Sharon Lee > Quotes

“Let us return to 'no'. It has the charm of brevity.”
― Sharon Lee, Local Custom

“The thing to recall about Dragons is that it takes a special person to deal with them at all. If you lie to them they will steal from you. If you attack them without cause they will dismember you. If you run from them they will laugh at you.

It is thus best to deal calmly, openly and fairly with Dragons: Give them all they buy and no more or less, and they will do the same by you. Stand at their back and they will stand at yours. Always remember that a Dragon is first a Dragon and only then a friend, a partner, a lover.

Never assume that you have discovered a Dragon's weak point until it is dead and forgotten, for joy is fleeting and a Dragon's revenge is forever.”
― Sharon Lee

“Every time you get the world by the tail, she thought, you gotta remember there's teeth on the other end.”
― Sharon Lee, Agent of Change

“Cozy place you got here,” he said, looking around the office. “You read all them books?” “I fear not. But one cannot simply get rid of books, you know. Especially books which have reposed so long on the same shelf.” “Reckon they’re good insulation,” Yulie said, nodding at the shelving stretching from floor to ceiling along the interior wall.”
― Sharon Lee, Neogenesis

“We can only speak the truth that we know at the time it is known.”
― Sharon Lee, Necessity's Child

“Who is old enough to ask, is old enough to know.”
― Sharon Lee, Necessity's Child

“She would change, but she would remember. That was—growth. Growth was key to continued existence.”
― Sharon Lee, Neogenesis

“If you gotta leave before I come back, I want to thank you for sharing the music. Remember that you’re not alone, ever; that there’s always the music, connecting all of us, and the whole world, too.”
― Sharon Lee, Carousel Seas

“Freely given, freely shared, between true companions and friends.” That was an old phrase, but Gran had made sure I knew all the old phrases. JoAnn looked—and according to the land, felt—startled. For a long moment, she didn’t move, then she smiled again—a little less firmly—and took the bag from me. “The feast increases, with the goodwill of all.”
― Sharon Lee, Carousel Sun

“People," she continued, as one spelling out basic truths, "help their friends. That's what holds it all together. If people didn't help their friends, then everything would fall apart. I'm in favor of holding things together, so I help my friends.”
― Sharon Lee, Agent of Change

“An error. Another error. Yet, in his experience, refusal to acknowledge an error did not reset circumstance to an error-free state.”
― Sharon Lee, Dragon Ship

“what Kamele’s state of mind might be at this point in her relationship with Theo’s father, he found himself reluctant to imagine. As she was a woman of great good sense, it was likely that she wanted to murder him—for which he would blame her not at all.”
― Sharon Lee, Ghost Ship

“The instinct for profit, thought Jela—personal profit. That instinct was maybe not a long-term survival trait.”
― Sharon Lee, Crystal Soldier

“I suppose it's nothing to you that your nose is cold and damp? I thought not. Contrive to leave my hair rooted to my head, if you please. And if I detect so much as a paw-flick toward that earring, you, my fine sir, are mouse meat.”
― Sharon Lee, The Dragon Variation

“while I . . . napped on the couch, beneath Breccia, who, like all cats, weighed twenty pounds more asleep than awake.”
― Sharon Lee, Carousel Seas

“Lifeless corpses”
― Sharon Lee, Carousel Seas

“Pantyhose feel weird.”
― Sharon Lee, Barnburner

“You may,” I said magnanimously, “invite me over whenever you care to have wine.”
― Sharon Lee, Carousel Sun

“to live apart from the comforts of clan and kin, surrounded by strangers upon whom she must depend for what day-to-day gentleness one human being might have from another.”
― Sharon Lee, The Dragon Variation

“If honor be your clothing, the suit will last a lifetime. —William Arnot”
― Sharon Lee, The Dragon Variation

“Sea rose canes bear thorns, just like their hybrid sisters,”
― Sharon Lee, Carousel Sun

“If I’d talked to anybody, instead of just passing judgment on myself, knowing that I was evil, because I was heir to every evil thing that had been visited upon me.”
― Sharon Lee, Carousel Sun

“Jethri had lately formed the theory that this reluctance to offer information was not what a Terran would call spitefulness, but courtesy. It would be—an insult, if his reading of the tapes was right, to assume that another person was ignorant of any particular something.”
― Sharon Lee, Balance of Trade

“Youth is a circumstance that time corrects, and error teaches us to err again along a different vector.”
― Sharon Lee, Ghost Ship

“Scotch’ll be fine,” she told him. “Don’t put ice in it. A religious experience shouldn’t be diluted”
― Sharon Lee, Agent of Change

“The words "brilliant," "radical," "original" were more often than not the descriptors applied to Scholar Kiladi's work. There was of course a leavening of "popinjay," "recluse," and "dangerous madman" from his detractors, but those served more to relieve than alarm her. A scholar who did not make collegial enemies was a scholar who was not exercising his intellect to its fullest extent.”
― Sharon Lee

“You will have to be on your guard, and when your guard slips, you must recover.” My fencing master used to say something eerily similar to that. And then she’d add that making a recover was much more difficult than simply doing the thing right the first time.”
― Sharon Lee, Carousel Sun

“The bonfire was going a treat”
― Sharon Lee, Carousel Sun

“Especially given Bechimo’s feelings about Uncle, who, as it happened, was on the Disallowed List, the Double-Plus Disallowed List and, Theo guessed, the Don’t Send a Mother’s Day Card List.”
― Sharon Lee, Ghost Ship

“did not like warmth retired from the kitchen," he murmured, extending his hand to sample the pleasant nap again. "I paid a cantra for this carpet. Were we selling out of Solcintra—and with certification from a merchant more experienced than myself . . . There are customers of—that I know, who would offer twenty cantra, sight unseen—not because of”
― Sharon Lee, I Dare