Rana > Rana's Quotes

“There are a hundred things she has tried to chase away the things she won't remember and that she can't even let herself think about because that's when the birds scream and the worms crawl and somewhere in her mind it's always raining a slow and endless drizzle.

You will hear that she has left the country, that there was a gift she wanted you to have, but it is lost before it reaches you. Late one night the telephone will sign, and a voice that might be hers will say something that you cannot interpret before the connection crackles and is broken.

Several years later, from a taxi, you will see someone in a doorway who looks like her, but she will be gone by the time you persuade the driver to stop. You will never see her again.

Whenever it rains you will think of her. ”
― Neil Gaiman

“When you draw, you copy the world don't you? You remake it on paper, but it isn't the same. It's yours. No one else could have created it just like that. When I make poems, I use the words we all use, but the order and the sound create a new power. This wood is someone's creation. We stumble through it's tendrils, as if we're crawling through the synapses of his mind.”
― Catherine Fisher, Darkhenge

“I hate her."
Merlin laughed, tossing the stick down. "Not so. You have forgotten how to love. That's a different sorrow.”
― Catherine Fisher, Corbenic

“:Paintings are easy to see," he said after a moment. "Open, presented flat to the eye. Words are not easy. Words have to be discovered, deep in their pages, deciphered, translated, read. Words are symbols to be encoded, their letters trees in a forest, enmeshed, their tangled meanings never finally picked apart.”
― Catherine Fisher, Darkhenge

“Chloe turned to Vetch. The poet said gently, "You see, you do have power. Words give you power, to create or destroy." His eyes flickered to Clare. "Even to forgive...”
― Catherine Fisher

“Shadow turned. Her eyes were wet; she smiled at him wanley. "I'll be she loved you.”
― Catherine Fisher, Corbenic

“Rix stroked the Glove. "There was a garden and a tree grew there with golden apples and if you ate one of them, you knew everything. And then Sapphique climbed over the fense and killed the many-headed monster and picked the apple, because he wanted to know, you see. He wanted to know how to Escape."

"Right." She had wriggled back. She was close to his pocked face.

"And a snake came out of the grass and it said, 'Oh go on, eat the apple. I dare you.' And he stopped then with it to his mouth because he knew the snake was Incarceron."

Keiro groaned. "Let me..."

"Put the Glove away, Rix. Or give it to me."

His fingers caressed its dark scales. "And because if he ate it he would know how small he was. How much of a nothing he was. He would see himself as a speck in the vastness of the Prison."

"So he didn't eat it, right?”
― Catherine Fisher, Sapphique

“Even across the dark, even across the loss, even across the emptiness, soul will speak to soul”
― Catherine Fisher, The Dark City

“In the Sapient tongue he said softly, ‘Tell
me, Master, did you know Incarceron was tiny?’
‘Is it?’ Sapphique replied in the same language, his green
eyes as he looked up lit by deep points of flame. ‘To you,
perhaps. Not to its Prisoners. Every prison is a universe for
its inmates. And think, Jared Sapiens. Might not the Realm
also be tiny, swinging from the watchchain of some being in
a world even vaster?”
― Catherine Fisher, Sapphique

“Once Incarceron became a dragon, and a Prisoner crawled into his lair. They made a wager. They would ask each other riddles, and the one who could not answer would lose. It it was the man, he would give his life. The Prison offered a secret way of Escape. But even as the man agreed, he felt its hidden laughter.
They played for a year and a day. The lights stayed dark. The dead were not removed. Food was not provided. The Prison ignored the cries of its inmates.
Sapphique was the man. He had one riddle left. He said, "What is the Key that unlocks the heart?"
For a day Incarceron thought. For two days. For three. Then it said, "If I ever knew the answer, I have forgotten it."
--Sapphique in the Tunnels of Madness”
― Catherine Fisher, Sapphique

“The Stars.
Jared slept beneath them, uneasy in the rustling leaves.

From the battlements Finn gazed up at them, seeing the impossible distances between galaxies and nebulae, and thinking they were not as wide as the distances between people.

In the study Claudia sensed them, in the sparks and crackles on the screen.

