The Lions of Al-Rassan Quotes

“The deeds of men, as footprints in the desert.
Nothing under the circling moons is fated to last.
Even the sun goes down.”
― Guy Gavriel Kay, The Lions of Al-Rassan

“Eyyia?" said her husband, and Eliane bet Danel heard the mangling of her name as music.
"You sound like a marsh frog," she said, moving to stand before his chair.
By the flickering light she saw him smile.
"Where have you been," she asked. "My dear. I've needed you so much."
"Eyyia," he tried again, and stood up. His eyes were black hollows. They would always be hollows.
He opened his arms and she moved into the space they made in the world, and laying her head against his chest she permitted herself the almost unimaginable luxury of grief.”
― Guy Gavriel Kay, The Lions of Al-Rassan

“He opened his arms and she moved into the space they made in the world, and laying her head against his chest she permitted herself the almost unimaginable luxury of grief.”
― Guy Gavriel Kay, The Lions of Al-Rassan

“It is an old truth that men and women sometimes miss what they hate as much as what they love.”
― Guy Gavriel Kay, The Lions of Al-Rassan

“I know love,"
Says the littlest one.
"Love is like a flower."

"Why is love a flower?
Little one tell me."

"Love is a flower
For the sweetness it gives
Before it dies away.”
― Guy Gavriel Kay, The Lions of Al-Rassan

“It's one thing to make war for your country, your family, even in pursuit of glory. It's another to believe that the people you fight are embodiments of evil and must be destroyed for that. I want this peninsula back. I want Esperana great again, but I will not pretend that if we smash Al- Rassan and all it has built we are doing the will of any god I know.”
― Guy Gavriel Kay, The Lions of Al-Rassan

“And surely, surely, if we are not simply animals that live to fight, there must be a reason for bloodshed.”
― Guy Gavriel Kay, The Lions of Al-Rassan

“You touched people's lives, glancingly, and those lives changed forever.”
― Guy Gavriel Kay, The Lions of Al-Rassan

“I think,' said Ammar ibn Khairan of Aljais, very slowly, 'that I should know you in a pitch black room. I think I would know you anywhere near me in the world.' He paused. 'Is that answer enough, Jehane? Or too much of one? Will you say?”
― Guy Gavriel Kay, The Lions of Al-Rassan

“It was too bitter a truth even for irony.”
― Guy Gavriel Kay, The Lions of Al-Rassan

“The inner voice always had the hard questions.”
― Guy Gavriel Kay, The Lions of Al-Rassan

“Know, all who see these lines,
That this man, by his appetite for honor,
By his steadfastness,
By his love for his country,
By his courage,
Was one of the miracles of the god.”
― Guy Gavriel Kay, The Lions of Al-Rassan

“I am always, endlessly, hoping to be surprised.”
“Then I wish it for you.”
― Guy Gavriel Kay, The Lions of Al-Rassan

“Whichever way the wind blows, it will rain upon the Kindath.”
― Guy Gavriel Kay, The Lions of Al-Rassan

“Surely, surely, if we are not simple animals that live to fight, there must be a reason for bloodshed."
"And the reason is? for you?"
"Power, Jehane. A bastion. A way to be as secure as this uncertain world allows, with a chance to build something for my sons to hold onto after I die.”
― Guy Gavriel Kay, The Lions of Al-Rassan

“Thank you,’ she said. And then, after another moment, holding as tightly as she could to the thing suspended there, ‘Goodbye.’
With her words the moment passed, the world moved on again: time, the flowing river, the moons. And the delicate thing that had been in the air between them - whatever it might have been named - fell, as it seemed to Jehane, softly to rest in the grass by the water.
‘Goodbye,’ he said. ‘Be always blessed, on all the paths of your life. My dear.’ And then he said her name.”
― Guy Gavriel Kay, The Lions of Al-Rassan

“And in the dark of that room, notorious for the woven patterns of desire it had seen, Ammar ibn Khairan held the woman beloved of the man he’d killed, and offered what small comfort he could. He granted her the courtesy and space of his silence, as she finally permitted herself to weep, mourning the depth of her loss, the appalling disappearance, in an instant, of love in a bitter world.”
― Guy Gavriel Kay, The Lions of Al-Rassan

“Let us go forward from this place and begin to reclaim our lost land.”
[...] And whose land will be broken and lost in that claiming?”
― Guy Gavriel Kay, The Lions of Al-Rassan

“They were like a bright golden coin, those two, two sides, different images on each, one value.”
― Guy Gavriel Kay, The Lions of Al-Rassan

“A coragem residia em lutar para tentar ultrapassar esse medo, em erguer-se para fazer o que tinha de ser feito.”
― Guy Gavriel Kay, The Lions of Al-Rassan

“It ought never to have been so swift, so much like a dance or a dream. It was as if there had been music playing somewhere, almost but not quite heard. He had fought those five men side-by-side with Rodrigo Belmonte of Valledo, whom he had never seen in his life, and it had been as nothing had ever been before, on a battlefield or anywhere else. It had felt weirdly akin to having doubled himself. To fighting as if there were two hard-trained bodies with the one controlling mind. They hadn't spoken during the fight. No warnings, tactics. It hadn't even lasted long enough for that.
He ought to have been elated after such a triumph, perhaps curious, intrigued. He was deeply unsettled instead. Restless. Even a little afraid, if he was honest with himself...
Come, brother; Rodrigo Belmonte of Valledo had said today as five hard men with swords had walked forward to encircle the two of them. Shall we show them how this is done?
They had shown them.
Brother.
He had looked at Belmonte after, and had seen - with relief and apprehension, both - a mirror image of that same strangeness. As if something had gone flying away from each of them and was only just coming back. The Valledan had looked glazed, unfocused.
At least, Ammar had thought, it isn't only me.”
― Guy Gavriel Kay, The Lions of Al-Rassan

“Then he turned away from them to the man lying on the ground and he sank to his knees beside him as the sun went down.
No sun, no moon, no stars over Al-Rassan.”
― Guy Gavriel Kay, The Lions of Al-Rassan

“Ammar’s eyes opened without warning, vivid and blue, the same color as her own. He looked at her. She watched him settle into an awareness of the day, what morning it was.”
― Guy Gavriel Kay, The Lions of Al-Rassan

“The necklace of Al-Rassan had been broken then, the pearls scattering. