Rebel Of The Sands Quotes

the difference between a rebel and a patriot depends upon who is in power at the moment.

Tell me that and we’ll go. Right now. Save ourselves and leave this place to burn. Tell me that’s how you want your story to go and we’ll write it straight across the sand.

You know, I never believed in fate until I met you... then I started thinking coincidence didn't have near so cruel a sense of humor

The world makes things for each place. Fish for the sea, Rocs for the mountain skies, and girls with sun in their skin and perfect aim for a desert that doesn't let weakness live.

Haven't you ever wanted something so bad that it becomes more than a want? I need to get out of this town. I need it like I need to breathe.

She moved like a storm someone had given steel to.

Jin had told me once there was no arguing against belief. It was a foreign language to logic.

But if knowledge was power, then the unknown was the greatest weakness of immortal things.

Jin always smiled at me like we were both about to be in big trouble and he loved it. The prince smiled like he was forgiving you for it.

I was a desert girl. I thought I knew heat. I was wrong.

I hated the quiet. I could hear my fears that much louder for it.

But then, this was what the desert did to us. It made us dreamers with weapons.

It was damn hard to trust a boy with a smile like that. A smile that made me want to follow him straight to the places he’d told me about and made me sure I shouldn’t at the same time.

I don't mean to worry you and all," I said, trying to keep my voice calm, "but have you noticed that you've been shot?" "Ah." Looking at him closer now, I could see he was clutching the counter to stay upright. "I'd almost forgotten about that.

Once there was a boy from the sea who fell in love with a girl from the desert. [...] But he wondered if a boy from the sea and a girl from the desert could ever survive together. He feared that she might burn him alive or that he might drown her. Until finally he stopped fighting it and set himself on fire for her.

I wouldn't point fingers if I were you. You know what they say: those who point fingers wind up with them broken so badly they point straight back at them. - Shazad

Amani." My eyes flew open. Jin was standing in the gates to Fahali. His face cleared as he saw me, and he ran toward me, relief written all over him. "Thank God." "You don't believe in God," I said. It came out half a croak just as he closed the last of the space between us with a kiss.

But even if the desert forgot a thousand and one of our stories, it was enough that they would tell of us at all. That long after our deaths, men and women sitting around a fire would hear that once, long ago, before we were all just stories, we lived.

I was born the same year as ten brothers and a dozen sisters. Being born doesn’t make a single soul important. But you were important when I met you, that girl who dressed as a boy, who taught herself to shoot true, who dreamed and saved and wanted so badly. That girl was someone who had made herself matter. She was someone I liked. What the hell has happened since you came here that she is so worthless to you? What’s happened that only my brother’s approval and some power you never needed before can make you important? That’s why I didn’t want to bring you into this revolution, Amani. Because I didn’t want to watch the Blue-Eyed Bandit get unmade by a prince without a kingdom.

We would be stories long after we were gone. Imperfect, inaccurate stories. Stories that could never even come close to reality

And then came that grin. I may have traitor eyes, but Jin had the sort of smile that would turn over whole empires to the enemy-that made me feel like I suddenly understood him exactly, even though I knew nothing about him. The kind that made me feel like if I was on the right side of it, we could do anything together

God, I knew I was in trouble even then. I was running for my life, bleeding on your floor, and all I could think about was kissing you and damn if we got caught.

She was all fire and gunpowder, and her finger was always on a trigger

What else was I meant to do? Leave you to die?" "You might've." "I wouldn't have.

The trouble with belief is that it's not the same as truth.

I swear to God, if he's hurt you, Amani, I will make him suffer for it." "You don't believe in God." "Then I swear to you.

You and I, we’re going to get tomorrow, and the next night, and a thousand nights after that. For now, it can be enough that I am yours.” He kissed me gently. “All that I am I give to you, and all that I have is yours.

My mother had raised me on a thousand stories of girls who were saved by the Djinn, princesses rescued from towers, peasant girls rescued from poverty. Turned out, stories were just stories. I was on my own.

