Fable 1 Quotes

Fable has strong shoulders that carry far more truth than fact can.

He looked at me with a hundred stories lit behind his eyes.

This isn’t a game to me, Fable. This is my life. And I want you to be a part of it … I want you and you only. I’m not sharing you with anyone else.

Like a weary bird flying out over the most desolate sea, I finally had a place to land.

Normal' is a bedtime story-a fable-that humans tell themselves to feel better when faced with overwhelming evidence that most of what's happening around them is not 'normal' at all.

you weren't made for this world, Fable.

Isolde was the wind and sea and sky of Saint's world. She was the pattern of stars that he navigated by, the sum of all directions on his compass. And he was lost without her.

The only safety that existed was in being completely alone.

My mother had loved Saint with a love that could set fire to the sea

Home was a ship that was at the bottom of the sea, where my mother's bones lay sleeping.

I loved her with a love that broke me.

Like light cast over the morning water, it became new. Every moment that lay ahead, like an uncharted sea. this was a new beginning.

The priest's lesson: beware the Nightlord, for his pleasure is a mortal's doom. My grandmother's lesson: beware love, especially with the wrong man.

You want something in this life?" She came to stand over me. "You take it, Fable.

I'd crossed the Narrows for a man who's probably never even loved me. For a dream that would never come true.

What he was saying-the things he told me-was his way of showing me he trusted me. It was also his way of giving me the match. If I wanted to, I could burn him down. But if we were going to do this, I would have to be his safe harbor and he would have to be mine.

Because that kiss broke open some dark night sky within me filled with stars and moons and flaming comets. That darkness was replaced by the blazing fire of the sun racing under my skin.

What I want is not to die alone," she said, her voice suddenly small. "I didn't really choose this life. It's just the only one I have...

I underestimated my ability to be on this ship with you and not touch you.

I have thought about you every single day since that day. Maybe every hour. I've counted days to go back to the island, and I pushed us into storms I shouldn't have because I didn't want to not be there when you woke up. I didn't want you to wait for me. Ever. Or to think I wasn't coming back." He paused. "I struck the deal with Saint because I wanted the ship, but I kept it because of you. When you got off the Marigold in Ceros and I didn't know if I would ever see you again, I thought . . . I felt like I couldn't breathe.

She was the sun and the sea and the moon in one. She was the north star that pulled us to the shore.

The Lark. the place my mother's story ended. Any in many ways, the place where mine began.

She was the pattern of stars that he navigated by, the sum of all directions on his compass. And he was lost without her.

Nothing is free

Nothing was what it seemed. Every truth was twisted. Every lie carefully constructed.

The only easy day was yesterday.

Apprenez que tout flatteur Vit aux dépens de celui qui l'écoute : Cette leçon vaut bien un fromage, sans doute. Flatterers thrive on fools' credulity. The lesson's worth a cheese, don't you agree?

We both know that surviving means sometimes doing things that haunt you.

Ruhn Danaan, Crown Prince of the Valbaran Fae. Son of the Autumn King and the current possessor of the Starsword, fabled dark blade of the ancient Starborn Fae. Proof of the prince’s Chosen One status among the Fae—whatever the Hel that meant.

My father had always told me that seabirds were the souls of lost traders. To turn them away or not give them a place to land or nest was bad luck.

Don't draw attention to yourself. It's better to be no one than to be someone in this city.

I didn't belong on the land or on the docks or the cities that lay across the Narrows, The place I belonged was gone

That was one of Saint's rules. Nothing is free. He wasn't just talking about food or passage or the clothes on your back. He was talking about respect. Safety. Protection. They were things no one owed. And one way or another, you always paid.

I can tell you as a scientist Diana, that there's no such thing as 'normal'." His voice was losing its careful softness. "'Normal' is a bedtime story-a fable- that humans tell themselves to feel better when faced with overwhelming evidence that most of what's happening around them is not 'normal' at all

The story of Terisa and Geraden began very much like a fable. She was a princess in a high tower. He was a hero come to rescue her. She was the only daughter of wealth and power. He was the seventh son of the lord of the seventh Care. She was beautiful from the auburn hair that crowned her head to the tips of her white toes. He was handsome and courageous. She was held prisoner by enchantment. He was a fearless breaker of enchantments. As in all the fables, they were made for each other.

