Sharon Shinn > Quotes

“A truth that no one knows is still the truth.”
― Sharon Shinn, Jenna Starborn

“Do you love me?" he asked.
I fell silent.
"For the rest of it is glitter and noise," he said. "At the heart of it all is love. You make that choice, and you go forward from there.”
― Sharon Shinn, Summers at Castle Auburn

“We cannot go backward. We cannot erase time and events. Bit we can go forward, hand in hand, hope in our hearts and love lighting our way.”
― Sharon Shinn, Jenna Starborn

“Love is a popular romantic notion that leads to nothing but its own brand of misery.”
― Sharon Shinn, Jenna Starborn

“Yes, Jenna, I love you with all my heart. And with my atoms and molecules and electrons and whatever further breakdown you require. ”
― Sharon Shinn, Jenna Starborn

“If there is no god, what is left but science? What is left to endow us with any grace? You can tell me the chemical makeup of my skin and my brain, but how can you explain away my soul? And if there is no god to watch over me, chastise me, grieve for me, rejoice for me, make me fear, and make me wonder, what am I but a collection of metals and liquids with nothing to celebrate about my daily living?”
― Sharon Shinn, The Alleluia Files

“And you're not leaving," she said. "Promise me."

It was as if she had asked him to promise to keep breathing, to notice sunshine, to permit the spinning of the earth. What choice did he have? Even if he left her, she would be camped in his heart, an insistent and willful presence. She would match her strides to his on any journey he ever took; she would lie beside him on any bed.

Amalie, he said, "that's the easiest promise I've ever had to make.”
― Sharon Shinn, Reader and Raelynx

“A truth comes out when it must;
A dream comes true when it will.
Though the world turn to ash and dust
A secret’s a secret still.”
― Sharon Shinn, The Safe-Keeper's Secret

“My love for you is elemental and immutable, and it will sustain me until I die.”
― Sharon Shinn, Jenna Starborn

“He leaned upon her as if there was no other support anywhere in the world, and she held him as if she would undertake no other task for all eternity.”
― Sharon Shinn, Angelica

“Are you asking me if there is a god?' he said, still in that soft voice. 'All I can say is, I believe there is. I feel him when I sing. He has responded to my prayers countless times. He guides my actions and he dwells in my heart. I know he is there.”
― Sharon Shinn, Archangel

“I was Amazement--I was Desire--I was Ecstasy and Rapture and the slightest bit of Greed.”
― Sharon Shinn, Jenna Starborn

“Everybody's afraid of love, because love is what hurts the most.”
― Sharon Shinn, Archangel

“Sometimes we become what we see. Sometimes we take what we see and make it the model for what we refuse to become.”
― Sharon Shinn, Summers at Castle Auburn

“Only the strongest are put through the fire,' Josiah said. 'And the forge creates things of great strength and beauty.'
'Then I shall be truly glorious by the time my tenure ends.”
― Sharon Shinn, Archangel

“I am who I am, born that way, and will die that way.”
― Sharon Shinn, Jenna Starborn

“If love makes you sad, you acquire a little depth, a little compassion. If it makes you happy, you learn how to be joyous. Every relationship should color your soul to a certain degree, don't you think? Every friendship, every love affair - each one should build up the chambers of your heart the way a sea creature builds the chamber of his shell.”
― Sharon Shinn, Jovah's Angel

“He is so kind that he makes me search my soul to find new ways to be compassionate to others.”
― Sharon Shinn, Heart of Gold

“Manufactured--synthetic--even virtual, if that is what you turned out to be--I would love you.”
― Sharon Shinn, Jenna Starborn

“And if I should leave you, for any reason," he added, tightening his grip as she struggled to free her hand, "I will return to you. That is as certain as the sun rising tomorrow morning and the thunderbolt falling tomorrow night. That is as sure as the god's existence. I will come back to you, or I will find you - over and over again, as often as we are parted, until the end of the world itself.”
― Sharon Shinn, Archangel

“If mankind's greatest achievement is to produce more spaces for mankind to live in, I do not think I am so impressed.”
― Sharon Shinn, Jenna Starborn

“For the world slows and the stars falter, and all that remains is you...”
― Sharon Shinn, Archangel

“I have changed for the last time--this is the man I will be till I die. And that man loves you.”
― Sharon Shinn, Heart of Gold

“Yet the world is the same as it always was. It is merely that you see it with new eyes.”
― Sharon Shinn, Jovah's Angel

“Your wedding completely changes the direction of your life, you know, no matter how greatly you desire it. I think that moment of doubt and faintness comes from all those imagined and now impossible futures all pressing in on you at once. It is your last chance to experience them, you see, and they all want to be lived at that moment.”
― Sharon Shinn, Jenna Starborn

“I thought it would not hurt to remind you that love is a powerful force in this world, invisible though it seems.”
― Sharon Shinn, Angelica

“It is very easy to shun someone who is deliberately cruel, and everyone loathes a man who is brutal and vicious. Such people have a hard time winning followers. But an individual who is gracious, who is attractive, who smiles and flatters and praises - that is a person who can lead whole nations to disaster. Who would not want to follow such a man or woman? Everyone is drawn to beauty and wit.”
― Sharon Shinn, Gateway

“Love is like water from the ocean." Damiana said. "You cannot empty it dry. Take bucket after bucket of water out of the Cormeon Sea, and there is still more water left than you could ever use up. That's what love's like.”
― Sharon Shinn

“She should leave you. Or you shouldn't leave her. I haven't worked it out yet. But you shouldn't be apart.”
― Sharon Shinn, Mystic and Rider

“That was so-Gryffin always has so much pain. That you can take it away like that - it's almost like magic."

