Robin

“Words aren't precise. They're vulnerable. When I work through a line of Mazwai I'm never sure I've really understood her meaning; and if I have her meaning, do I have her intention? My reading is always a translation, a shift from her viewpoint to mine. Misinterpretations happen. But that weakness of words is also their great strength. Words survive. They adapt to new places and new times. They find new expressions. Old words solve new problems.”
― Jon Ingold, The Vault

“It had been a parting-gift, from a man he had begun to love, one he had wished had been his father. But in Morgaine's service there were only partings - and deaths.”
― C.J. Cherryh, Exile's Gate

“I pray the tomb is shut forever," recited Harrowhawk, with the curious fervidity she always showed in prayer. " I pray the rock is never rolled away. I pray that which was buried remains buried, insensate, in perpetual rest, with closed eye and stilled brain. I pray it lives, I pray it sleeps ... I pray for the needs of the Emperor All-Giving, the Undying King, His Virtues and his men. I pray for the Second House, the Third, the Fourth, the Fifth; the Sixth, Seventh, and Eighth. I pray for the Ninth House, and I pray for it to be fruitful. I pray for the soldiers and adepts far from home, and all those parts of the Empire that live in unrest and disquiet. Let it be so.”
― Tamsyn Muir, Gideon the Ninth

“Peoples think I’s a harmless idiot,” he said. “They’s only half right.”
― Alastair Reynolds, Revenger