Kristin Cashore
When a monster stopped behaving like a monster, did it stop being a monster? Did it become something else?Collection: Monsters
The only way for you to keep your mind straight is to run from those who would confuse you.Collection: Running
I don't want to love you if you're only going to die.Collection: Love You
There's no shame in crawling when one can't walk.Collection: Shame
There are no medicines to bring a dead thing back to life.Collection: Medicine
She cried like a person whose heart is broken and wondered how, when two people loved each other, there could be such a broken heart.Collection: Heart
Everyone was willing to take some small risk to lessen the damage of their ambition and disorder and lawlessness.Collection: Ambition
The kingdoms' people were at the mercy of the natures of those who rose to be their rulers. It was a gamble, and the current generation did not make for a winning hand.Collection: Winning
A man who fights you as he does is no better than an opportunist and no worse than a thug.Collection: Fighting
And the kings were no better to their own people than they were to each others.Collection: Kings
She expected the pain, when it came. But she gasped at its sharpness; it was not like any pain she had felt before. He kissed her and slowed and would have stopped. But she laughed, and said that this one time she would consent to hurt, and bleed, at his touch. He smiled into her neck and kissed her again and she moved with him through the pain. The pain became a warmth that grew. Grew, and stopped her breath. And took her breath and her pain and her mind away from her body, so that there was nothing but her body and his body and the light and fire they made together.Collection: Hurt
Circumstances don't always align themselves with human intention.Collection: Intention
I know you don't want this, Katsa. But I can't help myself. The moment you came barreling into my life I was lost. I'm afraid to tell you what I wish for, for fear you'll... oh, I don't know, throw me into the fire. Or more likely, refuse me. Or worst of all, despise me," he said, his voice breaking and his eyes dropping from her face. His face dropping into his hands. "I love you," he said. "You're more dear to my heart than I ever knew anyone could be. And I've made you cry; and there I'll stop.Collection: Love You
You're good at love," she said simply, because it seemed to her that it was true. "I'm not so good at love. I'm like a barbed creature. I push everyone I love away." He shrugged. "I don't mind you pushing me away if it means you love me, little sister.Collection: Mean
Gratitude takes less energy than anger.Collection: Gratitude
Every configuration of people is an entirely new universe unto itself.Collection: People
Lady Katsa, is it?" "Yes, Lord Prince." "I've heard you have one eye green as the Middluns grasses, and the other eye blue as the sky." "Yes, Lord Prince." "I've heard you can kill a man with the nail of your smallest finger." She smiled. "Yes, Lord Prince." "Does it make it easier?" "I don't understand you." "To have beautiful eyes. Does it lighten the burden of your Grace, to know you have beautiful eyes?Collection: Beautiful
Brigan was saying her name, and he was sending her a feeling. It was courage and strength, and something else too, as if he were standing with her, as if he'd taken her within himself, letting her rest her entire body for a moment on his backbone, her mind in his mind, her heart in the fire of his. The fire of Brigan's heart was astounding. Fire understood, and almost could not believe, that the feeling he was sending her was love.Collection: Love
When Brocker arrived he took her hands and held them to his face and cried into them.Collection: Hands
If she took Po as her husband, she would be making promises about a future she couldn't yet see. For once she became his wife, she would be his forever. And, no matter how much freedom Po gave her, she would always know that it was a gift. Her freedom would be not be her own; it would be Po's to give or to withhold. That he never would withhold it made no difference. If it did not come from her, it was not really hers.Collection: Husband
It's as if when I open myself up to every perception, things create their own focus.Collection: Focus
And you may blame me for your feelings, but it isn't fair to blame me for how you've chosen to behave.Collection: Feelings
Go safely. Go safely, she thought to him. what a silly, empty thing it was to say to anyone, anywhere.Collection: Silly
Maybe it was for the best that she'd been so foolish, for if she'd known how hard this would be, perhaps she wouldn't have done it.Collection: Would Be
Still doing your best to ruin the horses, I see.Collection: Horse
Please, Katsa," he finally said. "At least talk to me". She swung around to face him. "What it there to talk about? You know how I feel, and what I think about it." "And what I feel? Doesn't it matter?Collection: Thinking
I don’t often know who should read what book. It’s a little bit like trying to set people up on a date - a good match is unpredictable and mysterious.Collection: Book
Spelling bees? Spelling bees do not scare me. I competed in the National Spelling Bee twice, thank you very much. My dad competed in the National Spelling Bee. My aunt competed in the National Spelling Bee. My uncle WON the National Spelling Bee. If I can't spell it, I know someone who can. So just bring it on.Collection: Uncles
It's only water," she said. "Tell that to a drowning man," Giddon said.Collection: Men
Your brothers are the foolish ones for not seeing the strength in beautiful things.Collection: Beautiful
If I'd been trying to kill him, he'd be dead.Collection: Trying
If he touches you, I'll come in and choke him to death.Collection: Choke
Katsa hugged her for a long time, and Bitterblue understood that this was always how it would be. Katsa would come and then Katsa would go. But the hug was real, and lasting, even though it would end. The coming was as real as the going, and the coming would always be a promise. It would have to be good enough.Collection: Real
How acutely sometimes the presence or absence of people matteredCollection: People
I must stop wishing for things to happen. Because something will happen eventually, and when it does, I'll be bound to wish it hadn't.Collection: Wish
Now we just need to find someone who is close to the king but is really a spy for Mydogg." "That should be easy. I could probably shoot an arrow out the window and hit one.Collection: Kings
Living is too hard right now. Dying is easy. Let me die.Collection: Dying
If she was suggesting she was too wise with the weight of her experience to fall prey to infatuation - well, the disproof was sitting before her in the form of a gray-eyed prince with a thoughtful set to his mouth that she found quite distracting.Collection: Wise
And of course she understood now why her body wanted to run whenever he appeared. It was a correct instinct, for there was nothing to be got from this but sadness.Collection: Running
My life is an apology for the life of my father.Collection: Im Sorry
Katsa and Po were trying to drown each other and, judging from their hoots of laughter, enjoying it immensely.Collection: Laughter
Your face will freeze like that, you know, Kat," Raffin said helpfully to Katsa. "Maybe I should rearrange your face, Raff," said Katsa. "I should like smaller ears," Raffin offered. "Prince Raffin has nice, handsome ears," Helda said, not looking up from her knitting. "As will his children. Your children will have no ears at all, My Lady," she said sternly to Katsa. Katsa stared back at her, flabbergasted. "I believe it's more that her ears won't have children," began Raffin, "which, you'll agree, sounds much less—Collection: Children
For a group of people who claimed to be concerned for her safety, they did seem to have developed rather a habit of encouraging uprisings against monarchs.Collection: Uprising
I've liked you better when Katsa's around," Giddon said. "She's so rotten to me that you seem positively pleasant in contrast.Collection: Rotten
That's interesting," Bitterblue said. "You think a conscience requires fear?Collection: Thinking
Why does everybody throw every troublesome thing into the river?Collection: Rivers
Lady Queen," he said, "You've given me all I want. You're the queen a librarian dreams of.Collection: Dream
The fellow who tends the greenhouse gardens? Trust me, Lady, you'd let him stake your tomatoes.Collection: Garden
It humbles me, but it doesn't humiliate me.Collection: Humiliate
...when truths disappear, they leave behind blank spaces, and that is also dangerous.Collection: Space