The Blue Sword Quotes

“[Harry] had always suffered from a vague restlessness, a longing for adventure that she told herself severely was the result of reading too many novels when she was a small child.”
― Robin McKinley, The Blue Sword

“...My friend, there are some things that I cannot tell you. Some I will tell you in time; some, others will tell you; some you may never know, or you may be the first to find the answers.”
― Robin McKinley, The Blue Sword

“You are attempting to be logical, I suspect, and logic has little to do with government, and nothing at all to do with military administration. ”
― Robin McKinley, The Blue Sword

“One doesn't generally look into mirrors when one is especially angry; one has better things to do, like pace the floor or throw things.”
― Robin McKinley, The Blue Sword

“It seems to me further, that it is very odd that fate should leave so careful a trail, and spend so little time preparing the one that must follow it.”
― Robin McKinley, The Blue Sword

“There had been certain romantic interludes in the past that had included galloping across the desert at night; but he had never abducted any woman whose enthusiastic support for such a plan had not been secured well in advance.”
― Robin McKinley, The Blue Sword

“What was she to say? "The prodigal has returned? The mutineer wishes to be reinstated? The subordinate, having gone to a great deal of trouble to prove her commander wrong, has come back and promises to be a good little subordinate hereafter, or at least until next time?”
― Robin McKinley, The Blue Sword

“...like a grain of sand that gets into an oyster's shell. What if the grain doesn't want to become a pearl? Is it ever asked to climb out quietly and take up its old position as a bit of ocean floor?”
― Robin McKinley, The Blue Sword

“Friends you will have need of, for in you two worlds meet. There is no one on both sides with you, so you must learn to take your own counsel; and not to fear what is strange, if you know it also to be true.”
― Robin McKinley, The Blue Sword

“Mathin said: "It is best to take your opponent's sash. The kysin mark each blow dealt, but to cut off the other rider's sash is best. This you will do."

"Oh," said Harry.

"You may, if you wish, unhorse him first," Mathin added as an afterthought.

"Thanks," said Harry.”
― Robin McKinley, The Blue Sword

“He looked at her rather as a man looks at a problem that he would very much prefer to do without. She supposed it was a distinction of a sort to be a harassment to a king.”
― Robin McKinley, The Blue Sword

“Tsornin's nostrils showed red, but his ears were as alert as ever, and occasionally he would rub his nose gently against the nape of her neck, just in case she was momentarily not thinking about him.”
― Robin McKinley, The Blue Sword

“He didn't look insane or inhuman. He did look uncooperative.”
― Robin McKinley, The Blue Sword

“Sungold blew impatiently and began to dig a hole with one foot. She booted his elbow with her toe and he stopped, but after a moment he lowered his head and blew again, harder, and she could feel him shifting his weight, considering if she might let him dig just a small hole.”
― Robin McKinley, The Blue Sword

“There was, too, a reality to her new life that her old life had lacked, and she realized with a shock that she had never truly loved or hated, for she had never seen the world she had been used to living in closely enough for it to evoke passion in her.”
― Robin McKinley, The Blue Sword

“[Gonturan] is a true friend, but a friend with thoughts of her own, and the thoughts of others are dangerous.”
― Robin McKinley, The Blue Sword

“Cigars should be like onions," she said, unfastening the catch and pushing back the pane. "Either the whole company does, or the whole company does not.”
― Robin McKinley, The Blue Sword

“He grunted; she recognized it as relief that she wasn't going to nag him further about Tor the Just, who probably wasn't that boring if he could hold off the Notherners for nine days and melt a hole in the hills.”
― Robin McKinley, The Blue Sword

“There was a certain bitter humor to lying awake wishing for something one cannot have, after lying awake not so long ago wishing for the opposite thing that one had just lost. Not a very useful sort of adaptability, this, she thought.”
― Robin McKinley, The Blue Sword

“She had had insomnia badly when she was fresh from Home.... She had had only occasional bad nights since then. Bad? she thought. Why bad? I rarely feel much the worse the next day, except for a sort of moral irritability that seems to go with the feeling that I ought to have spent all those silent hours asleep.”
― Robin McKinley, The Blue Sword

“Your attitude is perhaps a little unnecessarily rigorous," suggested Jack.”
― Robin McKinley, The Blue Sword

“My father... raised me to make up my own mind. The way he did this was by yielding to me when I asked, even when I was foolish. I lived through it; and I know my own mind; and he will do what I ask him.”
― Robin McKinley, The Blue Sword

“Mathin had taught her patience, and she had known all of her life how to be stubborn.”
― Robin McKinley, The Blue Sword

“But their strength is the strength of numbers and of stubbornness and persistence; do not underestimate it.”
― Robin McKinley, The Blue Sword

“--including Rilly, who was beside herself with excitement, and her mother, who was beside herself with Rilly--”
― Robin McKinley, The Blue Sword

“It is not a comfortable passion.”
― Robin McKinley, The Blue Sword

“I feel like a potato that's recently been mashed,"she said.”
― Robin McKinley, The Blue Sword

“It is that I cannot see what I am doing or why, and it is unsettling always to live only in the moment as it passes.
Oh, I know one never sees ahead or behind. But I see even less. It is like being blindfolded when everyone else in the room is not. No one can see outside the room – but everyone else can see the room. I would like to take my blindfold off.”
― Robin McKinley, The Blue Sword

“But he hated to see his people people unhappy--because he was a good king, not because he was a nervous one--”
― Robin McKinley, The Blue Sword

“No, but I am working up to telling you that there is no possibility of there being done what ought to be done-”
― Robin McKinley, The Blue Sword