A Year of Ravens Quotes

“Women are not always what we seem to be. What our reputations would tell you. Nor do we only exist in reference to our fathers, husbands, and sons.”
― Ruth Downie, A Year of Ravens

“Why did so many die in the night? As though they wished to kiss us and deliver us with sweet dreams before taking their leave of the world.”
― Ruth Downie, A Year of Ravens

“Even now he could not say in his heart of hearts for which side he would draw his blade when he was finally called upon. What was a child of two worlds to do?”
― Ruth Downie, A Year of Ravens

“Such was the cost of dealing with the Romans: even when one fought against them, the stain of their violence licked and crackled at the soul like a fire about to engulf an entire forest.”
― Ruth Downie, A Year of Ravens

“Blood for honor. That was the price then, as it was the price now. It was always the price of honor. Always blood. Always pain. And as the queen was scourged, he wondered if such a thing as honor really existed at all. For what was honor if it could not strip the pride from a barbarian woman even as she was beaten before her people? What was honor if he could only defend his own by doing this to her? Honor, Decianus thought, was just an excuse for war and mayhem. An excuse for taking. Whether the taking of a woman or the taking of one tribe against another, one empire over another, one emperor over the world. An emperor like the one he served . . . If this was honor, he wanted no part in it.”
― Ruth Downie, A Year of Ravens

“They say opposites attract, but like meets like, too.”
― Ruth Downie, A Year of Ravens

“Life is short, Hades is long. As Agathon says, you can’t change the past, and as Aristotle says—paraphrasing—things are as they are, it’s how we deal with them that counts.”
― Ruth Downie, A Year of Ravens

“Even if we lose, what of it? We have made a song of freedom that will ring for a thousand years. No one will forget the Iceni or their red-haired queen.”
― Kate Quinn, A Year of Ravens

“Because I sensed in him the magic of a poet, a storyteller who can bind you with tales of things that had never been and could never be. And I felt myself so bound. Pulled under. At a loss for breath in his presence, just as I once was in a river, clinging to life.”
― Stephanie Dray, A Year of Ravens

“And when Venutius was not busy fighting, he was content to spend his days hammering things near a forge and his evenings hammering, well... as I said, we got on well.”
― Stephanie Dray, A Year of Ravens