A Natural History of Dragons (The Memoirs of Lady Trent, #1)

by Marie Brennan

Although I appreciate music, to this day I could not carry a tune if you tied it around my wrist for safekeeping.)

Blackmail — Reckless stupidity — An even more unfortunate incident with a wolf-drake — The near loss of off-the-shoulder dresses

This has often been the way with me: notions too mad for another to take seriously are the very notions I seize upon and enact, often in the most organized and sensible fashion. (I say this not out of pride, for it is a very stupid habit that has nearly gotten me killed more than once, but out of honesty. If you do not understand what my husband has called my deranged practicality, very little of my life will make the slightest bit of sense.)

I vowed on the spot to show no behaviour that might possibly be construed as birdbrained, from then until the end of time.

I believed myself to be ready then; now, with the hindsight brought by greater age, I see myself for the naive and inexperienced young woman I was. We all begin in such a manner, though. There is no quick route to experience.

Sheep eat the grass, wolves eat the deer, and dragons eat everything that doesn’t run away fast enough.

Night is both blacker and more brilliant than you can imagine, and the sky a glory that puts to shame the most splendid jewels

(I have long been accused of having no motherly instinct. As near as I can tell, this instinct consists of attempting to wrap anyone below the age of eighteen in swaddling bands, so that they never learn anything about the world and its dangers. I fail to see the use of this, especially from the point of view of species survival; but I do confess that on this occasion I may have let my intellectual excitement distract me from the peril of allowing a ten-year-old boy to wave a loaded rifle about.)

The human mind is very good at imagining patterns where none truly exist.

Problems rarely go away because you ignore them, and this one would prove no different.

In which many answers are found, not all of them pleasant, and some carrying an unfortunate price

The dragon within my heart stirred, shifting her wings, as if remembering they could be used to fly.