House of Open Wounds Quotes

“A Palleseen writer once described the world of superstition and unreason that they were bringing perfection to as ‘the Great Night’, contrasted with the clarity of their rational sun. Which writer was subsequently excised from the Pal canon because personification of an abstract is in itself irrational. Nonetheless, the night persists.”
― Adrian Tchaikovsky, House of Open Wounds

“It was a terrible thing to know that, while he liked the department, he very much preferred them in their usual state of grim misery and personal problems. That made him sound like a profoundly broken person. Which he was, but not in that way. It was just that he wasn’t very good at being happy.”
― Adrian Tchaikovsky, House of Open Wounds

“He suddenly understood the sentence of death that every one of God’s victims lived under.”
― Adrian Tchaikovsky, House of Open Wounds

“You wouldn’t,” the Maric whispers and God lifts an eyebrow because the one thing every man of faith should know is that you don’t tempt the divine.”
― Adrian Tchaikovsky, House of Open Wounds

“Are you going to start with the poetry of it?” Ghastron asked softly. “How her hooks are in your soul, so that each sweet breath is naught but wind unless some part of her can feel as you now feel. How every beat of your labouring heart speaks her name, and yet you know it isn’t even her name. That, sans the bounds of contract and the conjurer’s circle, does the thing that fills your life even exist? Or is the one you love solely within your mind, a puppet show played for your own amusement, and in which you strive, ever doubting, to believe?”
― Adrian Tchaikovsky, House of Open Wounds

“I swear,” he said thickly. “I don’t know. You got the wrong man, magister.” And that was quite possibly true. If they could be certain of everyone’s loyalty then this whole circus wouldn’t be necessary. You always ended up damaging some good metal, if you were diligent enough about stripping out the broken pieces.”
― Adrian Tchaikovsky, House of Open Wounds

“With the sense that something tiny but unthinkably ancient had paid its final way in the world and passed away, and knowing that two meagre human lives were not worth its sacrifice.”
― Adrian Tchaikovsky, House of Open Wounds

“And he was doing his best to sound horrified but also, you had to interrupt Banders because she always interrupted you. She respected you for it.”
― Adrian Tchaikovsky, House of Open Wounds

“Off to scout, she said. Off to scavenge, Jack reckoned. Because something burned in her nature that even being left behind by a fleeing army couldn’t douse.”
― Adrian Tchaikovsky, House of Open Wounds

“You’re incorrigible.” “Only because everyone ‘incorriges’ me.” Banders had given an eminent grammarian an apoplectic fit once. One of her proudest moments.”
― Adrian Tchaikovsky, House of Open Wounds

“The air is made of screaming.”
― Adrian Tchaikovsky, House of Open Wounds

“Do you think she feels for you?” “I don’t know. I can’t control that. I only know what I feel,” he told her.”
― Adrian Tchaikovsky, House of Open Wounds

“Hardly recognisable now, which is a useful trait in a wanted man. Wearing a dark uniform borrowed from Banders, walking like he’s seen soldiers walk. The jut of his chin, that officers have, letting them cleave the world like a shark cleaves the water.”
― Adrian Tchaikovsky, House of Open Wounds

“Professor-Invigilator Scaffesty, Old Eyeball to the soldiers of Landwards, was a silver-haired old man. He did indeed just have the one eyeball, with a leather patch moulded to the socket of the other to hide the gory details while making the absence quite plain. He had a very pale face that seemed to loom from the shadows of his dark uniform, even in good light. Like a predatory fish in deep water or a murderer in an alley.”
― Adrian Tchaikovsky, House of Open Wounds

“But like many bright students of the phalanstery, Cosserby knows that if you put twice as much effort into cheating than you would just doing the work the regular way, you can fool anybody.”
― Adrian Tchaikovsky, House of Open Wounds

“She let herself lean into him, hoping she’d dream of the times they’d had on the run. The mad days, when they’d had the strength. Perhaps some of it would linger once she woke.”
― Adrian Tchaikovsky, House of Open Wounds

“wouldn’t say that he’s happy, exactly, but mostly because he can make his mind so full of the demands of his task that happy and unhappy get kicked outside like dogs, to whine and scratch at the door.”
― Adrian Tchaikovsky, House of Open Wounds

“I mean,” God said. “Maybe. A bit.” Wringing His beard a little. Someone whose ex and new flame have started comparing notes.”
― Adrian Tchaikovsky, House of Open Wounds

“The header on the first page read The Ninety-Seven Loopholes of God.”
― Adrian Tchaikovsky, House of Open Wounds

“Beyond the factories and forges where the demons laboured had been the junkyards where all the broken pieces went. Things to be remade or melted down or just held there, enormous piles of rust and the depredation of time. Like art, eventually. The art of waste, he’d thought, but he’d seen nothing, back then. This was art. This was a true monument to loss. The same piles of irreparable things beaten out of shape beyond any chance of serving their purpose, save that here it was people.”
― Adrian Tchaikovsky, House of Open Wounds

“They go into darkness, and it swallows them.”
― Adrian Tchaikovsky, House of Open Wounds

“You, ah, follow your dreams,” Jack said weakly.”
― Adrian Tchaikovsky, House of Open Wounds

“It would obviously be terribly remiss if some of this was held back for unauthorised commercial dealings.” “That would never happen, magister.” “Good. See that it never happens, say, in about three days’ time when everyone else has run out.” “Well it would serve them right, magister,” Banders said.”
― Adrian Tchaikovsky, House of Open Wounds

“She took the congratulations and adulation of her fellows with her customary modesty, even fetching a box so that she could be modest from an appropriate elevation.”
― Adrian Tchaikovsky, House of Open Wounds

“And yet the mere sight of her just filled him with despair at his own failures, the essential uselessness of him. God, he knew, felt the same way. A vast potential for good wrenched out of shape by the nature of the world and His own limitations until He was just this crooked, mean-spirited bitter old thing.”
― Adrian Tchaikovsky, House of Open Wounds

“There are most certainly roads that don’t appear on maps, that burrow between the pages of the cosmic atlas like worms, and why shouldn’t they look like rainbows sometimes?”
― Adrian Tchaikovsky, House of Open Wounds

“I mean it’s something you Marics do, right? You don’t, what, lay eggs or poop out sex bees or something?” “I, we, yes, we… sex bees? Is that a thing?”
― Adrian Tchaikovsky, House of Open Wounds

“Prassel had already shrugged her jacket on, receiving the compliments of a couple of her peers as though she hadn’t wanted them and didn’t have anywhere to put them.”
― Adrian Tchaikovsky, House of Open Wounds

“They were fighting to the compass, as the tradition went, circling round each other, launching into a new exchange each time they aligned with an axis of the star, circling again when the aggressor was pushed back to the centre. A ritual combat designed to be performed in the round.”
― Adrian Tchaikovsky, House of Open Wounds

“And Banders examined the fine head of anger she’d been about to vent, and let it go like poisoned dust sifting between her fingers.”
― Adrian Tchaikovsky, House of Open Wounds