I see her choosing now whether to make her love into a cage or a key.

A fable from the Age of Heroes." The maester tsked. "You must put these dreams aside, they will only break your heart.

I know you don’t know how to love me. I know you’re not built for it.

I can’t decide if I like you or if I think you’re stupid.” She laughed.

Maybe the universe doesn’t naturally bend toward justice either; maybe it’s only the weight of hands and hearts pulling it true, inch by stubborn inch.

As I was saying before we were so rudely interrupted,” Tyrion began, “there is a serious flaw in Littlefinger’s fable. Whatever you may believe of me, Lady Stark, I promise you this—I never bet against my family.

A look like thunder after a lightning strike lit on his face. Fear wound around every inch of his body and squeezed, and the feel of his hands on me sent a chill up my spine. There was something knowing in the way he looked at me. Something pulled at the knots in the net of lies we'd both told.

Then he's here, emerging from the water like some kind of myth, some fabled Ai'oan god, his hand smoothing his wet hair back from his face, his chest and shoulders gleaming with water and moonlight. Behind him, a pale shimmering trail of blue light marks his passage through the water. His wet shorts hang a bit lower on his hips than they usually do, tempting my imagination. He extends the flower, which I take with trembling fingers. (...) He smiles a small, crooked smile, and I think he knows exactly how tightly he's bound my tongue in knots. I suspect fetching me the passionflower was only half his purpose in swimming through the glowing pool.

He was talking about respect. Safety. Protection. They were things no one owed you. And one way or another, you always paid

It was the spot I'd sat every morning, waiting for my father's ship to return, even though he told me it wasn't coming back... it took me two years to believe him.

I’m on the Marigold to crew.” “No, you’re not.” She sighed, getting to her feet. “You’re on the Marigold to find a family.

I should have spent more time thinking about your life than worrying about your death.

An elusive creature, the fabled coincidence.

What truth do these people possess? What proof, damn it! A book of ancient fables? Promises of miracles to come?

Normal’ is a bedtime story—a fable—that humans tell themselves to feel better when faced with overwhelming evidence that most of what’s happening around them is not ‘normal’ at all.

Mira moved into the light like a sleepwalker, leaving Blue behind in the dust, the unused room, the past. She thought of the fabled hundred years that cursed girls like her had slept, and how, after that much time, everything would be covered by a thick blanket of dust, including the princess. The intrepid prince would have to trust that something beautiful was hidden underneath. He'd kiss her and the first color to be revealed would be the chapped pink of her lips. Her eyes went to Freddie, playing his guitar and lit by the sun. She couldn't picture him kissing a girl coated by dust - he was too alive for that. He was golden. And she ... she was covered with death, with her grief over her parents. She'd tried to replace them with dreams, and she'd drifted through life in a haze, her eyes seeking ghosts instead of the world around her. She was already asleep. She had been for a long time.

In clear-cutting, he said, you clear away the natural forest, or what the industrial forester calls "weed trees," and plant all one species of tree in neat straight functional rows like corn, sorghum, sugar beets or any other practical farm crop. You then dump on chemical fertilizers to replace the washed-away humus, inject the seedlings with growth-forcing hormones, surround your plot with deer repellants and raise a uniform crop of trees, all identical. When the trees reach a certain prespecified height (not maturity; that takes too long) you send in a fleet of tree-harvesting machines and cut the fuckers down. All of them. Then burn the slash, and harrow, seed, fertilize all over again, round and round and round again, faster and faster, tighter and tighter until, like the fabled Malaysian Concentric Bird which flies in ever-smaller circles, you disappear up your own asshole.

I’d always wanted to hear him say he loved me. I’d wanted to hear the words so many times. But in that moment, I was suddenly frightened he would. I was terrified to know how badly they would hurt me.

Isn't there a statute of limitation on playing the poor abused victim?

I never stopped trying to save you, so don't you fucking dare stop trying to save yourself.

My mother had loved Saint with a love that could set fire to the sea.

There was something knowing in the way he looked at me. Something that pulled at the knots in the net of lies we’d both told.

Life is a giant, coagulated bowl of suck.

Night fell over the sea, painting the Marigold black except for the white sails stretched against the dark, clouded sky. The stars and moon hid, giving no sign of where the sea ended and the sky began, and I liked the feeling. Like we were floating in the air. The west wind was warm, finding its way onto the ship before it ran back to the wake on the water behind us.

