Eva

“Because here’s the thing: No matter how much one tells stories of magical beasts or impossible worlds, in the end, it is always the world of here and now one is writing about. The better one understands that world, the more powerful the stories will be.”
― Steven Brust

“You’ll be angry, but I’m going to ask anyway. Will you marry me?' The unsupported voice, the one that happened when he couldn’t breathe, but had to speak.
I nudged his hands apart to see his face, and found it faintly overcast by tension. 'No,' I said gently,
He blinked again and asked, his voice unaltered, 'May I ask you once a year, every seventh of December, in case the answer changes?'
'Yes. I don’t think it will.'
'Oh. I only ask because I hate the thought of not having breakfast with you for the rest of my life.'
'My dear,' I said. 'Jamie. That’s a different question.'
'Oh. Will you have breakfast with me for the rest of my life?'
'Probably.”
― Steven Brust, Freedom & Necessity

“She smiled. “I don’t know. I wonder sometimes, too. Then you touch my face with your scarred hand and read my mind. Your eyes know me. That’s why I keep following you all over the realm, barefoot or half-frozen, cursing the sun or the wind, or myself because I have no more sense than to love a man who does not even possess a bed I can crawl into at night. And sometimes I curse you because you have spoken my name in a way that no other man in the realm will speak it, and I will listen for that until I die. So,” she added, as he gazed down at her mutely, “how can I leave you?” He”
― Patricia A. McKillip, Riddle-Master

“Paarfi undertakes a detailed examination on the virtues of brevity:

It would seem, therefore, that if we allow our readers, by virtue of being in the company of the historian, to eavesdrop on this interchange, we will have, in one scene, discharged two obligations; a sacrifice, if we may say so, to the god Brevity, whom all historians, indeed, all who work with the written word, ought to worship. We cannot say too little on this subject.”
― Steven Brust, The Phoenix Guards