Kes > Kes's Quotes

“How do I look?" he asked.
Barret grinned. "Old."
Moog glanced over appraisingly. "Tired."
Gabriel snorted a laugh. "Fuck you guys.”
― Nicholas Eames, Kings of the Wyld

“You should write a book," Matrick suggested.
Kit snorted. "Who wants to read the self-pitying lamentations of an old revenant?"
"There's your title right there," said Ganelon.”
― Nicholas Eames, Kings of the Wyld

“Among them is a renegade king, he who sired five royal heirs without ever unzipping his pants. A man to whom time has imparted great wisdom and an even greater waistline, whose thoughtless courage is rivalled only by his unquenchable thirst.

At his shoulder walks a sorcerer, a cosmic conversationalist. Enemy of the incurable rot, absent chairman of combustive sciences at the university in Oddsford, and the only living soul above the age of eight to believe in owlbears.

Look here at a warrior born, a scion of power and poverty whose purpose is manifold: to shatter shackles, to murder monarchs, and to demonstrate that even the forces of good must sometimes enlist the service of big, bad motherfuckers. His is an ancient soul destined to die young.

And now comes the quiet one, the gentle giant, he who fights his battles with a shield. Stout as the tree that counts its age in aeons, constant as the star that marks true north and shines most brightly on the darkest nights.

A step ahead of these four: our hero. He is the candle burnt down to the stump, the cutting blade grown dull with overuse. But see now the spark in his stride. Behold the glint of steel in his gaze. Who dares to stand between a man such as this and that which he holds dear? He will kill, if he must, to protect it. He will die, if that is what it takes.

“Go get the boss,” says one guardsman to another. “This bunch looks like trouble.”

And they do. They do look like trouble, at least until the wizard trips on the hem of his robe. He stumbles, cursing, and fouls the steps of the others as he falls face-first onto the mud-slick hillside.”
― Nicholas Eames, Kings of the Wyld

“No 'Glory shall be your reward' for me. Oh, no, for me, it is, 'Stop whining' and 'Go to bed'.”
― Megan Whalen Turner, The King of Attolia

“Are you badly hurt?"
"Hideously," said the king, without sounding injured at all. "I am disemboweled. My insides may in an instant become my outsides as I stand here before you.”
― Megan Whalen Turner, The King of Attolia

“Sometimes, if you want to change a man's mind, you have to change the mind of the man next to him first.”
― Megan Whalen Turner, The King of Attolia

“I'm dying of boredom. Or maybe just dying.”
― Megan Whalen Turner

“I am not sure I trust you."
"You can trust me with your life, My King."
"But not with my wine, obviously. Give it back.”
― Megan Whalen Turner, The King of Attolia

“All I wanted to do was lie in the dry grass with my feet in a ditch forever. I could be a convenient sort of milemarker, I thought. Get to the thief and you know you're halfway to Methana.”
― Megan Whalen Turner, The Thief

“This is the stupidest plan I have ever in my career participated in," Xenophon said.
"I love stupid plans," said Eugenides.”
― Megan Whalen Turner, The Queen of Attolia

“Relius looked away. "He said that you...cried," he said softly.
"But not that he cried as well," said the queen, amused at the memory. "We were very lachrymose... would you like to hear more romance of the evening? He told me the Guard should be reduced by half, and I threw an ink jar at his head."
"Is that when he cried?"
"He ducked," said Attolia dryly.
"I had not pictured you for a fishwife."
"Lo, the transforming power of love.”
― Megan Whalen Turner, The King of Attolia

“Why did you come if not to murder my king?"
"I came to steal his magus."
"You can't," said the magus in question.
"I can steal anything," Eugenides corrected him, "even with one hand.”
― Megan Whalen Turner, The Queen of Attolia

“He didn't marry you to become king. He became king because he wanted to marry you.”
― Megan Whalen Turner, The King of Attolia

“Will there be poppy juice in it?"
Phresine shook her head.
"Good. My wife and I agreed that only my wine was to be poisoned.”
― Megan Whalen Turner, The King of Attolia

“You're awake," he said.
"Phresine is not," pointed out the queen.
"Oh?"
"You gave her lethium."
"She gave it to me first.”
― Megan Whalen Turner, The King of Attolia

“One of us might be assassinated and then my heir will be king. Don't give up hope just because chances are slim."
"For the assassination or the heir, your majesty?”
― Megan Whalen Turner, The King of Attolia

“Your Majesty, please get down. My friend Aris is really a very good man, and if you fall off that wall he's going to hang for it, and so will his squad, most of whom are also nice men, and though I can't say I really care if your attendants hang, there are probably many people that do care, and would you please, please get down?"

