In the Serpent's Wake Quotes

“Do not bring violence to the sword. Do not bring heartbreak or anger or passion. You hold in your hand the steel of rationality.”
― Rachel Hartman, In the Serpent's Wake

“The world knew nothing at first. Then it gave birth to plants, who noticed what sunlight tasted like, and worms, who reveled in the luxuriant touch of soil. Soon the world's bright birds were perceiving the color of sound, its playful quigutl discerned the shapes of smells, and myriad eyes of every kind discovered sight and saw differently.

Behind these senses were minds--so many! The world was too vast to fit into just one mind; it needed millions of them to consider itself from every possible angle.

The difficulty with minds is that each perceives itself as a separate thing, alone. And so the minds spin stories to bridge the gaps between them, like a spider's web. There are a million stores, and yet they are all one.”
― Rachel Hartman, In the Serpent's Wake

“Kluit laughed uproariously. “You definitely are. None of us are happy to know our purpose at first, little trout. It always seems too big to manage, or too mundane to endure. But I’ll tell you a thing I’ve learned in forty-seven years: there’s more than one way a story can end, even with destiny in it. Your life is still yours, whatever they told you.”
― Rachel Hartman, In the Serpent's Wake

“Pathka touched Tess’s cheek with her padded fingers. “We’re still nest. Only our nest is as big as the world.”
― Rachel Hartman, In the Serpent's Wake

“Anyway, Spira didn’t have to forgive Tess or even like her to suspect that the world was better off with her in it, or to know for a fact that helping her was the correct thing to do.”
― Rachel Hartman, In the Serpent's Wake

“Kluit laughed. “We storytellers get blamed for all kinds of things—corrupting the young, failing to paint a glorious enough picture of our queen, insulting the priests—but our obligation is to dig into our own hearts and expose the truths there. Sometimes our hearts are full of monsters. It takes valor to look them in the eye.”
― Rachel Hartman, In the Serpent's Wake

“Awaken, Mind of the World! The recursive beauty of a mind is that it can think about its own thoughts. It can track reason through the forest of emotion and see where it went wrong.”
― Rachel Hartman, In the Serpent's Wake

“And I know I’m ham-handed, but all I’m trying to say is that we protagonists—whether born or made—are not diminished or lost when we help others become the heroes of their own stories.”
― Rachel Hartman, In the Serpent's Wake

“You, too, did what was easiest. Don't let that be all you do.”
― Rachel Hartman, In the Serpent's Wake

“It's not the stronger arm that prevails, but the stronger mind.”
― Rachel Hartman, In the Serpent's Wake

“I suddenly saw, clear as day, that Tess didn’t need me to protect her from Will. She resented it, in fact; it made her feel helpless and weak. What she needed was a sidekick.” “You are not saying, I hope, that I should be Tess’s sidekick,” snapped Marga, her hackles suddenly up. “N-not at all,” said Jacomo, eyes widening in apparent alarm. “I meant that both of us might be sidekicks to the Aftisheshe, instead of thundering in like knights-errant to save them, whether they need it or not.” Marga exhaled, her ire deflating a bit, although something at her core still quivered indignantly. “You must understand,” she said, “sidekick carries a different weight for me than for you. The world never told you your life would be better spent in service to a husband and children. Scholars and swordsmen never patronized you; your family never considered you too Porphyrian—or too Ninysh—to amount to much. You were born a protagonist; some of us have had to fight for it.” Jacomo opened his mouth as if to argue but seemed to think better of it. “There are other words,” he said at last. “How about accomplice? Or…”
― Rachel Hartman, In the Serpent's Wake