Donna McMaster

“All maps are fiction when the world is seen from the sky. But if ten thousand dragons choose to believe in this one, I think you will find it nearer truth than otherwise.”
― Naomi Novik, League of Dragons

“If they cannot be woken to a natural affection for their country, such as we feel, it is our fault and not theirs.”
― Naomi Novik, Victory of Eagles

“Pregnant women made him nervous, particularly when their condition sailed before them like the prow of some small, feminine ship.”
― Grace Burrowes, Andrew: Lord of Despair

“There I was, with a mare I knew I could do anything with—but the owners! Mary Pat had never even seen a jumping saddle. Her father had no conception of what goes into the making of a show jumper. But there is a lot of heart in that family, apparently a hereditary condition, for Mary Pat started surprising me. She was the first student I ever had who actually did what I told her to do. Older trainers had warned me that there would be such students, but I hadn’t believed them until now. Watching Mary Pat and Peggy, alone in the California desert, I thought of the diary of one nineteenth-century traveler who had said of southern California, “The mountains cut the land off from sympathy with the East.” I sometimes felt that God was whispering things into the landscape, in the breathing of that child and that horse.”
― Vicki Hearne, Animal Happiness: Moving Exploration of Animals and Their Emotions - From Cats and Dogs to Orangutans and Tortoises