The king looked at him, eyes narrowed. "I don't think I've ever heard you say that many words in a row. You sounded almost articulate.”
― Megan Whalen Turner, The King of Attolia

“I didn't think about being king,” he said, his voice hoarse.
Eddis stared. “Your capacity to land yourself in a mess because you didn't think first, Eugenides, will never cease to amaze me. What do you mean you didn't think about being king? Is Attolia going to marry you and move into my library?”
― Megan Whalen Turner, The Queen of Attolia

“I hate horses. I know people who think that they are noble, graceful animals, but regardless of what a horse looks like from a distance, never forget that it's as likely to step on your foot as look at you.”
― Megan Whalen Turner, The Thief

“And the Earth had no name. The gods know themselves and have no need of names. It is man who names all things, even gods.”
― Megan Whalen Turner, The Thief

“How do you know that, Philo, dear?"
But Philologos had had enough of being condescended to. "Because, Lamion, I am not as dumb as you think I am, even if you are."
By the time Lamion had parsed this to make sure that there was in fact an insult at the end of it, Hilarion had laid a restraining hand on his arm.”
― Megan Whalen Turner, The King of Attolia

“I want you to steal something."
I smiled. "Do you want the king's seal? I can get it for you."
"If I were you," said the magus, "I'd stop bragging about that." His voice grated.
My smile grew. The gold ring with the engraved ruby had been in his safekeeping when I had stolen it away.”
― Megan Whalen Turner, The Thief

“So Sophos thinks you're going to marry me."
"While I think you'll marry Sophos."
"I might. We'll see what he's like when he grows up.”
― Megan Whalen Turner, The Thief

“Fitting is a luxury rarely given to immigrants, or children of immigrants. We are stuck in emotional purgatory. Home, somehow, is always the last place you left, and never the place you're in.”
― Scaachi Koul, One Day We'll All Be Dead and None of This Will Matter

“Mom has reorganized the kitchen so that the one room that was everyone's room is foreign to me. My visits are punctuated with me whipping around, angrily demanding, "Where are the forks, WHY DID YOU MOVE THE FORKS?" and she has to calmly open the drawer on the other side of the kitchen as if she moved it just to ruin my life. I just found out where she puts the bowls and their new location feels like such a personal attack that I can barely talk about it without raising my blood pressure.”
― Scaachi Koul, One Day We'll All Be Dead and None of This Will Matter

“There is no cowardice in removing yourself from a wildly unhealthy and unwinnable situation . . . You shouldn't feel like you have to play . . . you don't owe anyone anything. You don't have to be available to everyone. You can stop.”
― Scaachi Koul, One Day We'll All Be Dead and None of This Will Matter

“She breathed deeply of the scent of decaying fiction, disintegrating history, and forgotten verse, and she observed for the first time that a room full of books smelled like dessert: a sweet snack made of figs, vanilla, glue, and cleverness.”
― Joe Hill, NOS4A2

“Was there any human urge more pitiful-or more intense- than wanting another chance at something?”
― Joe Hill, NOS4A2

“I felt like it needed some color down there, so I painted the walls with the motherfucker.”
― Joe Hill, NOS4A2

“Everyone lives in two worlds,” Maggie said, speaking in an absentminded sort of way while she studied her letters. “There’s the real world, with all its annoying facts and rules. In the real world, there are things that are true and things that aren’t. Mostly the real world s-s-s-suh-sucks. But everyone also lives in the world inside their own head. An inscape, a world of thought. In a world made of thought—in an inscape—every idea is a fact. Emotions are as real as gravity. Dreams are as powerful as history. Creative people, like writers, and Henry Rollins, spend a lot of their time hanging out in their thoughtworld. S-s-strong creatives, though, can use a knife to cut the stitches between the two worlds, can bring them together. Your bike. My tiles. Those are our knives.”
― Joe Hill, NOS4A2