Kristin Cashore Quotes

I'm not going to wear a red dress," she said. "It would look stunning, My Lady," she called. She spoke to the bubbles gathered on the surface of the water. "If there's anyone I wish to stun at dinner, I'll hit him in the face.

When a monster stopped behaving like a monster, did it stop being a monster? Did it become something else?

How absurd it was that in all seven kingdoms, the weakest and most vulnerable of people - girls, women - went unarmed and were taught nothing of fighting, while the strong were trained to the highest reaches of their skill.

Sit, Your High Majestic Lord Princes," she said. She yanked a chair from the table and sat herself down. "You're in fine temper," Raffin said. "Your hair is blue," Katsa snapped back.

What are you grinning at?" Katsa demanded for the third or fourth time. "Is the ceiling about to cave in on my head or something? You look like we're both on the verge of an enormous joke." "Katsa, only you would consider the collapse of the ceiling a good joke.

Great! He has indigestion, so let's torture him with cake.

Perhaps I can stay by the fire and mend your socks and scream if I hear any strange noises.

It seems better to me for a child to have these skills and never use them, than not have them and one day need them," she said.

There will be no yelling at people who are bleeding themselves to unconsciousness.

You're the queen, and it's the queen's house, and whatever Brigan may accomplish, he's highly unlikely ever to be queen.

She knew he was angry, but she couldn't stop laughing. "Forgive me, Po. I was only trying to get your attention." "And I suppose it never occurs to you to start small. If I told you my roof needed rebuilding, you'd start by knocking down the house.

I'll teach you how to defend yourself, how to maim a man. We can use Po as a model.' 'Wonderful,' Po said. 'It's quite boring really, the way you beat me to death with your hands and feet, Katsa. It'll be refreshing to have you come at me with a knife.

I wouldn't marry Giddon to save my life," Katsa said. "Not even to save yours." "Well." Raffin's eyes were full of laughter. "I'd leave that part out.

I wanted you to go away, because it hurts to be with you when I can't see you.

But that's how memory works," Bitterblue said quietly. "Things disappear without your permission, then come back again without your permission." And sometimes they came back incomplete and warped.

Bacon improved things dramatically.

She shivered as he left her to go to the fire, and find water and cloths. He leaned into the light, and brightness and shadows moved across his body. He was beautiful. She admired him, and he flashed a grin at her. Almost as beautiful as you are conceited, she thought at him, and he laughed out loud.

Still doing your best to ruin the horses, I see.

You won't even take your bow? Are you planning to throttle a moose with your bare hands, then?" "I've a knife in my boot," she said, and then wondered, for a moment, if she could throttle a moose with her bare hands.

Are you determined to leave me in this world to live without my heart?

I don't want to love you if you're only going to die.

All right," Clara said. "We have our swordsman, so let's get moving. Brigan, could you attempt, at least, to make yourself presentable? I know this is a war, but the rest of us are trying to pretend it's a party.

Katsa sat in the darkness of the Sunderan forest and understood three truths. She loved Po. She wanted Po. And she could never be anyone's but her own.

In the end, Leck should have stuck to his lies. For it was the truth he almost told that killed him.

It was a hurting tune, resigned, a cry of heartache for all in the world that fell apart. As ash rose black against the brilliant sky, Fire's fiddle cried out for the dead, and for the living who stay behind to say goodbye.

He laughed. "I know you're teasing me. And you should know I'm not easily humiliated. You may hunt for my food, and pound me every time we fight, and protect me when we're attacked, if you like. I'll thank you for it.

Mercy was more frightening than murder, because it was harder.

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.

Katsa and Po were trying to drown each other and, judging from their hoots of laughter, enjoying it immensely.

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?

Find something useful to do with your morning,' she thought to him as she neared her chambers. 'Do something heroic in front of an audience. Knock a child into a river while no one's looking and then rescue him.

Well then," Roen said briskly, "are you sleeping?" "Yes." "Come now. A mother can tell when her son lies. Are you eating?" "No," Brigan said gravely. "I've not eaten in two months. It's a hunger strike to protest the spring flooding in the south." "Gracious," Roen said, reaching for the fruit bowl. "Have an apple, dear.

It was a very hard thing to have crushed the heart, and the hopes, of a friend.