She turned to Jin now, sprawled by the fire, his hat pulled over his eyes. “I can tell you’re awake. Are you coming with us?” He sighed, tipping his hat backward. “Yeah, yeah. Just trying to get some sleep before going to near certain death.

You're right." He cut me off. "I never understood this country. I never understood why he chose to leave everything else behind and stay for this. Not until I met you." I felt like he'd pushed me, like I was falling and I needed him to reel those words back in to keep me standing straight. "You /are/ this country, Amani." He spoke more quietly now. "More alive than anything ought to be in this place. All fire and gunpowder, with one finger always on the trigger.

I promised them that if they got my son out, I would show this city how a desert girl dies. - Shira

I thought of Shazad. My sister in arms. We had recognised something in each other the first time we met and we were tied. By more than blood.

I wasn’t up to no good. Then again, I wasn’t exactly up to no bad neither.

Like I was about to say before getting interrupted, it's a modern age. I don't need a lot of muscle to pull a trigger.' ... 'Did you just shoot someone?' 'I got us hired, if that's what you're asking.

I believe money and guns get you a lot further in a war than magic these days.

Ahmed would tell me that an eye for an eye would make the whole world blind. Shazad would tell me that was why you had to stab people through both eyes the first time around.

The stories of Izman had belonged to my mother. But the world was a lot bigger than my mother ever told me. And it occurred to me once or twice that I could go anywhere in it.

And suddenly, the once-nameless boy knew he didn't want a stolen name, tarnished with use. What he wanted desperately was a name good enough to give to this girl.

These ideas could make men shout for rebellion even when it meant they would hang for it.

I seemed to still be alive. Which was unexpected. I'd feel good about it when I stopped retching my insides up.

tomorrow the sun would rise on the first day of a new desert.

Hundreds of prayer cloths were tied around rocks and stakes all the way up the mountain, but God had failed here.

We contained our own stories. A thousand tiny parts of the story would die with us.

Arms around my waist caught me before I could hit the ground. "I've got you," Jin said in my ear. "Let go; I've got you.

The Rebel Prince will rise again. He will bring a new dawn. A new desert.

But there, standing at the entrance to the garden, wearing a khalat the colour of a breaking dawn and that faint smile that meant she knew she was outsmarting someone, was Shazad.

For you I would flood the desert. For my sister... I would set the sea on fire

Is there a reason you keep coming back injured when I leave you for five seconds, or is it---" His voice carried too loud, and I clapped a hand over his mouth, shutting him up. "Don't flatter yourself," I said quietly. "I'm always getting injured when you're around, too.

Besides, if I let everyone I found annoying die, we'd be mighty thin on allies.

I'd near forgotten what it felt like to be a girl in Miraji. I was inconspicuous, but not the same way I'd been as a boy. Not because I was the same as everyone else. Because I didn't matter. Nobody in Miraji had ever thought enough of a girl to imagine I might be a spy.

What do you think happens" I said instead. "When we die?" Jin didn't believe in gods. He didn't believe in heavens or hells or worlds after. Just in this world. Just in now. Jin traced my face, like he was trying to remember it. "I think they burn us and we become dust and ash." He ran a finger across the edge of my lips. "And I think that the dust that was me will spend until the end of time trying to get as close as possible the the dust that was you out in that vast desert.

Her wish was simple: that you should live. - Bahadur, to Amani, about her mother.

And the storyteller began.

I had a few things to say about being dragged to a so-called Free City tied up like a goat on a spit, but even I knew I was better off not running my mouth just now.

I don't mean to worry you and all... but have you noticed you've been shot?' 'Ah... I'd almost forgotten about that.

And just like that, everyone was looking at me. If I'd known I was doomed to get this much attention, I might've brushed my hair.

You're wrong, you know. I'm not with you because of who you became. I fell in love with you when I was bleeding under a counter at the dead end of the desert and you saved my life. Back when we were both who we used to be.

God above, you’re beautiful,’ he breathed. ‘You don’t believe in God,’ I reminded him, my voice low. ‘Right now, I think I just might.

He feared that she might burn him alive or that he might drown her. Until finally he stopped fighting it and set himself on fire for her.