Keep your knife where you can reach it. Never, ever owe anyone anything. Nothing is free. Always construct a lie from a truth. Never, under any circumstances, reveal what or who matters to you.

Down here, in the deep, with the Marigold floating above, it was quiet. No Saint or Zola or Jeval. No secrets or lies or half-truths. Down here, we were only two mortals in an upside-down world.

It caught the wind above me as I untied the lines and pulled. The night sky was black and empty, stars cast across it in swirling sprays. There was no moon, leaving the deck of the ship dark below. I leaned into the mast, letting my weight fall into the ropes, and tipped my head back, feeling the wind rush around me.

Besides, who makes all these silly rules?

If it hadn't been my prison, I might even think it was beautiful.

I hoped he wasn't breathing. I hoped he was dead. But I'd never been that lucky.

It was a map.

Their love has hung above me like the sun, a burning brightness I could survive only if I never looked straight at it, never flew too close.

You were born a prey animal but you don't have to die as one." -Anastasia Bloody Thorn

And I think I’ve loved you since the first time we anchored in Jeval.

Without stories, we’d have even more trouble recognizing what’s real.

A text from Fable and it says one word. Marshmallow

Over the stern, I could see the clouds rolling over the sea towards us. Hungry. I closed my eyes and drew the humid air into my chest. I'd spent my childhood in the face of storms just like her, many of them angrier than this one. It was the reason only the most daring traders sailed the Narrows. And even though I could feel her power in every bone, every muscle, there was something deep inside of me that opened its eyes from sleep when I felt it. It was terrifying, but familiar. As beautiful as it was deadly.

I stood against the wind, watching the movement of the water around the coral islands. It pushed up the shelf gently, and if it was as calm beneath the surface as it was above, I could do the dive in just minutes

Axel and Fable, their father was a woodcutter, and they live in a Candy House? Axel is always hungry, and eats too much candy, and Fable is fond of eating bread. It doesn’t get easier than that to know who they really are.

Hey, it's okay, alright? I'll walk with you, every step. You won't be alone." We might not be able to fix our bullshit stories, but surely we can be less lonely inside them, here at the end. "Just go to sleep. I'm right here.

I am the slave of what I have spoken, but the master of what I conceal.

Courage doesn’t always roar. Sometimes courage is the quiet voice at the end of the day saying, I will try again tomorrow.

In that moment he reminds me of Charm’s parents, or maybe my own: a person whose love is a burdensome thing, a weight dragging always at your ankles.

And no matter where I went, I’d never get home. Because home was a ship that was at the bottom of the sea, where my mother’s bones lay sleeping.

It was a world poised on the top of a knife.

and consequently you are destroyed; while we, on the contrary, bend before the least breath of air, and therefore remain unbroken.

Where you go, I go. I am with you until the end.

When you read The Arabian Nights you accept Islam. You accept the fables woven by generations as if they were by one single author or, better still, as if they had no author. And in fact they have one and none. Something so worked on, so polished by generations is no longer associated with and individual. In Kafka's case, it's possible that his fables are now part of human memory. What happened to Quixote could happen to to them. Let's say that all the copies of Quixote, in Spanish and in translation, were lost. The figure of Don Quixote would remain in human memory. I think that the idea of a frightening trial that goes on forever, which is at the core of The Castle and The Trial (both books that Kafka, of course, never wanted to publish because he knew they were unfinished), is now grown infinite, is now part of human memory and can now be rewritten under different titles and feature different circumstances. Kafka's work now forms a part of human memory.

You're kind and patient and honorable, and yes, maybe those aren't flashy, magical, extraordinary traits. Maybe being all those things does make you a bit ordinary, but the ordinary things are the important things.

However, many a pirate has tried to make his name on the High Seas by searching for famous, long-lost treasures. These include the fabled wreck of the good ship Petunia, the infamous magic stash of the Enchantress of the Northlands, and, of course, the toothbrush collection of Blackjaw Hawkins.

I'm turning away when Prince Harold says, his voice thick and fleshy through his swollen nose, "I don't understand." His eyes are on Primrose and Charm, on the place where their hands are joined together so tightly they look like a single creature. "Well, Harold," I say gently. "They're lesbians.