In the prison, Attia dreamt of them, She sat curled on the hard chair, Rix repacking his hidden pockets obsessively with coins and glass discs and hidden handkerchiefs.

A single spark flickered deep in the coin Keiro spun and caught, spun and caught.”
― Catherine Fisher, Sapphique

“Where are the leaders?' Sapphique asked.
'In the fortresses,' the swan replied.
'And the poets?'
'Lost in dreams of other worlds.'
'And the craftsmen?'
'Forging machines to challenge the darkness.'
'And the Wise, who made the world?'
The swan lowered its black neck sadly.
'Dwindled to crones and sorcerers in towers.”
― Catherine Fisher, Incarceron

“I remember a story of a girl in Paradise who ate an apple once. Some wise Sapient gave it to her. Because of it she saw things differently. What had seemed gold coins were dead leaves. Rich clothes were rags of cobweb. And she saw there was a wall around the world, with a locked gate.”
― Catherine Fisher, Incarceron

“Despair is deep. An abyss that swallows dreams. A wall at the world's end. Behind it I await death. Because all our work has come to this.”
― Catherine Fisher, Incarceron

“And what would they be scared of? There's nothing to fear in a perfect world, is there?”
― Catherine Fisher

“The world is a chessboard, Madam, on which we play out our ploys and follies. You are the Queen, of course. Your moves are the strongest. For myself, I claim only to be a knight, advancing in a crooked progress. Do we move ourselves, do you think, or does a great gloved hand place on our squares”
― Catherine Fisher, Incarceron

“All my years to this moment
All my roads to this wall.
All my words to this silence
All my pride to this fall.
-Songs of Sapphique”
― Catherine Fisher, Incarceron

“If it means my death, I don't care, because even death will be a sort of freedom.”
― Catherine Fisher (Incarceron), Incarceron

“Underground, the stars are legend.”
― Catherine Fisher, Incarceron

“I have walked a stair of swords,
I have worn a coat of scars.
I have vowed with hollow words,
I have lied my way to the stars
-Songs of Sapphique”
― Catherine Fisher, Incarceron

“Only the man who has known freedom
Can define his prison.”
― Catherine Fisher, Incarceron

“Walls have ears.
Doors have eyes.
Trees have voices.
Beasts tell lies.
Beware the rain.
Beware the snow.
Beware the man
You think you know.
-Songs of Sapphique”
― Catherine Fisher, Incarceron

“Amateurs sit and wait for inspiration, the rest of us just get up and go to work.”
― Stephen King, On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft

“So okay― there you are in your room with the shade down and the door shut and the plug pulled out of the base of the telephone. You've blown up your TV and committed yourself to a thousand words a day, come hell or high water. Now comes the big question: What are you going to write about? And the equally big answer: Anything you damn well want.”
― Stephen King, On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft

“Your job isn't to find these ideas but to recognize them when they show up.”
― Stephen King, On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft

“Let's get one thing clear right now, shall we? There is no Idea Dump, no Story Central, no Island of the Buried Bestsellers; good story ideas seem to come quite literally from nowhere, sailing at you right out of the empty sky: two previously unrelated ideas come together and make something new under the sun. Your job isn't to find these ideas but to recognize them when they show up.”
― Stephen King, On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft

“If you want to be a writer, you must do two things above all others: read a lot and write a lot. There's no way around these two things that I'm aware of, no shortcut.”
― Stephen King, On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft

“I'm a slow reader, but I usually get through seventy or eighty books a year, most fiction. I don't read in order to study the craft; I read because I like to read”
― Stephen King, On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft

“Kill your darlings, kill your darlings, even when it breaks your egocentric little scribbler’s heart, kill your darlings.”
― Stephen King, On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft

“Talent renders the whole idea of rehearsal meaningless; when you find something at which you are talented, you do it (whatever it is) until your fingers bleed or your eyes are ready to fall out of your head. Even when no one is listening (or reading or watching), every outing is a bravura performance, because you as the creator are happy. Perhaps even ecstatic.”
― Stephen King, On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft