Quotes from book

The Sweet Far Thing

“People have a habit of inventing fictions they will believe wholeheartedly in order to ignore the truth they cannot accept.”

“Oh, I've a love, a true, true love, who waits upon yon shore… and if my love won't be my love, then I will live no more…”

“The trouble with morning is that it comes well before noon.”

“But aren't many gardens beautiful because they are imperfect?… aren't the strange, new flowers that arise by mistake or misadventure as pleasing as the well-tended and planned?”

“To each his own magic.”

“Goodbye," I whisper at last, when it no longer matters and there is no one to hear it but the window.”

“How terrible it is to have no cares, no longings. I do not fit. I feel too deeply and want too much. As cages go, it is a gilded one, but I shall not live well in it or any cage, for that matter.”

“Tell my brother to remember his heart in all things. That is where his honor and his destiny will be found. Tell him.”

“I'm like everyone else in this stupid, bloody, amazing world. I'm flawed. Impossibly so. But hopeful. I'm still me.”

“I know I've done the right thing but I couldn't feel worse about it, and I suppose that is part of what it is to lead.”

“No person has ever held all the power. There must be a balance between chaos and order, dark and light. With the Temple magic bound to you, the realms are no longer in balance. The power could change you… and you could change the magic.”

“She shrieks above the din. "If you wish a battle, I shall give it. I am the last of my kind. I shall not lie down without a fight.”

“Don't you? if you keep them from the magic, they will never know what their lives could be.'
They will remain protected,' Asha insists.
No, 'I say. 'Only untested.”

“Will you punish me forever?”

“Power changes everything till it is difficult to say who are the heroes and who the villains.”

“If God has nothing better to do than punish schoolgirls for a bit of tomfoolery, then I've no use for God.”

“Peace is not happenstance. It is a living fire that must be fed constantly. It must be tended with vigilance, else it dies out.”

“I shan't ever understand your willingness to lie down and die," Felicity bars. "If you won't at least try to fight, I have no sympathy for you.”

“Around us the night creatures have their say. We are surrounded by a symphony of crickets and frogs. Neither of us feels the need to speak, and I suppose that is one of the qualities I find comforting in Kartik. We can be alone together.”