I'd never been to the Unnamed Sea, but my mother was born there. Her leathered skin and callused hands made her look as if she'd grown up on a ship, but she'd come to the Narrows on her own when she was no more than my age, finding a place on Saint's crew as a dredger and leaving her past in the Unnamed Sea behind. She would wrap her arms around me as we sat up on the mast with our feet dangling, and she would tell me about Bastian, the port city she called home, and the huge ships that sailed those deep water. Once, I asked her if she'd ever go back. If she'd take me there one day. But she only said she'd been born for a different life, and so had I.

What he was saying—the things he told me—was his way of showing me he trusted me. It was also his way of giving me the match. If I wanted to, I could burn him down. But if we were going to do this, I would have to be his safe harbor and he would have to be mine.

Sleeping Beauty is the worst fairy tale, pretty much any way you slice it. It’s aimless and amoral and chauvinist as shit. It’s the fairy tale that feminist scholars cite when they want to talk about women’s passivity in historical narratives. (“She literally sleeps through her own climax,” as my favorite gender studies professor used to say. “Double entendre fully intended.”)... ..Even among the other nerds who majored in folklore, Sleeping Beauty is nobody’s favorite. The romantic girls like Beauty and the Beast; basic girls like Cinderella; goth girls like Snow White. Only the dying girls like Sleeping Beauty.

Who wasn’t either bored or troubled with their own story and only too happy to leap into someone else’s? It further confirmed her motto: Reality sucks. Make-believe rocks.

I warned Harold against him, but he didn’t listen. I think he liked him because their names rhyme, if you want my honest opinion. Kings can be frivolous that way.” Percy

Dusty’s methods I don’t particularly care for, but if he wants to kill a flea with an axe, more power to him.” She

It seemed such an extraordinary notion—that I could set off from home and walk 1,800 miles through woods to Georgia, or turn the other way and clamber over the rough and stony White Mountains to the fabled prow of Mount Katahdin, floating in forest 450 miles to the north in a wilderness few have seen. A little voice in my head said: “Sounds neat! Let’s do it!

It was tradition for every member of a crew to give a copper to the newest member as a show of good faith. I’d seen my father’s crews do the same many times. But in the years since I first set foot on Jeval, I’d never been given anything. Ever. I didn’t bother trying to hold back my tears. They streamed down my face one after the other as I hugged the hat to me. Like a weary bird flying out over the most desolate sea, I finally had a place to land.

There was an ocean of lies dragging behind this ship. They'd killed their dredger and another helmsman's stryker. Whatever they'd done in Sowan was spreading in rumors across the Narrows. And if that wasn't enough they were running side trade under the nose or their own employer.

Loken tried to imagine the future, but the image would not form. Death would wipe them all from history. Not even the great First Captain Ezekyle Abaddon would survive forever. There would be a time when Abaddon no longer waged bloody war across the territories of humanity. Loken sighed. That would be a sad day indeed. Men would cry out for Abaddon’s return, but he would never come. He tried to picture the manner of his own death. Fabled, imaginary combats flashed through his mind. He imagined himself at the Emperor’s side, fighting some great, last stand against an unknown foe. Primarch Horus would be there, of course. He had to be. It wouldn’t be the same without him. Loken would battle, and die, and perhaps even Horus would die, to save the Emperor at the last. Glory. Glory, like he’d never known. Such an hour would become so ingrained in the minds of men that it would be the cornerstone of all that came after. A great battle, upon which human culture would be based. Then, briefly, he imagined another death. Alone, far away from his comrades and his Legion, dying from cruel wounds on some nameless rock, his passing as memorable as smoke. Loken swallowed hard. Either way, his service was to the Emperor, and his service would be true to the end.

She's saying something. My mother's words found me, there in the black. I pinched my eyes closed, her face coming into perfect view One long, dark red braid over her shoulder. Pale gray eyes the color of morning fog and the sea-dragon necklace around her neck as she looked up into the clouds above us. Isolde loved the storms. That night, the bell rang out and my father came for me, pulling me from my hammock bleary-eyed and confused. and when he put me in the rowboat, I screamed for my mother until my throat was raw. The Lark was already half-sunk, disappearing in the water behind us. My mother called it touching the soul of the storm. When she came upon us like that, she was taking us into her hart and letting us see her. She was saying something. And only then would we know what lay within her. Only then would we know who she was.

