Children of Earth and Sky Quotes

“We cannot know. But sometimes there is kindness, and sometimes there is love.”
― Guy Gavriel Kay, Children of Earth and Sky

“It seemed to him that people must pass through each other’s lives all the time, touch them, be touched by them. Leave something behind, maybe, like a star that fell – you became a memory.”
― Guy Gavriel Kay, Children of Earth and Sky

“We live among mysteries. Love is one, there are others. We must not imagine we understand all there is to know about the world.”
― Guy Gavriel Kay, Children of Earth and Sky

“It happens this way sometimes, we can discover truths about ourselves in a moment, sometimes in the midst of drama, sometimes quietly. A sunset wind can be blowing off the sea, we might be alone in bed on a winter night, or grieving by a grave among leaves. We are drunk in a tavern, dealing with desperate pain, waiting to confront enemies on a battlefield. We are bearing a child, falling in love, reading by candlelight, watching the sun rise, a star set, we are dying . . . But there is something else to all of this, because of how the world is for us, how we are within it. Something can be true of our deepest nature and the running tide of days and years might let it reach the shore, be made real there—or not.”
― Guy Gavriel Kay, Children of Earth and Sky

“Legends, if you crossed their path, could get you killed.”
― Guy Gavriel Kay, Children of Earth and Sky

“You had to grow into your own significance—or come to terms with the lack of it.”
― Guy Gavriel Kay, Children of Earth and Sky

“We have a need to persuade ourselves we are not at the mercy of the world.”
― Guy Gavriel Kay, Children of Earth and Sky

“Memories, she thought, were tangling things. They brought you ease and they brought you sorrow, and the same images and people could do both.”
― Guy Gavriel Kay, Children of Earth and Sky

“Eternity is too long for us. It is not a scale for men and women. We live by different, smaller measures, but there are stories we tell . . .”
― Guy Gavriel Kay, Children of Earth and Sky

“Darkness gives way to morning's sunrise,
Winter ends, there are flowers, birds fly.
Honour the goddess, remember the gods.
We are children of earth and sky.”
― Guy Gavriel Kay, Children of Earth and Sky

“We are children of earth and sky.”
― Guy Gavriel Kay, Children of Earth and Sky

“Laughter was also necessary, and found, I spite of - or because of - these close and terrible dangers. Simple pleasures. Music and dance, wine, ale, dice, and cards. Harvest's end, the taste of berries on the bush, tricking the bees from a hive full of honey. Warmth and play in a bed at night or in the straw of a barn. Companionship. Sometimes love.”
― Guy Gavriel Kay, Children of Earth and Sky

“I am trying to say that what has happened to you is a hard thing, even if there is war somewhere. Even if emperors and kings die. You are entitled to your rage.”
― Guy Gavriel Kay, Children of Earth and Sky

“It was surprising how easy it was to think about the unthinkable if you’d had a few glasses of wine on a spring night.”
― Guy Gavriel Kay, Children of Earth and Sky

“Change and chance are the way of the world.”
― Guy Gavriel Kay, Children of Earth and Sky

“It happens this way sometimes, we can discover truths about ourselves in a moment, sometimes in the midst of drama, sometimes quietly. A sunset wind can be blowing off the sea, we might be alone in bed on a winter night, or grieving by a grave among leaves. We are drunk in a tavern, dealing with desperate pain, waiting to confront enemies on a battlefield. We are bearing a child, falling in love, reading by candlelight, watching the sun rise, a star set, we are dying...
But there is something else to all of this, because of how the world is for us, how we are within it. Something can be true of our deepest nature and the running tide of days and years might let it reach the shore, be made real there-- or not.”
― Guy Gavriel Kay, Children of Earth and Sky

“We aren't heroes if we lead men into battles we will lose.”
― Guy Gavriel Kay, Children of Earth and Sky

“The customs officials never ask for gifts but they expect them. There is a fairly precise scale of how much to give at different levels. If you are too generous with someone lower down the ranks of bureaucrats it will often become known, and those higher up will be unhappy. Not only will they expect more themselves, they will be legitimately disturbed that someone is interfering with norms and protocols. It is not for reckless Jaddites to disturb an orderly system.”
― Guy Gavriel Kay, Children of Earth and Sky

“younger son of a merchant? What was his life about? Trade? Clever, profitable dealings? He was from a city-state that flourished by letting no one hate them enough to do anything disagreeable. Where you are situated in the world,”
― Guy Gavriel Kay, Children of Earth and Sky

“the religious course left you with arrogant superiors and surrounded by frustrated women. The struggles for trivial advantage in a closed-off, overwrought retreat could create hatreds and rage fiercer than on a battlefield, and they festered like untreated wounds.”
― Guy Gavriel Kay, Children of Earth and Sky

“How can we ever presume to know what will come of our choices, our paths, the lives we lead?”
― Guy Gavriel Kay, Children of Earth and Sky