Stress Reader’s Reviews > To Shape a Dragon's Breath > Status Update

"... the Anglish have robbed us in so many ways, I can’t condone giving up who we are to become more like them.”

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"Why is it all right to ride a train, but not for me to study how trains are crafted?"

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"I don’t want to be more like them; I want them to take us seriously as a modern people with modern ideas.”

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"The world is changing, Father. We’re going to have to change with it.”

“What, by sweet Fyra’s milky tits, did you think you were doing?”

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"There are lots of girls like me—”
“There are no girls like you, Anequs,”

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"I was going to make sure that the Anglish understood that we had never gone anywhere. That despite their best efforts, we were still living here among them on the lands where we’d always lived. I was going to show them just how many of us there were."

"I can’t be sad about a life I never had.”

“You have a right to be, if you want to,”

I'm 100% aware that part of my emotional reaction is due to my own trauma. But damn, this section made me ugly cry and now my head hurts more than it did.

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"Someday not far in the future, I was going to be able to fly on Kasaqua, and I wasn’t planning to ask anyone’s permission to go looking for answers to questions like that."

“No one has ever given half a damn about the natural rights of nackies.”

"Then someone ought to make them give a damn,” I said.

“Those are the kinds of words that will get you arrested and hanged,” Theod snapped.

“Let them try,” I said. “I’m not friendless, and I’ve made no special effort to stay below anyone’s notice..."

"We may be of the same species of mankind, Miss Anequs, but our circumstances are not especially similar.”

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“Oh—thank you for telling me. I’d hate to have brought up something painful out of ignorance,”

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“If you want to be the darling of jarls and kings, you’ll have to be a lady and a scholar, and marry a gentleman of good breeding, and comport yourself prettily.”

“Like Halya I will,” I said with a snort.

“I suppose I see your point; that which is lost to the depths of time can only be a matter of faith, I suppose.”

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"Daughter of my daughter, you’re going to teach us all how to dance with dragons again.”

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"I had become like Crow, venturing to dangerous and unknown lands to bring fire back to my people. I wondered, as we sat together in one another’s company, what we were going to burn with it."

"I’m here to help my people, Frau Kuiper. I’m not here to make them more like yours.”

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"You need to know the rules of engagement before you can formulate an effective battle strategy.”

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"They don’t feel as inclined to show me my place if they see me where they think I ought to be."

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“Do you have any idea how people will talk?”

"They’ll talk regardless, Theod. Let’s give them something to say.”

“Well,” I said, bending down to pick up Kasaqua because she’d started pawing at the hem of my skirt, “it’s not too late to start being fairer.”

This book has already made me incredibly angry for so many injustices that have occurred & continue to occur. Things I knew but reading them in this manner hits differently, I guess. The refusal to even use Anequs's name as she requested particularly bothers me. Names matter

"There were so many infuriating little presuppositions that everyone made—things that they all knew and expected without it being expressly stated—and no one bothered to explain them to me, who had no way of knowing them."

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“…have you ever met any other nackies before?”

“I have been privileged to live among an enlightened people for all of my life. I’ve been further privileged to be allowed to come and study..."

"It seemed that the only reason to speak, in polite Anglish society, was to please and praise others."

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“It’s so wonderful of you and Karina to take in these savage children and see to their proper education, Elsie..."

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“Did you intend to imply that I’m incapable of reading?”

"Well, it is to be presumed. Your people had no knowledge of written language before it was introduced to them by scholars..."