Guy gavriel kay quotes

One didn't stop to talk with creatures from one's nightmares.

Fantasy is, at its best, the purest access to storytelling that we have. It universalizes a tale, it evokes wonder and timeless narrative power, it touches upon inner journeys, it illuminates our collective and individual pasts, throws a focus beam on the present day, and presages the dangers and promises of the future.

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

It was different, though, knowing something in your thoughts and then hearing it confirmed, made real, planted in the world like a tree

We worship…the powers that speak to our souls, if it seems they do. We do so knowing there is more to the world, and the half-world, and perhaps worlds beyond, than we can grasp. We always knew that. We can’t even stop children from dying, how would we presume to understand the truth of things? Behind things? Does the presence of one power deny another? [p. 176]

I have always argued, in a good novel, interesting things happen to interesting people.

By things so achingly small are lives measured and marred.

Ice is for death and endings.

... everyone knew that all islands were worlds unto themselves, that to come to an island was to come to another world.

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

There are no wrong turnings. Only paths we had not known we were meant to walk.

Unless the perfidious wolves have the temerity to disobey the High King's plans, we should meet Shalhassan's forces by the Latham in mid-wood with the wolves between us. If they aren't,' Diarmuid concluded, 'we blame anyone and everything except the plan.

She was owner and captive, both, of a bitterly divided heart.

As many have noted, the peril for authors is that our work space is too easily our play space.

Irritation for some men was their response to strain.

But if you couldn't do everything, did that mean you did nothing?

Writing is never, ever easy but I wake up every morning grateful for the gift of being able to do this.

There was some sadness in how that could happen, falling out of love with something that had shaped you. Or even people who had.

One man sees a riselka: his life forks there. Two men see a riselka: one of them shall die. Three men see a riselka: one is blessed, one forks, one shall die.

My youngest brother had a wonderful schtick from some time in high school, through to graduating medicine. He had a card in his wallet that read, ‘If I am found with amnesia, please give me the following books to read …’ And it listed half a dozen books where he longed to recapture that first glorious sense of needing to find out ‘what happens next’ … the feeling that keeps you up half the night. The feeling that comes before the plot’s been learned.

Men made wagers with their judgment, their allegiances, their resources.

We are all shaped by where we grow up, though that shaping takes different forms. I dont think theres any doubt that coming of age in Winnipeg both opened my eyes and made me hungry - if I can subvert all claims to be a real writer by mixing metaphors like that.

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

Some writers later, describing the events of that night and day, wrote that Wan'yen of the Altai had seen a spirit-dragon of the river and become afraid. Writers do that sort of thing. They like dragons in their tales.

When I was 18 years old, in a more innocent time, my first backpacking trip through Europe, I sneaked into the Temple of Saturn in the Roman Forum after nightfall and spent several hours in there avoiding the guards patrolling.

Liu Fang is a truly gifted, world-famous player of the pipa and the guzheng, classical Chinese stringed instruments.

It can be hard to write a skillfully entertaining fiction, but a great book wants to be more, and wants more from us.

Lazy poets try to elicit a reader's response with words designed to tug at the heart.

Do you know the wish of your heart?" - The Darkest Road

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

Sometimes you didn't really arrive at a conclusion about your life, you just discovered that you already had.

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

The military preferred - invariably - those who could be readily defined, assigned roles, understood, and controlled.

After a while, you start to realize that you should write a book you would want to read. I try to write a book I would enjoy.

One man sees a riselka: his life forks there.  Two men see a riselka: one of them shall die.  Three men see a riselka: one is blessed, one forks, one shall die. One woman sees a riselka: her path comes clear to her.  Two women see a riselka: one of them shall bear a child.  Three women see a riselka: one is blessed, one is clear, one shall bear a child.

Eanna love us, Adaon preserve us, Morian guard our souls.

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

We are the total of our longings.

I will not say I am sorry, but I can tell you that I grieve.

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

There was some sadness in how that could happen, Tai thought: falling out of love with something that had shaped you. Or even people who had? But if you didn't change at least a little, where were the passages of a life? Didn't learning, changing, sometimes mean letting go of what had once been seen as true?

A hard truth: that courage can be without meaning or impact, need not be rewarded, or even known. The world has not been made in that way. Perhaps, however, within the self there might come a resonance, the awareness of having done something difficult, of having done . . . something.

You'd never killed anyone. Then you had.

Weariness, sometimes more than anything else, can bring an end to war.

When I'm all grown up, come what may, I'll build a boat to carry me away

A hand fought best when it made a fist.

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.

Dave hung up. And unplugged the phone. With a fierce and bitter pain he stared at it, watching how, over and over again, it didn't ring.

Why did becoming accustomed to something have to render its pleasures stale.

What man would dare believe that all he planned might come to pass?

You have to be afraid for it to count as bravery.

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

What mortal knew the way their fate line would run?

It is always difficult, even with the best will in the world, to look back a long way and see anything resembling the truth.

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

She had been a solitary child, and then solitary as a woman, drawn into an orbit of her own that took her away from others, even those who would be her friends.