It was a bad idea to play chicken with someone who'd known you your whole life. Nobody came out a winner.

for only those whose days were numbered counted them.

I'm not good at losing people, Amani, and you know I don't give a damn about this country." The rest of him was still now, something solid to hang on to. But his fingers were sliding into my hair, making me shiver. "I give a damn about you and you are this place. I thought I had to do without you if you were so determined to leave the world. But then you were gone and I would have torn the desert apart looking for you.

My aunt Safiyah might be blood, but Jin I knew. And I didn’t want to leave him. He made the world bigger. I wanted to go to the countries he’d been to. And more than anything I wanted him to ask me to go with him. But we were running out of time together.

I had just interrupted one of the Sultan's councils to decide the outcome of the ceasefire and the fate of our whole country, with a dead duck. I wondered if this was what would cost me my head.

I did this to stay alive. Because you are a vicious, stupid, impotent man. - Shira, to Kadir

So are you planning on stealing all our guns, or do you think maybe you only need one per hand? - Ahmed

We were sailing on a sea of sand.

There's no such thing as just a story.

It was damn hard to trust a boy with a smile like that.

He held out a foreign-looking sword to Shazad. "Are you as good as Amani says you are?" "No, I'm even better." Shazad grabbed the blade out of his hand.

Stories were written by the winners.

Until there was a girl. A girl called the Blue-Eyed Bandit, who had been made in the sands and sharpened by the desert and who burned with all of its fire. And for the first time the Foreign Prince understood what it was that his brother loved in this desert.

The tales would be imperfect; the legends would be incomplete. And each and every one of us standing in the garden that night would take an entire universe of stories with us when we died, the accounts of every small moment that did not seem grand enough to storytellers, which would disappear in smoke when our bodies were burned.

My knuckles skimmed over the edges of the sun tattooed over his heart. That was the last thing I noticed before I kissed him. His jaw tensed in surprise for a moment; his hand gripped my arm hard enough to hurt. And then his body was flush against mine, pushing me back against the wall of the train. I was a desert girl. I thought I knew heat. I was wrong

The truth is I had no idea what I was doing when it came to you, Amani. I tried to leave you in Dustwalk because I didn't want to drag you into my brother's war. I came back for you because I didn't want to see you die at the hands of my other brother. But either way, I was bound to wind up doing one or the other. Just depended on which one." His hand came up like he was going to reach for me but dropped to his side instead. "I was glad in Sazi when I saw you'd gone because it meant you'd escaped on your own path, and I was glad when you took the compass because it gave me a reason to go after you. And yes, I lied to keep you out of Izman because I was afraid someone would know what you were and you'd get snapped up and sold to the Sultan. And I steered you toward Dassama figuring there was a chance I might be able to deliver you to the sea and get you out of this country before it killed you.

What would I possibly know - I've only been stationed in the mountains of Iliaz for half a decade. I only heard Rocs screaming every night while you were still sleeping in the harem by your mother. But you know better, I'm sure.

You almost died," Mahdi said again, like we might be too stupid to understand. "You say that like it's the first time I've ever had a gun pointed at me," I retorted as Shazad rolled her eyes. "It's not even the first time this month.

I put a knife in your hand and your first instinct was to stab me." "You tried to stab me first," I objected without thinking.

For a second it looked like a mortal horse. The next it was pure sand. Shifting from bright gold to violent red, fire and sun in a windswept desert.

I’m so sorry, Noorsham,” I said. And then I punched him in the face.

I called the desert into a storm.

Ahmed looked shocked, his hands digging into my arms. 'But you love him,' he said softly. 'You love him, and you should save him. That' what people do with those they love, Amani -- they save them.' No iT wasn't. Sam had taught me that. Great love stories ended in death. All stories ended in death sooner or later. Ours was ending sooner.

We all knew the stories. Djinn who fell in love with worthy princesses and gave them all of their hearts’ wishes. Pretty girls who lured Nightmares straight onto men’s blades. Brave merchants’ daughters who caught Buraqi and rode them to the ends of the earth. They were drawn to us, but also vulnerable to us. We could turn them into flesh and blood.