The more I see and hear, the more I realize how much I don't know.

Your brand of comfort bears some similarity to your tactical offense.

Katsa didn't think a person should thank her for not causing pain. Causing joy was worthy of thanks, and causing pain worthy of disgust. Causing neither was neither, it was nothing, and nothing didn't warrant thanks.

I'd thought once, actually, of taking your mind, if you asked. I'd thought I could help you fall asleep at night." He opened his mouth to say something. Shut it again. His face closed for a moment, his unreadable mask falling into place. He spoke softly. "But that wouldn't be fair; for after I slept you'd be left awake, with no one to help you sleep.

Something caught in her throat at this second thanks, when she'd threatened him so brutally. When you're a monster, she thought, you are thanked and praised for not behaving like a monster. She would like to restrain from cruelty and receive no admiration for it.

Skye kissed her forehead. "You saved my life." Katsa smiled. "You Lienid are very outward in your affection." "I'm going to name my firstborn child after you." Katsa laughed at that. "For the child's sake, wait for a girl. Or even better, wait until all your children are older and give my name to whichever is the most troublesome and obstinate." Skye burst into laughter and hugged her, and Katsa returned his embrace. And realized that quite without her intending it, her guarded heart had made another friend.

It's hard to wake from a nightmare when the nightmare is real.

I'm not such a bad fighter myself," Skye said. Po exploded with laughter. "Oh, fight him, Katsa. Please fight him. I can't imagine a more entertaining diversion.

What she really loved was to hang over the edge and watch the bow of the ship slice through the waves. She loved it especially when the waves were high and the ship rose and fell, or when it was snowing and the flakes stung her face.

His name was Death. It was pronounced to rhyme with "teeth", but Bitterblue liked to mispronounce it by accident on occassion.

I have no doubt that you are more than capable of bringing the Monsean queen and my son and the rest of my sons and a hundred Nanderan kittens through an onslaught of howling raiders if you chose to.

But you're better than I am, Katsa. And it doesn't humiliate me. It humbles me. But it doesn't humiliate me.

A monster that refused, sometimes, to behave like a monster. When a monster stopped behaving like a monster, did it stop being a monster? Did it become something else?

Dear Brigan, she thought to herself. People want incongruous, impossible things. Horses do, too.

The only way for you to keep your mind straight is to run from those who would confuse you.

I was doing science," Giddon said. "He threw a bean." "I was testing the impact of a bean upon water," Bann said. "That's not even a real thing." "Perhaps I'll test the impact of a bean upon your beautiful white shirt.

Every configuration of people is an entirely new universe unto itself.

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.

While I was looking the other way your fire went out Left me with cinders to kick into dust What a waste of the wonder you were In my living fire I will keep your scorn and mine In my living fire I will keep your heartache and mine At the disgrace of a waste of a life

You’re crying.” “I’m not.” “Right,” he said mildly. “I suppose you got rained on.

I hear you're supposed to be good at manipulating people. Try a little harder to make me like you, all right? I'm the queen. Your life will be nicer if I like you.

She wanted to cause him pain for taking a place in her heart she wouldn't have given him if she'd known the truth.

Why does everybody throw every troublesome thing into the river?

Only a person with the true heart of a dictionary-writer would be lying in bed, three days after being stabbed in the gut, worrying about his P's.

I wish people would stop hitting Po," whispered Bitterblue. "Well," Giddon said. "Yes. I'm hoping Skye is following my model. Punch Po; go on a long trip; feel better; come back and make up.

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.

He considered her seriously. "Well. And that's easy," he said. "My Grace will protect me from him, And I'll protect you. You'll be safe with me, Katsa.

You know,” he said, “I wish you could see this cave.” “What’s it like?” He paused. “It’s...beautiful, really.” “Tell me.” And so Po described to Katsa what hid in the blackness of the cave; and outside, the world awaited them.

Then come here," he said, a bit redundantly, as he had already pulled her with him into an armchair and curled her up in his arms. "Tell me what I can do to help you feel better." Fire looked into his quiet eyes, touched his dear, familiar face, and considered the question. Well. I always like when you kiss me. "Do you?" You're good at it. "Well," he said. "That's lucky, because I'll always be kissing you.

