Jane

“Do you love me?" he asked.
I fell silent.
"For the rest of it is glitter and noise," he said. "At the heart of it all is love. You make that choice, and you go forward from there.”
― Sharon Shinn, Summers at Castle Auburn

“So do I wish I was to be king? That is not a question I ask myself. I ask myself, Would I be a good king? Would I be quick witted and generous of spirit and full of that boundless energy? Or would I be clumsy and stupid and dulled by my own prejudices? I try to be a good man, since I am alive at all, and hope that that teaches me what I would need to know if I was ever faced with a higher challenge.”
― Sharon Shinn, Summers at Castle Auburn

“He looked down at his empty glass. "One of the other ways in which I am different from my father," he said. "I am not interested in marrying where I do not love."

I spoke in a jesting voice. "And of all the women in the eight provinces, you have not been able to find one you could love?"

Now he looked at me again, and his face was completely serious. "That's the problem," he said. "There is one.”
― Sharon Shinn, Summers at Castle Auburn

“I've never thought of you like that,' said Christopher. 'How could I? If you were any other woman, I could tell you I loved you, easily enough, but not you-- because you've always seemed to me like a part of myself, and it would be like saying I loved my own eyes or my own mind. But have you ever thought of what it would be to have to live without your mind or your eyes, Kate? To be mad? Or blind?”
― Elizabeth Marie Pope, The Perilous Gard