But the storytellers would never know that. Even if people had known the truth, they wouldn't have been interested in telling it. Flowers pouring from Windows like falling stars made a better tale.

The night was screams, and the smell of gunpodwer, and my gun snapping shut with a fresh round in the chamber.

They both die tragically at the end. That's what happens in all great love stories.

Legends were never what you expected when you saw them up close.

He dared to fight because his destiny was to die.

You can go to civilisation or go to hell, for all I care.' And it felt like the sand was stretching around my feet until that was all there was in the world, until Izman crept further and further away. 'I'm not leaving him for dead.

I'd once asked Jin if the sand sea was like the real sea. He'd given me that knowing smile he used to use when he knew something I didn't. Before I stripped all his secrets away and that smile became mine.

Here’s a tip for you.” He was close to me now, close as he had been when he kissed me, or when I kissed him. “Don’t try to hit a man in the face when he’s looking straight into your eyes. You’ve got traitor eyes, Bandit.” I drove my other fist into his gut hard enough that my knuckles popped. Jin doubled over, coughing. “Thanks for the tip.

there was no arguing against belief. It was a foreign language to logic.

I hadn’t thought Jin shared anything with this brother, but the aversion to shirts seemed to be a family trait.

I barged through the palace, dripping a trail of blood behind me as I held the dead bird by the neck.

Well, in this case, your friend's finest clothes,' Shazad said. Friends. The simple word grabbed my attention. I'd been shedding friends since Tamid. Shazad must've caught my hesitation. 'I have other khalats. If you don't like it,' she said quickly, pushing a loose strand of hair back behind her ear like she was nervous, only that was impossible.

He must've heard we were on our way. But I had the feeling iT wasn't the News of our numbers or our weapons that made him flee. It was the news that the rebel prince had returned from the dead. We didn't even have to fight with the tale of Ahmed preceding us. That was the power of a legend.

Gentlemen,' he said dramatically as he rose, kicking his chair back out of the way, 'your infidelity leaves me no choice but to fold this hand. But I Will return hen I've had Some luck rub off on me.' He winked widely, pulling me tight against him by the waist. Thumbscrews. The way I murdered him was going to include thumbscrews.

This revolution was a legend in the making. The kind of tale that sprawled out long before me and far beyond my reach. The sort of epic that was told over and over to explain how the world was never the same after this handful of people lived and fought and won or died trying. And after it happened, the story seemed somehow inevitable. Like the world was waiting to be changed, needing to be saved, and the players in the tale were all plucked out of their lives and moved into places exactly where they needed to be, like pieces on a board, just to make this story come true. But it was wilder and more terrifying and intoxicating, and more uncertain, than I’d ever thought. And I could be part of it. If I wanted to. It was getting way too late to rip myself out of this story now, or to rip it out of me. “Where

Once a rebel, always a rebel. You can't help being one. You can't deny that. And it's best to be a rebel so as to show 'em it don't pay to try to do you down. Factories and labour exchanges and insurance offices keep us alive and kicking - so they say - but they're booby-traps and will suck you under like sinking-sands if you're not careful. Factories sweat you to death, labour exchanges talk you to death, insurance and income tax offices milk money from your wage packets and rob you to death. And if you're still left with a tiny bit of life in your guts after all this boggering about, the army calls you up and you get shot to death. And if you're clever enough to stay out of the army you get bombed to death. Ay, by God, it's a hard life if you don't weaken, if you don't stop that bastard government from grinding your face in the muck, though there ain't much you can do about it unless you start making dynamite to blow their four-eyed clocks to bits.

America Although she feeds me bread of bitterness, And sinks into my throat her tiger’s tooth, Stealing my breath of life, I will confess I love this cultured hell that tests my youth. Her vigor flows like tides into my blood, Giving me strength erect against her hate, Her bigness sweeps my being like a flood. Yet, as a rebel fronts a king in state, I stand within her walls with not a shred Of terror, malice, not a word of jeer. Darkly I gaze into the days ahead, And see her might and granite wonders there, Beneath the touch of Time’s unerring hand, Like priceless treasures sinking in the sand.