I thought it was supposed to be impossible to sneak up on you. Eyes of a hawk and ears of a wolf and all.

...when truths disappear, they leave behind blank spaces, and that is also dangerous.

It's not reasonable to love people who are only going to die," she said. Nash thought about that for a moment, stroking Small's neck with great deliberation, as if the fate of the Dells depended on that smooth, careful movement. "I have two responses to that," He said at last. "First, everyone is going to die. Second, love is stupid. It has nothing to do with reason. You love whomever you love. Against all reason I loved my father." He looked at her keenly. "Did you love yours?" "Yes," she whispered. He stroked Small's nose. "I love you," he said, "even knowing you'll never have me. And I love my brother, more than I ever realized before you came along. You can't help whom you love, Lady. Nor can you know what it's liable to cause you to do.

He said, ‘The moment I began to love you was the moment when you saw your fiddle smashed on the ground, and you turned away from me and cried against your horse. Your sadness is one of the things that makes you beautiful to me. Don’t you see that? I understand it. It makes my own sadness less frightening.

It hurt her eyes, almost, Ror City; and it didn't surprise her that Po should come from a place that shone.

I've liked you better when Katsa's around,' Giddon said. 'She's so rotten to me that you seem positively pleasant in contrast.

Alone in the forest, Katsa sat on a stump and cried. 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.

Do you understand? I don't want you to do a thing if you don't understand it.

He made her drunk, this man made her drunk; and every time his eyes flashed into hers she could not breathe.

Everybody was strange. In a fit of frustration, she scratched out strange and wrote the word CRACKPOTS in big letters.

If her enemies were Brigan's friends and her friends were Brigan's enemies, then the two of them could walk through the world arm in arm and never be hit by arrows again.

Your eyes are beautiful," he said, and she felt warm suddenly, warm in the sun that dappled through the treetops and rested on them in patches.

Teddy grinned again. 'Truths are dangerous,' he said. -'Then why are you writing them in a book?' -'To catch them between the pages,' said Teddy, 'and trap them before they disappear.' -'If they're dangerous, why not let them disappear?' -'Because when truths disappear, they leave behind blank spaces, and that is also dangerous.

You have a wound too, Papa." Hanna took Brigan's left hand, which was wrapped in a bandage, and inspected it. "Did you throw the first punch?

Brigan," she said, annoyed that he had not understood. "I’ll always be beautiful. Look at me. I have one hundred and sixty two bug bites, and has it made me any less beautiful? I’m missing two fingers and I have scars all over, but does anyone care? No! It just makes me more interesting! I’ll always be like this, stuck in this beautiful form, and you’ll have to deal with it." He seemed to sense that she expected a grave response, but for the moment, he was incapable. "I suppose it’s a burden I must bear," he said, grinning.

Could you attempt, at least, to make yourself presentable? I know this is a war, but the rest of us are trying to pretend it's a party.

Have you ridden over anyone you shouldn't?

You're in fine temper," Raffin said. "Your hair is blue," she snapped back.

To Garan's credit, the treatment of Dellian prisoners did change after that. One particularly laconic man, after a session in which Fire learned positively nothing, thanked her for it specifically. "Best dungeons I ever been in," he said, chewing on a toothpick. "Wonderful," Garan grumbled when he had gone. "We'll grow a reputation for our kindness to lawbreakers.

I love you," he said. "You're more dear to my heart than I ever knew anyone else can be. And I've made you cry; and there I'll stop." She was crying, but not because of his words. It was because of a certainty she refused to consider while she sat before him.

She found him standing before the water staring unseeing at its frozen surface. He was shivering. She watched him doubtfully for a moment. 'Po,' she said to his back, where’s your coat?' 'Where’s yours?' She moved to stand beside him. 'I’m warm.' He tilted his head to her. 'If you’re warm and I’m coatless, there’s only one friendly thing for you to do.' 'Go back and get your coat for you?' He smiled. Reaching out to her, he pulled her close against him. Katsa wrapped her arms around him, surprised, and tried to rub some warmth into his shivering shoulders and back. 'That’s it exactly,' Po said. 'You must keep me warm.' She laughed and held him tighter.