Jess Pepper's review of the Avalon Strings: 'In a land so very civilized and modern as ours, it is unpopular to suggest that the mystical isle of Avalon ever truly existed. But I believe I have found proof of it right here in Manhattan. To understand my reasoning, you must recall first that enchanting tale of a mist-enshrouded isle where medieval women--descended from the gods--spawned heroic men. Most notable among these was the young King Arthur. In their most secret confessions, these mystic heroes acknowledged Avalon, and particularly the music of its maidens, as the source of their power. Many a school boy has wept reading of Young King Arthur standing silent on the shore as the magical isle disappears from view, shrouded in mist. The boy longs as Arthur did to leap the bank and pilot his canoe to the distant, singing atoll. To rejoin nymphs who guard in the depths of their water caves the meaning of life. To feel again the power that burns within. But knowledge fades and memory dims, and schoolboys grow up. As the legend goes, the way became unknown to mortal man. Only woman could navigate the treacherous blanket of white that dipped and swirled at the surface of the water. And with its fading went also the music of the fabled isle. Harps and strings that heralded the dawn and incited robed maidens to dance evaporated into the mists of time, and silence ruled. But I tell you, Kind Reader, that the music of Avalon lives. The spirit that enchanted knights in chain mail long eons ago is reborn in our fair city, in our own small band of fair maids who tap that legendary spirit to make music as the Avalon Strings. Theirs is no common gift. Theirs is no ordinary sound. It is driven by a fire from within, borne on fingers bloodied by repetition. Minds tormented by a thirst for perfection. And most startling of all is the voice that rises above, the stunning virtuoso whose example leads her small company to higher planes. Could any other collection of musicians achieve the heights of this illustrious few? I think not. I believe, Friends of the City, that when we witnes their performance, as we may almost nightly at the Warwick Hotel, we witness history's gift to this moment in time. And for a few brief moments in the presence of these maids, we witness the fiery spirit that endured and escaped the obliterating mists of Avalon.

But that was where his excitement began to melt into cold anxiety. His dad had been the Gryffindor Seeker, the youngest one in Hogwarts history. The best he, James, could hope for was to match that record. That’s what everyone would expect of him, the first-born son of the famous hero. He remembered the story, told to him dozens of times (although never by his own dad) of how the young Harry Potter had won his first Golden Snitch by virtually jumping off his broom, catching the golden ball in his mouth and nearly swallowing it. The tellers of the tale would always laugh uproariously, delightedly, and if Dad was there, he’d smile sheepishly as they clapped him on the back. When James was four, he found that famed Snitch in a shoe box in the bottom of the dining room hutch. His mum told him it’d been a gift to Dad from the old school headmaster. The tiny wings no longer worked, and the golden ball had a thin coat of dust and tarnish on it, but James was mesmerized by it. It was the first Snitch he had ever seen close up. It seemed both smaller and larger than he’d imagined, and the weight of it in his small hand was surprising. This is the famous Snitch, James thought reverently, the one from the story, the one caught by my dad. He asked his dad if he could keep it, stored in the shoebox when he wasn’t playing with it, in his room. His dad agreed easily, happily, and James moved the shoebox from the bottom of the hutch to a spot under the head of his bed, next to his toy broom. He pretended the dark corner under his headboard was his Quidditch locker. He spent many an hour pretending to zoom and bank over the Quidditch green, chasing the fabled Snitch, in the end, always catching it in a fantastic diving crash, jumping up, producing his dad’s tarnished Snitch for the approval of roaring imaginary crowds.

The cracks grew over him like vines, faster and faster. At first he bucked, whinnying metallic screeches. Then he gradually stilled, looking up at me with frightened glass eyes. He was growing. New, molten glass leeched out between his fissures, cooled and hardened only to crack again and make room for more liquid glass. The gears inside him moaned and creaked, and metal filings gathered at the base of his transparent stomach, only to fly up again and form more joints and chains and gears. Black smoke poured from his nostrils. Soon he was the size of a large dog, then a man, and still he grew and grew until he towered over my bed, as big as any plow horse I’d ever seen. Glass dripped down his flanks like sweat, a few rivulets still glowing with molten heat.