to restructure our own understanding of reality. We have to make room for them.”

“The deeds of men, as footprints in the desert.
Nothing under the circling moons is fated to last.
Even the sun goes down.”

“Ice is for death and endings.”

“We must be what we are, or we become our enemies.”

“The world could bring you poison in a jewelled cup, or surprising gifts. Sometimes you didn't know which of them it was.”

“The heart has its own laws… and the truth is… the truth is that you are the law of mine.”

“By things so achingly small are lives measured and marred.”

“We salvage what we can, what truly matters to us, even at the gates of despair.”

“Only then, invisible to everyone and with her curtains drawn, did she allow her tears to fall: in love, and for his hurts, and in terrible pride.”

“Music trains the mind, like mathematics, or logic, to precision of mind.”

“It was true, it was all true. But none of it was the truth.”

“Home was a dream she’d had yesterday. A place where children used to play. Among towers near the mountains, by a river, on curving sweeps of white or golden sand beside a palace at the edge of the sea.”

“When power is gone the memory of power lingers.”

“A reminder of what it was to be mortal and so doomed to tread one road only and that one only once…We can never truly know the path we have not walked.”

““The Tyrants have cleaned out most of the highway brigands. Just a matter of protecting their own interests. They want to make sure no one else robs us before they do with their border tariffs and taxes.” He spat, discreetly, into the dust of the road. “Personally I preferred the brigands. There were ways of dealing with them.””

“The Tyrants have cleaned out most of the highway brigands. Just a matter of protecting their own interests. They want to make sure no one else robs us before they do with their border tariffs and taxes.”