Madlen: 'It's a relief to me, Lady Queen, that in your own pain, you take no interest in hurting yourself.' Bitterblue: 'Why would I? Why should I? It's foolish. I would like to kick the people who do it.' Madlen: 'That would, perhaps, be redundant, Lady Queen.

She looked at him then, but his image blurred behind tears that swelled into her eyes. She must leave. She must leave this room, because she wanted to hit him, as she had sworn she never would do. She wanted to cause him pain for taking a place in her heart that she wouldn't have given him if she'd known the truth. "You lied to me," she said. She turned and ran from the room.

He held up a finger and went to the hallway, where he tripped over Blotchy, and then over the two monster cats madly pursuing Blotchy. Swearing, he leaned over the landing and called to the guard that unless the kingdom fell to war or his daughter was dying, he better not be interrupted until further notice.

There is nothing unnatural in this world," he said. "An unnatural thing is a thing that could never happen in nature. I happened. I am natural, and the things I want are natural. The power of your mind, and your beauty, even when you've been drugged in the bottom of a boat for two weeks, covered in grime and your face purple and green - your unnatural beauty is natural. Nature is horrifying.

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—

She knew her nature. She would recognize it if she came face-to-face with it. It would be a blue-eyed green-eyed monster, wolflike and snarling. A vicious beast that struck out at friends in uncontrollable anger, a killer that offered itself as a vessel of the king's fury. But then it was a strange monster, for beneath its exterior it was frightened and sickened by its own violence. It chastised itself for its savagery. And sometimes it had no heart for violence and rebelled against it utterly. A monster that refused, sometimes, to behave like a monster. When a monster stopped behaving like a monster , did it stop being a monster? Did it become something else? Perhaps she wouldn't recognize her own nature after all.

It was when she returned to him, chilled & clearheaded, that it happened. He sat against the tree, his knees bent & his head in his hands. His shoulders slumped. Tired, unhappy. Something tender caught in her breath at the sight of him. And then he raised his eyes and looked at her, and she saw what she had not seen before. She gasped. His eyes were beautiful. His face was beautiful to her in every way, and his shoulders and hands. And his arms that hung over his knees, and his chest that was not moving, because he held his breath as he watched her. And the heart in his chest. This friend. How had she not seen this before? How had she not seen him? She was blind. And then tears choked her eyes, for she had not asked for this. She had not asked for this beautiful man before her, with something hopeful in his eyes that she did not want.

Through an arrow loop in the wall she saw a familiar horse and rider tearing across the camp toward the healing rooms. Brigan pulled up at Nash's feet and dropped from the saddle. The two brothers threw their arms around each other and embraced hard. Shortly thereafter he stepped into the healing rooms and leaned in the doorway, looking across at her quietly. Brocker's son with the gentle gray eyes. She abandoned all pretense of decorum and ran at him.

She glanced up at him, and in that moment he pulled his wet shirt over his head. She forced her mind blank. Blank as a new sheet of paper, blank as a starless sky. He came to the fire and crouched before it. He rubbed the water from his bare arms and flicked it in the flames. She stared at the goose and sliced his drumstick carefully and thought of the blankest expression on the blankest face she could possibly imagine. It was a chilly evening; she thought about that. The goose would be delicious, they must eat as much of it as possible, they must not waste it; she thought about that.

Raff,' Katsa said, 'your problem is that your heart's not in it. We need to find something to strengthen your defensive resolve. What if you pretended he's trying to smash your favorite medicinal plant?' 'The rare blue safflower,' Bann suggested. 'Yes,' Katsa said gamely, 'pretend he's after your snaffler.' 'Bann would never come after my rare blue safflower,' Raffin said distinctly. 'The very notion is absurd.' 'Pretend he's not Bann. Pretend he's your father.

They sat on the outcropping of stone and at bread and fruit. Kasta watched the long grass moving around them. The wind pushed it, attacked it, struck it in one place than another. It rose and fell again. It flowed, like water. "Is this what the sea is like?" Kasta asked, and they both turned to her, surprised. "Does the sea move the way this grass moves?" “It's like the sea,” she said. Giddon’s eyes on her were incredulous. “What? Is it such a strange thing to say?” “It’s a strange thing for you to say.” He shook his head. He gathered their bread and fruit, then rose. “The Lienid fighter is filling your mind with romantic notions.

