The Thorn Boy Quotes

“To this point, I had not realised how deadly Mallory could be, and even believed her hand was not behind these events. I realised I must be wrong. Some of Mallory’s creatures were among the delegations to Mewt.”
― Storm Constantine, The Thorn Boy

“Cossics do not understand Mewts. They ascribe to them the morals and values of Cos. This is a grave mistake. I am not Cossic, and I can appreciate the Mewtish mind only too well. The Cossic nobleman is a thinker; honourable, loyal, and traditional, but he keeps emotion in check. Challis Hespereth demands sex as a sacrifice, not love. The Mewt, on the other hand, is a passionate individual; he feels. Love to him is all; it is his god. He would die for for it.”
― Storm Constantine, The Thorn Boy

“If I am a thorn in your mattress, he will be a cage of briars around you.”
― Storm Constantine, The Thorn Boy

“I donned my smartest, blackest clothes and brushed my hair until it gleamed like jet. I put earrings of obsidian into my ears, and brushed the skin around my eyes with a kiss of charcoal. My mirror showed me the image of an aloof young man of glacial beauty. I was a black and white creature, even my lips were without colour, and my eyes were the darkest grey. It was as I desired.”
― Storm Constantine, The Thorn Boy

“I was dazed, perplexed by the eternal flights of shallow steps that made me feel like a tiny, crawling creature negotiating a fallen pack of cards. From every shadowed corner, rampant stone lions and gryphons leered down at me with lolling tongues. Ancient swords clashed upon the walls around me.”
― Storm Constantine, The Thorn Boy

“You have been my solace, my exorcism, but perhaps my place is beside his tomb, celibate and beautiful.”
― Storm Constantine, The Thorn Boy

“I have never beheld a youth so pale and lovely. Such magic must refresh your very soul.”
― Storm Constantine, The Thorn Boy

“I was a pampered plaything, pale and thin; a sickle moon to the memory of Mewt’s slaughtered sun king.”
― Storm Constantine, The Thorn Boy

“The Mewts have an almost holy regard for beautiful boys beloved of kings, and Alofel was aware of this. Mewtish folklore was plump with tales about the mysterious, sacrosanct relationship of male lovers, whereas the Cossics were far more casual about these lessons. Most Cossic noblemen had wives and boys, but there was really little distinction between them.”
― Storm Constantine, The Thorn Boy

“We are all so many people; a hundred burgeoning personalities confined within a single body. I am weak, I am strong. I am afraid, I am courageous. I am a vessel, I am the fluid that fills it. Akaten was languorous beneath me, and I was not the person who had swooned in the arms of the stranger in the shrine. I felt powerful, twice as tall, capable of anything, but entirely tender. My lovemaking was as gentle as the dew around us. When I slid into him, he opened for me like a flower. He was a lily on the water, and I rode him slowly, so slowly, to the shore.”
― Storm Constantine, The Thorn Boy

“I heard the scrape of a soft shoe and then the curtain was lifted by a single hand. I saw the long slim arm and the dark shape of the body, a tumble of loose hair that fell about him like a frayed cloak. He brought a breeze with him that warmed the flame of the lamp, and sent shadows of laughter across the face of the goddess.”
― Storm Constantine, The Thorn Boy

“There is a saying: in dreams the heart speaks truly.”
― Storm Constantine, The Thorn Boy

“If a body should fall from that window, its flight would be impeded by the stone arms of caryatids and gargoyles, or else impaled. I could see him thinking of his own death, and he was achingly lovely as he did so: the archetype of all the boys ever loved by kings. His hair, unbound, flowed down him like a veil; the colour of dark honey. His eye, in profile, was slightly slanted, its cat-like shape accentuated by a kiss of kohl.”
― Storm Constantine, The Thorn Boy

“I was not sad to leave the banquet, for my evening had been poisoned at the thought of this thorn that had come to embed itself in Alofel’s flesh.”
― Storm Constantine, The Thorn Boy

“I’ve dreamed of the sensuous, secret-shrouded lands of antiquity, where the nights are filled with perfume and the tantalizing slither of silk against skin. In these places, the incubi and the succubae of the imagination wake up and walk.”
― Storm Constantine, The Thorn Boy

“He breathes as I breathe, he thinks as I think, yet we are worlds apart. I cannot know his thoughts, and yet our skins are touching. How strange.”
― Storm Constantine, The Thorn Boy