The Empress of Salt and Fortune Quotes

“Angry mothers raise daughters fierce enough to fight wolves.”
― Nghi Vo, The Empress of Salt and Fortune

“You will never remember the great if you do not remember the small.”
― Nghi Vo, The Empress of Salt and Fortune

“The abbey at Singing Hills would say that if a record cannot be perfect, it should at least be present. Better for it to exist than for it to be perfect and only in your mind.”
― Nghi Vo, The Empress of Salt and Fortune

“She had a foreigner’s beauty, like a language we do not know how to read.”
― Nghi Vo, The Empress of Salt and Fortune

“Being close to her was like being warmed by a bonfire, and I had been cold for a long time.”
― Nghi Vo, The Empress of Salt and Fortune

“Look to your records, cleric. Honor is a light that brings trouble. Shadows are safer by far.”
― Nghi Vo, The Empress of Salt and Fortune

“Strange how some trash survives, but precious things are lost, isn’t it?”
― Nghi Vo, The Empress of Salt and Fortune

“Submission but only to the truth.”
― Nghi Vo, The Empress of Salt and Fortune

“Let him kill himself,” I said finally. “As long as he is dead, that is all that matters to me.” That’s something I think peasants understand better than nobles. For them, the way down matters, whether you are skewered by a dozen guardsmen or thrown in a silk sack to drown or allowed to remove your robe and walk down to the shores of the lake before you gut yourself. Peasants understand that dead is dead.”
― Nghi Vo, The Empress of Salt and Fortune

“Those who bear children hold the keys to life and death, and their ill wishes are to be feared.”
― Nghi Vo, The Empress of Salt and Fortune

“Angry mothers raise daughters fierce enough to fight wolves. I am not worried for her in the least.”
― Nghi Vo, The Empress of Salt and Fortune

“In-yo would say that the war was won by silenced and nameless women, and it would be hard to argue with her.”
― Nghi Vo, The Empress of Salt and Fortune

“She disappeared like Kazu did, like any number of women did over the years, unremarked, and their demise as unremarkable as surely they were not.”
― Nghi Vo, The Empress of Salt and Fortune

“History will say that she was an ugly woman, but that is not true. She had a foreigner’s beauty, like a language we do not know how to read.”
― Nghi Vo, The Empress of Salt and Fortune

“Save that anger,” Mai said with a sigh. “Angry mothers raise daughters fierce enough to fight wolves.”
― Nghi Vo, The Empress of Salt and Fortune

“I know very well, though, that In-yo never hated Kao-fan. She may have pitied her, or been angry with her, or simply found her irritating or foolish or unfashionable. Hate, however, was reserved for equals, and as far as In-yo was concerned, she had no equals in all the empire.”
― Nghi Vo, The Empress of Salt and Fortune

“Honor is a light that brings trouble. Shadows are safer by far.”
― Nghi Vo, The Empress of Salt and Fortune

“... He was unimportant, the least of In-yo's spies and couriers, but—"
Almost Brilliant fluttered her wings in the dying light. "I understand. I will remember Sukai for you, and so will my children and their children as well.”
― Nghi Vo, The Empress of Salt and Fortune

“Chih thought that even from the crowd, they would see in her face the trace of a migratory bird, a rabbit, and the empress from the north, fierce enough to fight wolves.”
― Nghi Vo, The Empress of Salt and Fortune

“Hate, however, was reserved for equals”
― Nghi Vo, The Empress of Salt and Fortune

“See, this combination means that you will be successful in your career, but only if you remember to take things in their own time. No one likes a prodigy, after all. Patience should be your watchword.”
― Nghi Vo, The Empress of Salt and Fortune

“No one likes a prodigy, after all.”
― Nghi Vo, The Empress of Salt and Fortune

“When I explained it to her, she went silent and turned her face to the wall, still as the sky before a lightning strike.”
― Nghi Vo, The Empress of Salt and Fortune

“During the day, the waters were a translucent flint green, as beautiful and unremarkable as any other lake. It took nightfall to show the truth.”
― Nghi Vo, The Empress of Salt and Fortune

“If it was a monster of some kind, it was a monster that watched over me, and, at the very least it had not devoured me yet.”
― Nghi Vo, The Empress of Salt and Fortune

“As you live with anything, I suspect. You bear it, or you end it. So far we have proved equal to bearing it."
With my mouth stuffed full of mushroom, I didn't say that you could also find beauty in it.”
― Nghi Vo, The Empress of Salt and Fortune

“Are you going to ask me if I understand? I am still not sure if I do."
"Well, something like this, you understand or you won't.”
― Nghi Vo, The Empress of Salt and Fortune

“but deep down, I thought she would never be alone again, not it I could help it. Being close to her was like being warmed by a bonfire, and I had been cold for a long time.”
― Nghi Vo, The Empress of Salt and Fortune

“[,,,] if you want to understand people who have gone, that's what you look at, isn't it? Their offal. Their leavings.”
― Nghi Vo, The Empress of Salt and Fortune

“Brilliant. If your cleric is from the Singing Hills, you must be a neixin, are you not?” Almost Brilliant’s feathers fluffed out in pride. “Yes, matriarch. I am descended from the line of Ever Victorious and Always Kind. Our memories go all the way back to the Xun Dynasty.”
― Nghi Vo, The Empress of Salt and Fortune