Guy Gavriel Kay > Quotes

“My youngest brother had a wonderful schtick from some time in high school, through to graduating medicine. He had a card in his wallet that read, ‘If I am found with amnesia, please give me the following books to read …’ And it listed half a dozen books where he longed to recapture that first glorious sense of needing to find out ‘what happens next’ … the feeling that keeps you up half the night. The feeling that comes before the plot’s been learned.”
― Guy Gavriel Kay

“There are no wrong turnings. Only paths we had not known we were meant to walk.”
― Guy Gavriel Kay, Tigana

“In this world, where we find ourselves, we need compassion more than anything, I think, or we are all alone.”
― Guy Gavriel Kay, Tigana

“There are kinds of action, for good or ill, that lie so far outside the boundaries of normal behavior that they force us, in acknowledging that they have occurred, to restructure our own understanding of reality. We have to make room for them.”
― Guy Gavriel Kay, The Summer Tree

“The deeds of men, as footprints in the desert.
Nothing under the circling moons is fated to last.
Even the sun goes down.”
― Guy Gavriel Kay, The Lions of al-Rassan

“We must be what we are, or we become our enemies. ”
― Guy Gavriel Kay, A Song for Arbonne

“How we remember changes how we have lived.
Time runs both ways. We make stories of our lives.”
― Guy Gavriel Kay, Under Heaven

“The world could bring you poison in a jewelled cup, or surprising gifts. Sometimes you didn't know which of them it was.”
― Guy Gavriel Kay, Under Heaven

“One man sees a riselka: his life forks there.
 Two men see a riselka: one of them shall die.
 Three men see a riselka: one is blessed, one forks, one shall die.

One woman sees a riselka: her path comes clear to her.
 Two women see a riselka: one of them shall bear a child.
 Three women see a riselka: one is blessed, one is clear, one shall bear a child.”
― Guy Gavriel Kay, Tigana

“Ice is for death and endings.”
― Guy Gavriel Kay, Tigana

“Unless the perfidious wolves have the temerity to disobey the High King's plans, we should meet Shalhassan's forces by the Latham in mid-wood with the wolves between us. If they aren't,' Diarmuid concluded, 'we blame anyone and everything except the plan.”
― Guy Gavriel Kay, The Wandering Fire

“Sometimes you didn't really arrive at a conclusion about your life, you just discovered that you already had.”
― Guy Gavriel Kay, Lord of Emperors

“It was Aileron who saw the light blaze in Arthur's face. The Warrior leaped from his horse down into the road and, at the top of his great voice, cried 'Cavall!'

Bracing his legs, he opened wide his arms and was knocked flying, nonetheless, by the wild leap of the dog. Over and over they rolled, the dog yelping in intoxicated delight, the Warrior mock growling in his chest. . . .
This is' asked Aileron with gentle irony, 'your dog?”
― Guy Gavriel Kay, The Wandering Fire

“Do you know the wish of your heart?" - The Darkest Road”
― Guy Gavriel Kay

“We worship…the powers that speak to our souls, if it seems they do. We do so knowing there is more to the world, and the half-world, and perhaps worlds beyond, than we can grasp. We always knew that. We can’t even stop children from dying, how would we presume to understand the truth of things? Behind things? Does the presence of one power deny another? [p. 176]”
― Guy Gavriel Kay, Sailing to Sarantium

“A hard truth: that courage can be without meaning or impact, need not be rewarded, or even known. The world has not been made in that way. Perhaps, however, within the self there might come a resonance, the awareness of having done something difficult, of having done . . . something.”
― Guy Gavriel Kay, The Last Light of the Sun

“Full moon is falling through the sky.
Cranes fly through clouds.
Wolves howl. I cannot find rest
Because I am powerless
To amend a broken world.

Sima Zian added, "I love the man who wrote that, I told you before, but there is so much burden in Chan Du. Duty, assuming all tasks, can betray arrogance. The idea we can know what must be done, and do it properly. We cannot know the future, my friend. It claims so much to imagine we can. And the world is not broken any more than it always, always is.”
― Guy Gavriel Kay, Under Heaven

“Dave hung up. And unplugged the phone. With a fierce and bitter pain he stared at it, watching how, over and over again, it didn't ring.”
― Guy Gavriel Kay, The Summer Tree

“She lifted her hands and closed them around his head... and it seemed to Catriana in that moment as if that newborn trialla in her soul began to sing. Of trials endured and trials to come, of doubt and dark and all the deep uncertainties that defined the outer boundaries of mortal life, but with love now present at the base of it all, like light, like the first stone of a rising tower. ”
― Guy Gavriel Kay, Tigana

“There was some sadness in how that could happen, Tai thought: falling out of love with something that had shaped you. Or even people who had? But if you didn't change at least a little, where were the passages of a life? Didn't learning, changing, sometimes mean letting go of what had once been seen as true?”
― Guy Gavriel Kay, Under Heaven

