Alex Singer > Quotes

“I am going to tell you that you are a good person, who has stayed kind despite all we have done to you. Kindness is what makes us. We must help each other. Even if the world is not kind now, if we can still find it in our hearts, after it all comes to an end, we are not yet gone from this world.”
― Alex Singer, Song of the Bull Rider

“The mentor smiled in that way the old do, when they think they know better.

No one in this country knew anything.”
― Alex Singer, Song of the Bull Rider

“Now?” he mumbled as I opened his robes for him. “I thought — you would want — I was being good, damn it!”

“So very,” I said. “I don’t want to be. I would like to be in command. Sit up, would you?”
― Alex Singer, Song of the Bull Rider

“Parnach looked sullen. “You’re pretty enough to fool an army.”

“What?”

“What?”
― Alex Singer, Song of the Bull Rider

“Oh, silence,” he grumbled right back at me. “I am your prince. I do not die until I say so.”

“That makes no sense.”

“It is beyond your common mind.”

“That makes even less sense!”
― Alex Singer, Song of the Bull Rider

“Parnach bristled. His horse skipped uncertainly under the sudden shift in his weight. “You doubt me?”

“You ride with all the glory of a wild bull,” I said.

And the unwieldiness, I didn’t add.”
― Alex Singer, Song of the Bull Rider

“You’d better,” spat Sarai. “This is my father’s house. If my brother and I have to be that bastard’s queen, you will treat me like one.”
― Alex Singer, Song of the Bull Rider

“Don’t worry, God’s gift to the sacred lands has done his business,” said Sarai. She sat up, regal as anything. “With any luck, there won’t be too much of that. How boring powerful men are in bed.”
― Alex Singer, Song of the Bull Rider

“There you are,” he jabbered at me, his arm and chest bound tightly in bandages. “You have some nerve. Leaving me to this. I am alive, thanks to you. It hurts like a fucking fuck—”

He passed out before figuring out the end of that sentence.”
― Alex Singer, Song of the Bull Rider

“I was a slave. The lowest of the low. I spent a year sleeping in stables. I spent another in a warlord’s bed. No bed mats or baths for me. No glory or distinction in battle. No dignity in death, even. Yet, now I am king, poised to end all who have ever wronged me. Free from all pain except that which I might inflict upon my enemies. What say you to that?”

“I’m sorry,” I said, the words came to me without thought, a tiny spark of kindling amidst the cold pit in my stomach.

Amaziah’s smile fell away.”
― Alex Singer, Song of the Bull Rider

“I’m no man,” I said, “but I’m no woman, either. You may see for yourself, if you’d like, but I cannot guarantee I will not kick you in the face for trying.”
― Alex Singer, Song of the Bull Rider

“I don’t compete over who has lost more. There is a sting to it, whatever it is.”
― Alex Singer, Song of the Bull Rider

“The people of Between welcomed outsiders whose hearts did not match their bodies, who wished to live a life beyond being strictly Man or strictly Woman — but the mentor smiled in that way the old do, when they think they know better.

No one in this country knew anything.”
― Alex Singer, Song of the Bull Rider

“Though be wary, little one. He shall beat you if you remind him of it.”

“I’d rather not remind him of anything at all.”

“Smart child,” said Sarai. “It is such a relief to be ignored.”
― Alex Singer, Song of the Bull Rider

“Fuck that, and fuck the goat that’s fucking it,” said the ever eloquent Parnach. “What about any kind of war is clean?”
― Alex Singer, Song of the Bull Rider

“I suppose vengeance suits him. Do you think this will be the end of it?”

“Uh-uh, I would not say that,” said Makeda. “Oh, yes, he will be fat off this victory for a while, but he eats countries. This one will be digested, and he shall go on to gnaw on the next.”

“Is that your word as a mentor?”

“My word as anyone with eyes.”
― Alex Singer, Song of the Bull Rider

“Since when is what is in your heart have to do with what’s between your legs?” I asked.”
― Alex Singer, Song of the Bull Rider

“What? Who said that?”

“The mother of my soul,” I explained.

“Mother of your what?”

“The one who fathered me,” I explained, in his people’s terms.

“So, your father.”

“I would not consider them my father.”

“How complicated,” huffed Parnach, as though having two separate words, kingdoms, and bodies weren’t its own social knot to be untangled.”
― Alex Singer, Song of the Bull Rider

“Any man shall yield if you hold his balls in your hand,” said Sarai, proudly.”
― Alex Singer, Song of the Bull Rider

“He looked tired and fierce at the same time, and, from my angle, impossibly tall.

How ridiculous. I knew which of us was taller.”
― Alex Singer, Song of the Bull Rider