The Bone Orchard Quotes

“Men did not respect anger in a woman. They labeled it weakness.”
― Sara A. Mueller, The Bone Orchard

“You’ll find that what you can bear increases a great deal when you are not offered any other choice.”
― Sara A. Mueller, The Bone Orchard

“They made you! They made you to control me! A childish woman who lives to be good. To be proper. To be appropriate! To do what she’s told! And every time I came to the surface you split that ‘me’ off! It isn’t the mindlock that kept you from throwing me out, it’s that I’m Charmaine and you were never part of me. And I won’t feel guilty anymore for what was done to us! I won’t feel guilty about surviving! I won’t be ashamed of what was done to me! I won’t be ashamed of remaking myself. And I won’t turn my back on myself.”
― Sara A. Mueller, The Bone Orchard

“To change any of this, we need to live.”
― Sara A. Mueller, The Bone Orchard

“The world isn’t all towers of white marble, and it isn’t all gardens of perfectly trimmed grass,” said Pain softly. “Whether we want to look or not, we cannot escape from the world. We can retreat for awhile, but always it is there.”
― Sara A. Mueller, The Bone Orchard

“I’ve noticed a curious trend in your boneghosts, Mistress Charm. Desire cannot hold on to anything, Pain is pale, and Pride is blind. It cannot be a coincidence, surely?”
― Sara A. Mueller, The Bone Orchard

“You began as an emptiness, and all your experiences are only yours. I don’t need an empty place now. It scares me to be without it,” she admitted, “but I’m not going to let another person carry my hurt. You’re a separate person now; so much so that you have your own name, and a rather lean, slightly sticky gentleman who loves you.” She paused and tipped her head at the rosy blush that crept up Mercy’s face.
Mercy clamped a hand over her mouth for a moment, giggling. Her scarlet eyes shone with tears.
Charm went on. “I wouldn’t feel right taking your life away from you. So…welcome to the world.” Charm smiled in spite of the pinch in her throat. Something that was hers, and not Pain’s.
The fragility in the air seemed to fall away with Mercy’s shaky smile. “Thank you.”
― Sara A. Mueller, The Bone Orchard

“I tore myself apart so they wouldn’t destroy me, but I can stand it now.” Tears traced down her cheeks. She bared her teeth and wouldn’t stop. She wouldn’t spare herself. Better wild grief than this meekness with no passion. “Pain…she was how I stood it then, but I can remember it all, now. I can stand by myself because I won’t let you win. I won’t let what someone else made me into be what I am. I love this me I’ve made myself into. I’m proud of me. And I damn well won’t give this me up to you.”
― Sara A. Mueller, The Bone Orchard

“They’re all falling away from me. I don’t want to be the Lady. I’m just learning how to be me. I don’t want to go back to the Lady, to being an empty nothing. I’m afraid.”
― Sara A. Mueller, The Bone Orchard

“He did not want to hear or believe what she said, and so she said nothing.”
― Sara A. Mueller, The Bone Orchard

“How did you escape?”
It took Pain a moment to decide. She wasn’t sure she liked the answer she found. “Well, first of all you threw me away. And now I am becoming too much my own self.” She paused. “I am afraid, too. We are the same in that, at least. I don’t want to go back to sleep. I don’t want to be only an empty place. I do not think I can do it.”
― Sara A. Mueller, The Bone Orchard

“The Lady’s head ached. She didn’t want to think about it, didn’t want to know anymore or fight anymore. She was so tired already. How did people live like this, with all the ugliness?”
― Sara A. Mueller, The Bone Orchard

“I’m tired of being only a ghost,” she said with something like desperation.”
― Sara A. Mueller, The Bone Orchard

“Sorry, Mistress, but I’m not much interested in ghosts. I have enough of my own.”
― Sara A. Mueller, The Bone Orchard

“You exorcised the others. You threw away shame and pain and pride…even justice. Everything that interfered with being their obedient little dolly. You kept me locked in whatever they asked, and you never had to pay the price for any of it because you had parts of me to do that for you.”
― Sara A. Mueller, The Bone Orchard

“He doesn’t deserve anything from you. Not. One. Tear. Cry for yourself. Not for him.”
― Sara A. Mueller, The Bone Orchard

“We were made pale, crippled, blind, and lame so that we would be clumsy and ridiculous, but the Lady has underestimated us.” The last words rang in the dank of the laboratory as if in marbled halls. “I love you, Pain, as a sister; but I will not suffer you to take my place. Do I make myself clear?”
― Sara A. Mueller, The Bone Orchard

“Responsibility for a country’s actions must ultimately rest with their government.”
― Sara A. Mueller, The Bone Orchard

“She couldn’t find anyone who was responsible except herself.”
― Sara A. Mueller, The Bone Orchard

