Aliette de Bodard > Quotes

“You leave behind your fine poems.
You leave behind your beautiful flowers. And the earth that was only leant to you. You ascend into the Light, O Quechomitl, you leave behind the flowers and the singing and the earth. Safe journey, O friend.”
― Aliette de Bodard, Servant of the Underworld

“She says--because darkness needs to be faced, needs to be denied--"You would have given me so much, in exchange for me giving up everything.”
― Aliette de Bodard, Fireheart Tiger

“We’ve discussed this before. Not just other people saying yes, but whether they mean it, or whether they’re just doing it because they’re afraid.”
― Aliette de Bodard, In the Vanishers’ Palace

“Life is too short to be ringed by other people’s expectations of proper behavior.”
― Aliette de Bodard, Fireheart Tiger

“I still couldn’t banish the image of the Quetzal Flower. In my mind, it merged with that of Priestess Eleuia: everything a man could desire or aspire to, a woman who would suck the marrow from your bones and still leave you smiling.”
― Aliette de Bodard, Servant of the Underworld

“Anyway, the fire doesn't matter. There will be other fires, my love, and we will survive them all.”
― Aliette de Bodard, Fireheart Tiger

“If love is what it takes to make her remember a girl in the midst of a fire, then how much can you trust her? How much can you trust that love?”
― Aliette de Bodard, Fireheart Tiger

“It’s this place, this wretched place, where they never stop watching, where they never stop judging. It makes monsters out of us.”
― Aliette de Bodard, On a Red Station, Drifting

“The lie wasn’t meant to be believed. It was just social grease, intended to keep wheels turning.”
― Aliette de Bodard, Fireheart Tiger

“Are not friends and sworn brothers as important as blood-brothers? A true friend will know your heart, and hear the roar of running waters and the distant wind over the mountains in the song of your zither, without any need for you to speak aloud.”
― Aliette de Bodard, On a Red Station, Drifting

“Power is power. Those who hold it seldom remember where they came from.”
― Aliette de Bodard, The House of Shattered Wings

“She wanted to apologize again, but how many times could she repeat empty words without becoming empty herself?”
― Aliette de Bodard, On a Red Station, Drifting

“I'll never be what you are. I'll never walk in your skin. But that's the doom of all parents. And I can tell you that it goes the same way for everyone. We all stumble. We all fail. You always do the same thing: you apologize and change, again and again and again. There'll never be a place where everything is right, but we can try our best to strive towards it. It's the striving that defines us. That makes us different from them.”
― Aliette de Bodard, In the Vanishers’ Palace

“Please," Thanh says. Because Giang should be angry. Because Giang should be blaming her. Because--because anger is easier, and compassion hurts so much.”
― Aliette de Bodard, Fireheart Tiger

“We’re fighting each other, and in the end the board is clear for them to win.”
― Aliette de Bodard, Fireheart Tiger

“is almost pleasant, at first, to be Falling. The harsh, unwavering light of the City recedes, leaving you in shadow, leaving only memories of relief, of a blessed coolness seizing your limbs. Nothing has turned yet into longing, into bitterness, into the cold that will never cease, not even in the heat of summer.”
― Aliette de Bodard, The House of Shattered Wings

“Just because it makes sense doesn’t mean it needs to happen that way.”
― Aliette de Bodard, Fireheart Tiger

“History is replete with the seeds of apocalypse. In particular, the 19th/early 20th Century in France was a time of country-shattering events, whether it was the rise and fall of Napoleon Bonaparte (the creation and brutal upending of a whole new social order, within scarcely more than a decade), or the Great War (which devastated the country to a degree that is hard to believe today, wiping out an entire generation in the trenches). It was no great stretch to imagine a magical war engulfing Europe in 1914, and leaving Paris as a field of ruins filled with magical booby traps–the familiar monuments destroyed, the Seine overflowing with the residue of spells.

It’s no secret that I’m fascinated by the narrative of war, and of recovery after war: how people struggle to rebuild lives and go on in the wake of world-shattering devastation; how the past can still cast a long, terrible shadow over everything; how the years before the war become a golden thing, regardless of how many injustices and hardships might have been happening then. I’m equally fascinated by history–the narratives that get preserved and enshrined, the stories that are passed down; and the speed with which some things get forgotten while others endure for generations. For me, the vocabulary and tropes of post-apocalypse were a great way to tackle those subjects, and to imagine what would happen in a city that had such a traumatic event in its past.”
― Aliette de Bodard

“IT is almost pleasant, at first, to be Falling. The harsh, unwavering light of the City recedes, leaving you in shadow, leaving only memories of relief, of a blessed coolness seizing your limbs. Nothing has turned yet into longing, into bitterness, into the cold that will never cease, not even in the heat of summer.”
― Aliette de Bodard, The House of Shattered Wings

“...she wore peach-coloured robes with imprints of moons and banyan trees. Her long hair flowed into the floor, turning into the vast expanse of the sky halfway down her back; it looked as though she was dragging the heavens behind her, beautiful and terrible.”
― Aliette de Bodard, The Red Scholar's Wake

“a man of no religion, who dares use pain as a weapon, tainting it for mundane things”
― Aliette de Bodard, The Jaguar House, in Shadow

“You don’t walk away. You don’t get to take what you want, what you think you’re due simply because no one has ever refused you.”
― Aliette de Bodard, Fireheart Tiger

“A bargaining chip who didn’t turn out the right way. A clumsy oaf who can’t be trusted to do the right thing.”
― Aliette de Bodard, Fireheart Tiger

“We study the past so that we may know the future. Why not study abroad, so that we may know ourselves?”
― Aliette de Bodard, On a Red Station, Drifting

“Ssshhh. It's all right." And does it matter that it's not, if it gets them through the night?”
― Aliette de Bodard, Fireheart Tiger

“All the heads of Houses looked like tigers who’d just caught prey— which boded ill for Silverspires.”
― Aliette de Bodard, The House of Shattered Wings

“People don't usually ask. Especially if it's for my own good."

"That's never an excuse. People should ask.”
― Aliette de Bodard, In the Shadow of the Ship

“you feel like a field of sugar canes after the harvest—burnt out, all cutting edges with no sweetness left inside.”
― Aliette de Bodard, Clarkesworld Magazine, Issue 69, June 2012

“Threats or rewards are the way you move the world.”
― Aliette de Bodard, Harbinger of the Storm

“Nothing, until the ground comes up to meet you, and you land in a jumble of pain and shattered bones; and the scream you didn’t think you had in you scrapes your throat raw as you let it out—like the first, shocked breath of a baby newly born into a universe of suffering.”
― Aliette de Bodard, The House of Shattered Wings