Kushiel's Scion Quotes

“Even a stunted tree reaches for sunlight.”
― Jacqueline Carey, Kushiel's Scion

“Love child!" What else? You will find it and lose it, again and again. And with each finding and each loss, you will become more than before. What you make of it is yours to choose.”
― Jacqueline Carey, Kushiel's Scion

“True friendship must be akin to romance, I think; only without all the anguish and anxiety.”
― Jacqueline Carey, Kushiel's Scion

“I preferred a hard truth to a well-meant lie.”
― Jacqueline Carey, Kushiel's Scion

“There would be love, and while it was mine, I could cling to it. I could rejoice -- in life, in the existence of love. In the existence of people like Phedre and Joscelin. Although the standards they set were impossibly high, still, I could rejoice that such courage and compassion existed in the world. I could hope and aspire.”
― Jacqueline Carey, Kushiel's Scion

“What does it mean to be good?”
― Jacqueline Carey, Kushiel's Scion

“I lie awake in my bed, clinging to the brightness I have known, fighting back the tide of darkness, the memories of blood and branding and horror, and the legacy of cruelty that runs in my own veins, shaping my own secret vow and wielding it like a brand against the darkness, whispering it to myself, over and over.

I will try to be good.”
― Jacqueline Carey, Kushiel's Scion

“It is passing strange, what a fluid thing is one's own identity.”
― Jacqueline Carey, Kushiel's Scion

“Victory doesn’t matter to the dead, nor to the living who mourn them.”
― Jacqueline Carey, Kushiel's Scion

“It is what I do. If you wish to thank me, do a kindness for someone in need.”
― Jacqueline Carey, Kushiel's Scion

“Take your happiness where you find it, children, and don't ask too many questions. Life is too short and uncertain to do otherwise.”
― Jacqueline Carey, Kushiel's Scion

“I am here, Imriel nó Montrève.” His voice was gentle, blending with the sounds of the benighted isle. “Kushiel’s scion, you have seen terrible things, and you have witnessed glorious mysteries given unto few. This I know. It is hard to be a pawn of the gods. Even in loving us in all their numinous might, they are careless of our mortality. And I think you have been wounded by a darker god than any you or I serve.”
― Jacqueline Carey, Kushiel's Scion

“Aeolia!”
― Jacqueline Carey, Kushiel's Scion

“we can but try to do good. And you did. What he’s done with it is up to him.”
― Jacqueline Carey, Kushiel's Scion

“Amid the horrors of war, the poets seldom saw fit to mention the deadly tedium.”
― Jacqueline Carey, Kushiel's Scion

“You can’t separate the means from the cause, Brigitta. In theory, perhaps, but not in practice. We are dealing in realities here.”
― Jacqueline Carey, Kushiel's Scion

“Guild takes an almighty risk when it decides to unleash the bottled lightning of a riot. Easy to start, hard to control.”
― Jacqueline Carey, Kushiel's Scion

“I was not surprised. I wanted to be, but I wasn’t.”
― Jacqueline Carey, Kushiel's Scion

“The defeated always remember.”
― Jacqueline Carey, Kushiel's Scion

“How could anyone endure what we had known and still be capable of so much goodness?”
― Jacqueline Carey, Kushiel's Scion

“One day I took my courage in both hands”
― Jacqueline Carey, Kushiel's Scion

“suspended between the carefree child of the Sanctuary I had once been and the confident adult I wished to become.”
― Jacqueline Carey, Kushiel's Scion

“There’s glory in it,” he acknowledged. “Dagda Mor! It’s why I like to fight. When the battle-frenzy fills you, you feel like a god, I think.” He paused, remembering. “But then you hear a friend’s voice begging you to help, and you see your friend’s guts falling out of a hole in his belly, and you can’t stop to help, because someone is trying to kill you, so you have to keep going. You tread upon a corpse and realize it’s a man who taught you how to hunt when you were ten years old. You see the woman who just got married run through by a spear, falling over her husband’s body.” The others were hushed, listening. Eamonn shook his head. “And when it’s over,” he said simply, “they’re still dead. Victory doesn’t matter to the dead, nor to the living who mourn them.”
― Jacqueline Carey, Kushiel's Scion

“I had grown to love the very city in all its decrepit grandeur. I had walked every inch of it by now. I knew it in the soles of my feet, in the sturdy muscles of my calves. Surely the finding mattered more than the losing.”
― Jacqueline Carey, Kushiel's Scion

“My thanks, Master.” He waved his hand. “It is what I do. If you wish to thank me, do a kindness for someone in need.”
― Jacqueline Carey, Kushiel's Scion