Chase shrugged in the dark. "Kindness is a form of magic," he said. "So everyone should be capable of at least a little. Good night. See you in the morning." And he nodded to me and strode off.

Kindness is a form of magic.

Then magic had sprinkled itself across me many times, when I had not noticed its fey sparkle. I had been used to thinking of my life as bleak and full of darkness, but for the first time it occurred to me how often a stranger had stepped forward to offer me comfort and assistance, no matter how briefly. Ian Shelby. Sarah Parmer. Aylre the Safe-Keeper. The man who had stopped Carlon from beating me in the streets. Chase Beerin. They had been kind to me; most had, in different ways, been kind to Gryffin as well. Looked at that way, my life was a weave of brightness laid over a trembling black, a scrap of midnight velvet spangled with many jewels.

I had another thought as I stood there, trying desperately to understand a completely altered view of my existence. Someday I might be the one to offer kindness to someone else in grim and dire circumstances. Someday I might be the one with wealth or knowledge or strength or power that could be used to alleviate another person's distress. Such a thought had literally never crossed my mind before. More than once I had been saved. Someday I might save someone else in return.”
― Sharon Shinn, The Dream-Maker's Magic

“I've remembered that most of life is about small, essential connections, so unobtrusive, so elastic, that you scarcely realize they're actually holding you together. The big ones-the great, grand emotional bonds-those are the ones that break, the ones that fail you, the ones that give way and send you careening toward the foot of the bleak and jagged canyon. It's the tough, gnarled, unadorned ties that really do bind, that never let you fall all the way down into darkness.”
― Sharon Shinn, The Shape of Desire

“She was smiling as she leaned toward Reed, who stooped down to put his lips against her ear. He would tell her that he wanted to travel to Merendon, or Marring Cross or Cranfield, someplace far away and exotic. He was the sort of man whose wish altered every year.

He said in a voice that only she could hear: "I wish you were not my sister."

She pulled back and stared up at him. He smiled, his face just faintly touched with sadness, and tossed his true-love into the fire.”
― Sharon Shinn, The Safe-Keeper's Secret

“I wonder,” I said. “Perhaps you can meet with an accident on the road. Harwin and I can bring back the sad news that you died while we were traveling.”
Gisele looked amused—and a little intrigued. “But wouldn’t you be expected to return with my corpse in tow?”
“Not if you—fell off a cliff and drowned, and the water carried you away,” I said, improvising quickly. “Not if you were mauled by wolves andeaten .”
“Oh, yes, do have me devoured by wild creatures.”
― Sharon Shinn, Never After

“So do I wish I was to be king? That is not a question I ask myself. I ask myself, Would I be a good king? Would I be quick witted and generous of spirit and full of that boundless energy? Or would I be clumsy and stupid and dulled by my own prejudices? I try to be a good man, since I am alive at all, and hope that that teaches me what I would need to know if I was ever faced with a higher challenge.”
― Sharon Shinn, Summers at Castle Auburn

“And might I live long enough to see the world yet again as a place completely different, through eyes that see another truth not yet revealed?”
― Sharon Shinn, Jovah's Angel

“She smiled, if he could see that, and waited for him to ask the real question. But he was silent. He wanted her to volunteer the story, she realized, and she could just as easily choose to say nothing. But he deserved to know. They all deserved it, and Kirra already knew it, and Cammon may have guessed it, because Cammon could read souls, but Tayse was the only one she would tell.”
― Sharon Shinn, Mystic and Rider

“...the townhouses looked bedraggled, unkempt, like an old homeless woman with an interesting history but a perilous future.”
― Sharon Shinn, Gateway

“His brown eyes were set back in deep hollows, as though he looked out from a place of shadow on all the verities of the world.”
― Sharon Shinn, The Safe-Keeper's Secret

“She told me that Melisande had borne a daughter, and that one day . . . one day she would like for us to meet. And so when your father advertised the fact that he was looking for a husband for his daughter—”
“Advertised,” she interrupted.
“Oh, yes. Far and wide. Princess. Beautiful. Nubile. Available to big strong man, with even bigger sword.” Mickel thumped his chest. “I was intrigued. I was mortified. I thought I would save the daughter of my mother’s best friend from a fate worse than death.”
“And if I had been a loud mouthed harridan with a taste for garlic and a fear of bathing?”
“I would have been the Warlord everyone thinks I am, tossed her aside like a sack of potatoes in a white wedding dress, and asked for the hand of a peculiar redheaded woman I met on the road.”
Sally smiled. “And if she said no?” “Well,” Mickel said, kissing her hand. “I may not be the Warlord of the Savage Belly Ache, but I am exceptionally brave. I would fight for her.”
― Sharon Shinn, Never After