Alice > Alice's Quotes

“...What I am saying, Marshal, is that you have known her but a short time; I have known her for years. You have seen her in one trouble; I have seen her in many. I know her as someone trustworthy in battle, in long campaigns, day after day. You see some flaw – some little speck on a shining ring – and condemn the whole. But I see the whole – the years of service, the duties faithfully performed– and that is good, Marshal. Is there one of us with no flaws? Are you perfect, that you indict her?”
― Elizabeth Moon, Divided Allegiance

“How do you like her?" Philip asked, nodding toward Meg.

"She's perfect." And she really was. "Just spirited enough to keep it interesting without being difficult to manage. And so beautiful." I patted her neck and flashed him a smile. "A gentle mare would have never been able to keep up with you."

He smiled, too, but as if at a private thought. "You are absolutely right.”
― Julianne Donaldson, Edenbrooke

“I am a soldier, I enjoy swordplay, I want that kind of life. But not just for – for fighting anything, or for show. I want to fight –"

"What needs fighting?" suggested the Kuakgan.

Paks looked at him and nodded. "I think that's what I mean. Bad things. Like the robbers in Aarenis that killed my friends, or Siniava – he was evil. Or that – whatever that held the elf lord. Only I don't think I have the powers for that. But I want to fight where I'm sure it's right – not just to show that I'm big and strong. It's the same as Tavern brawling, it seems to me – even if it's armies and lords –”
― Elizabeth Moon, Divided Allegiance

“[...] and I longed for the rock isles and algae pools of my own land. We are part of our homes and I think there will always be a feeling of loss and ache within when we cannot long actively communicate with our own special places.”
― Andre Norton, The Mark of the Cat

“Her series features relaxed into a wide smile. She possessed the teeth of a tiny horse--white and square except for two pairs of pathetic canines.”
― Grace Draven, Radiance

“You're a woman,' said Ogo.

Ayndra spat, 'Ha!' and then started laughing. She turned her back on him again, and pulled an undertunic over her head. Through the wool she said, 'And what of it?'

'I . . . I thought you were a boy.'

'I never told you so.'

'No, but . . . I thought . . . there's a rule of no women in the camp.'

'No women in the camp. Is there a rule of no women in the army?”
― Alison Spedding, The Road and the Hills

“Perhaps it was all an elaborate charade of the sort envisioned by Miles, where the dragons were large iguanas and the knights and wizards were all supplied by Central Casting. Perhaps the dream was a sham, an imitation of what the imagination would have it truly be. Even if it were all real – if it were all as described, all as the artist had rendered it to be – still it might be less than the dream. It might be as ordinary in truth as his present life.”
― Terry Brooks, Magic Kingdom for Sale/Sold

“How soon this child must assume his manhood, Halleck thought. How soon he must read that form within his mind, that contract of brutal caution, to enter the necessary fact on the necessary line: ‘Please list your next of kin.”
― Frank Herbert, Dune (Spanish edition)

“The man blinked in the sudden light of the lantern, his mouth slightly open. His skin, hued with an almost reddish tint, marked him from Gurla, while his pudgy face and a body flabby around the middle and soft like a woman's betrayed that he had been castrated sometime before puberty. His head was shaved and he had no facial hair whatsoever.”
― Brian McClellan, Promise of Blood

“In short this was a "shameless master and disciple pair who spent all day on some nameless mountain ignoring their duties to knock boots, who went down the mountain to fight monsters and take trips to pound town, who used two person push-ups to settle misunderstandings, who still needed to play a round of hide the sausage before dying, who continued to ride the bony express after death, and who after resurrection would still gleefully smack each other's salmons as before"...sort of story.”
― Mò Xiāng Tóng Xiù, The Scum Villain's Self-Saving System: Ren Zha Fanpai Zijiu Xitong, Vol. 2

“Suddenly there was a great heave, and he cracked his chin against Sebell’s shoulderblade. Inadvertently looking down, he saw the ground moving away from him as Lioth sprang skyward. He could feel the great muscles along Lioth’s neck as the fragile-seeming wings took their first all-important downsweep. Then the Gather meadow and the Harper Hall seemed to tush away, and they were on a level with the Hold fire-heights.

Sebell gave Piemur’s hands, clutching his belt, a warning squeeze. The next heartbeat and there was nothing but a cold so intense that it was painful. Except that Piemur couldn’t feel pain with his body, only sense that his lack of tactile contact with reality included everything except the wild beating of his heart against ribcage. Ruthlessly he clamped down on the instinct to scream. Then they were back in the world again, Lioth gliding effortlessly down to the right, a tremendous expanse of golden ground beneath his wings.”
― Anne McCaffrey, Dragondrums

“He spoke two short sentences in a low voice, watching her all the time; for the pupils of her eyes dilated into a black horror, and the whiteness of her complexion became livid. He ceased speaking.”
― Elizabeth Gaskell, North and South

“Where have you been?" she cried. "Damn you, where have you been?" She took a few steps toward Schmendrick, but she was looking beyond him, at the unicorn.

When she tried to get by, the magician stood in her way. "You don't talk like that," he told her, still uncertain that Molly had recognized the unicorn. "Don't you know how to behave, woman? You don't curtsy, either."

But Molly pushed him aside and went up to the unicorn, scolding her as though she were a strayed milk cow. "Where have you been?" Before the whiteness and the shining horn, Molly shrank to a shrilling beetle, but this time it was the unicorn's old dark eyes that looked down.

"I am here now," she said at last.

Molly laughed with her lips flat. "And what good is it to me that you're here now? Where where you twenty years ago, ten years ago? How dare you, how dare you come to me now, when I am this?" With a flap of her hand she summed herself up: barren face, desert eyes, and yellowing heart. "I wish you had never come. Why did you come now?" The tears began to slide down the sides of her nose.

The unicorn made no reply, and Schmendrick said, "She is the last. She is the last unicorn in the world."

"She would be." Molly sniffed. "It would be the last unicorn in the world to come to Molly Grue." She reached up then to lay her hand on the unicorn's cheek; but both of them flinched a little, and the touch came to rest on on the swift, shivering place under the jaw. Molly said, "It's all right. I forgive you.”
― Peter S. Beagle, The Last Unicorn