But all I feel is impatience, fury for the opposition I anticipate and the lies I'm going to have to tell to make it happen, and frustration that I can't even take a walk without them sending someone to hover. Attack me," she said. "I beg your pardon, Lady Queen?" "You should attack me, and we'll see what he does. He's probably quite bored--it'll be a relief to him." "Mightn't he run me through with his sword?" "Oh." Bitterblue chuckled. "Yes, I suppose he might. That would be a shame." "I'm gratified that you think so," said Giddon dryly.

Raffin appeared again, a floor above her, on the balconied passageway that ran past his workrooms. He leaned over the railing and called down to her. "Kat!" "What is it?" "You look lost . Have you forgotten the way to your rooms?" "I'm stalling." "How long will you be? I'd like to show you a couple of my new discoveries." "I've been told to make myself pretty for dinner." He grinned. "Well in that case, you'll be ages." His face dissolved into laughter, and she tore a button from one of her bags an hurled it at him. He squealed and dropped to the floor, and the button hit the wall right where he'd been standing. When he peeked back over the railing, she stood in the courtyard with her hands on her hips, grinning. "I missed on purpose," she said. "Show off! Come if you have time." He waved, and turned into his rooms.

He was handsome, like Po, and confident, like Po, and so much more authoritative in his bearing than Po could ever be. But - this Katsa came gradually to understand - he was not drunk on his power. He might never dream of helping a sailor to haul a rope, but he would stand with the sailor interestedly while the sailor hauled the rope, and ask him questions about the rope, about his work, his home, his mother and father, his cousin who spent a year once in the lakes of Nander. It struck Katsa that there was a thing she'd never encountered: a king who looked at his people, instead of looking over their heads, a king who saw outside himself.

Fire's tears were real now, and there was no helping them, for there was no time. Everything was moving too fast. She crossed the room to him, put her arms around him, clung to him, turning her face to the side, learning all at once that it was awkward to show a person all of one's love when one's nose was broken. His arms came around her tightly, his breath short and hard against her hair. He held on to the silk of her hair and she pressed herself against him until her panic calmed to something desperate, but bearable. Yes, she thought to him, understanding now what he'd been about to ask. If you die in the war, I'll keep Hanna in my heart. I promise I won't leave her.

It's not reasonable to love people who are only going to die," she said. Nash thought about that for a moment, stroking Small's neck with great deliberation, as if the fate of the Dells depended on that smooth, careful movement. "I have two responses to that," he said finally. "First, everyone's going to die. Second, love is stupid. It has nothing to do with reason. You love whomever you love. Against all reasons I loved my father." He looked at her keenly. "Did you love yours?" "Yes," she whispered. He stroked Small's nose. "I love you," he said, "even knowing you'll never have me. And I love my brother, more than I ever realized before you came along. You can't help whom you love, Lady. Nor can you know what it's liable to cause you to do." She made a connection then. Surprised she sat back from him and studied his face, soft with shadows and light. She saw a part of him she hadn't seen before. "You came to me for lessons to guard your mind," she said, "and you stopped asking me to marry you, both at the same time. You did those things out of love for your brother." "Well" he said, looking a bit sheepishly at the floor. "I also took a few swings at him, but that's neither here nor there." "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.

Uncle," she said. "Let me explain what will happen the instant one of your men makes a move toward me. Let's say, for instance, one of your archers lets an arrow fly. You've not come to many of my practices, Uncle. You haven't seen me dodge arrows; but your archers have. If one or your archers releases an arrow, I'll drop to the floor. The arrow will doubtless hit one of your guards. The sword and the dagger of that guard will be in my hands before anyone in the room has time to realize what's happened. A fight will break out with the guards; but only seven or eight of them can surround me at once, Uncle, and seven or eight is nothing to me. As I kill the guards I'll take their daggers and begin throwing them into the hearts of your archers, who of course will have no sighting on me once the brawl with the guards has broken out. I'll get out of the room alive, Uncle, but most of the rest of you will be dead. Of course, this is only what will happen if I wait for one of your men to make a move. I could move first. I could attack a guard, steal his dagger, and hurl it into your chest this instant.