“I have been outside the walls of Orchard House, Lady. The things that are bad within this house, and even the things that are wrong in the city, are not bad and wrong everywhere; any more than Inshill’s perfection existed outside the walls of its palace,” Pain told her. “When you see a larger world, there is room for good things as well as bad.”
― Sara A. Mueller, The Bone Orchard

“She took the bird to her worktable and put a rubber tube into its beak. With the end of the tube in her mouth, she massaged its ribs with her finger as she puffed, very gently, into the tube. The little swallow kicked, and she held it gently between her hands.
“Just like resuscitating a person,” murmured Bern.
“Exactly like that,” agreed the Lady. “Most animals want to live. They struggle toward life regardless of their surroundings.” She deposited the bird in the cage, a sad smile pulling at the corners of her mouth. “Human beings are more difficult. At some point of trauma, most people just give up and die.”
Bern’s face changed, something like guilt shadowing his eyes. “Only if they’re let to, Mistress.”
― Sara A. Mueller, The Bone Orchard

“The night breeze off the sea riffled through the bone orchard, playing softly in the ghastly white fruits, making the solid ones clatter while the long bones chimed and fluted. The trees were as foreign to Borenguard as their owner, Charm. She sat in the solarium with the windows open to the mellow night, going over her books. A soothing rhythm of touch, tally, and check to the uneven music of her bones.”
― Sara A. Mueller, The Bone Orchard

“She isn't me. Her experiences are no part of me. I'm the daughter of the Chancellor, not this girl who has to sit sorting people all day.”
― Sara A. Mueller, The Bone Orchard

“It had taken her years to learn to make them, the vessels for the other people in her mind.”
― Sara A. Mueller, The Bone Orchard

“You body was the only one that was perfect. I was so close, with you, but growing a human is harder than growing an animal. With Pain I didn’t uncover the tank, and with Shame I let light in too soon. Justice’s bones were not fully grown when I assembled her because I just couldn’t wait to pick. She made me feel so…guilty; and I couldn’t wait for the perfect thighbone, so she limped. It took a few years to figure out what I’d done that blinded you, but it was too much air in the mix. It injured your eyes in some way.”
Pride opened and closed her mouth, turned her head away.
“It doesn’t mean much to you, I’m sure, but I am sorry.”
Pride managed a brittle smile. “While it is utterly unacceptable that you would put any of us out into bodies that you wouldn’t want for yourself, I neither need not want your apology. I do not find my lack of sight such a great disadvantage.”
― Sara A. Mueller, The Bone Orchard

“Charm watched her go. Mercy would continue carrying pain for others. For Oram and for the Firedrinkers. But that was Mercy’s choice and Charm could not make it for her. There were, of course, complications. Mercy was not quite human, for all that she so clearly wanted to be. She could not have children. Charm would make sure the Assembly didn’t weep about that or try to force some other bride on Oram. It would be easy to point out to Hanover that if the Assembly got into the habit of electing the emperors, they would retain a great deal of the Imperial power. It was the least Charm could do for her child.”
― Sara A. Mueller, The Bone Orchard

“Charm watched her go. Mercy would continue carrying pain for others. For Oram and for the Firedrinkers. But that was Mercy’s choice and Charm could not make it for her. There were, of course, complications. Mercy was not quite human, for all that she so clearly wanted to be. She could not have children. Charm would make sure the Assembly didn’t weep about that or try to force some other bride on Oram. It would be easy to point out t Hanover that if the Assembly got into the habit of electing the emperors, they would retain a great deal of the Imperial power. It was the least Charm could do for her child.”
― Sara A. Mueller, The Bone Orchard

“I’ll tell you what not everyone does,” said Charm, hastily diverting. “Not everyone is shot through the lungs and gets back up.” She looked pointedly at the Duchess.
Nathair lifted their shoulders. “That’s my gift. I am persistent. I bled out in childbirth when I was sixteen, and since then I’ve always reanimated. I’ve been shot, stabbed, burned, beheaded, disemboweled, and dismembered. None of it has been pleasant, but more crucially none of it was permanent.”
“Not poisoned?” asked Charm, teasing with some care.
“If anyone’s tried it, it didn’t do anything to me.” They lifted the brandy snifter in a toast and smiled before they sipped again.
“And what will you do now, Duchess?” The Empress seemed eager to get away from the ghoulish subject, and as Charm had just done the same thing, Charn couldn’t really object.
“It will depend on what Emperor Oram…I presume they’ll make him emperor. It’s the obvious thing, and the Assembly does tend to leap to the obvious. What I will do depends on what Oram decides to do with any of the army who are in Boren and who might have survived. They’re welcome to execute me a few times if it makes anyone feel better, but if I can supply a sufficiently talented, low-power, high-manipulation telekinetic for Boren, I can probably do whatever I’d like.”
― Sara A. Mueller, The Bone Orchard

“Silence fell between them like the stillness of old bones.”
― Sara A. Mueller, The Bone Orchard

“I’m all the pieces of myself again.”
― Sara A. Mueller, The Bone Orchard