The Curse of Chalion (World of the Five Gods, #1)

by Lois McMaster Bujold

“Any man can be kind when he is comfortable. I’d always thought kindness a trivial virtue, therefore. But when we were hungry, thirsty, sick, frightened, with our deaths shouting at us, in the heart of horror, you were still as unfailingly courteous as a gentleman at his ease before his own hearth.”

The gods’ most savage curses come to us as answers to our own prayers. Prayer is a dangerous business.

“I’d storm heaven for you, if I knew where it was.”

I have not the words for what I saw. Talking about it is like trying to weave a box of shadows in which to carry water.

The gods delight in poets, you know. Songs and poetry, being of the same stuff as souls, can cross into their world almost unimpeded. Stone carvers, now…even the gods are in awe of stone carvers.