“For all his frustrations and his chronic sense of being overburdened. He was proud of that; he’d always felt that it was worth doing a task properly if it was worth doing at all. That was part of his problem, of course; that was why he ended up with so much to do. It was also the source of his own particular pride: he knew--and he was certain they knew that there was no one else who could handle details such as these as well as he.”
― Guy Gavriel Kay, A Song For Arbonne

“We salvage what we can, what truly matters to us, even at the gates of despair.”
― Guy Gavriel Kay, The Summer Tree

“Brightly woven, Diar,' Aileron said. And then dazzled them all with the warmth of his smile.”
― Guy Gavriel Kay, The Wandering Fire

“Eanna love us, Adaon preserve us, Morian guard our souls.”
― Guy Gavriel Kay, Tigana

“Eyyia?" said her husband, and Eliane bet Danel heard the mangling of her name as music.
"You sound like a marsh frog," she said, moving to stand before his chair.
By the flickering light she saw him smile.
"Where have you been," she asked. "My dear. I've needed you so much."
"Eyyia," he tried again, and stood up. His eyes were black hollows. They would always be hollows.
He opened his arms and she moved into the space they made in the world, and laying her head against his chest she permitted herself the almost unimaginable luxury of grief.”
― Guy Gavriel Kay, The Lions of al-Rassan

“He had a sense—honed by experience—that what he’d contrived might achieve something of the effect he wanted. That, Martinius had always said, was the best any man in this fallible world could expect. [p. 67]”
― Guy Gavriel Kay, Sailing to Sarantium

“Truth" when examining events and records of the past was always precarious, uncertain. No man could say for certain how the river of time would have flowed, cresting or receding, bringing floods or gently watering fields, had a single event, or even many, unfolded differently.

It is in the nature of existence under heaven, the dissenting scholars wrote, that we cannot know these things with clarity. We cannot live twice, or watch as moments of the past unfurl, like a courtesan's silk fan. The river flows, the dancers finish their dance. If the music starts again it is starting anew, not repeating itself.”
― Guy Gavriel Kay, Under Heaven

“Battles are won en route, Shalhassan of Cathal though. A worthy thought: he raised his hand in a certain way, and a moment later Razeil galloped up, uneasy on a horse at speed, and the Supreme Lord of Cathal made him write it down.”
― Guy Gavriel Kay, The Wandering Fire

“And Shalhassan of Cathal realized in that moment, standing between the fair brother and the dark, that he was not going to lead this war after all.”
― Guy Gavriel Kay, The Wandering Fire

“One didn't stop to talk with creatures from one's nightmares.”
― Guy Gavriel Kay, The Summer Tree

“For some moments the two men sat quietly, each wrapped in his own thoughts, then Ivor rose. 'I should speak to Levon about tomorrow's hunt,' he said. 'Sixteen [eltors], I think.'

'At least,' the shaman said in an aggrieved tone. 'I could eat a whole one myself. We haven't feasted in a long time, Ivor.'

Ivor snorted. 'A very long time, you greedy old man. Twelve whole days...why aren't you fat?'

'Becaues,' the wisest one explained patiently, 'you never have enough food at the feasts.”
― Guy Gavriel Kay, The Summer Tree

“If you so much as start to bow or anything like that, Dave, I'll beat you up. I swear I will.”
― Guy Gavriel Kay, The Wandering Fire

“Praise be to the Weaver and all the gods!' said Shalhassan of Cathal. 'Finally she's done something adult!”
― Guy Gavriel Kay, The Wandering Fire

“Bright star of Eanna, forgive me the manner of this, but you are the harbor of my soul’s journeying.”
― Guy Gavriel Kay, Tigana

“Branching paths. The turning of days and seasons and years. Life offered you love sometimes, sorrow often. If you were very fortunate, true friendship. Sometimes war came.

You did what you could to shape your own peace, before you crossed over to the night and left the world behind, as all men did, to be forgotten or remembered, as time or love allowed.”
― Guy Gavriel Kay, Under Heaven

“Just now, high above the chaos of Sarantium, it seemed as if there were so many things he wanted to honour or exalt- or take to task, if it came to that, for there was no need for, no justice in, children dying of plague, or young girls being cut into pieces in the forest, or sold in grief for winter grain.

If this was the world as the god- or gods- had made it, then mortal man, this mortal man, could acknowledge that and honour the power and infinite majesty that lay within it, but he would not say that it was right, or bow down as if he were only dust or a brittle leaf blown from an autumn tree, helpless in the wind.

He might be, all men and women might be as helpless as that leaf, but he would not admit it, and he would do something here on the dome that said- or aspired to say- these things, and more.”
― Guy Gavriel Kay

“A coragem residia em lutar para tentar ultrapassar esse medo, em erguer-se para fazer o que tinha de ser feito.”
― Guy Gavriel Kay, The Lions of al-Rassan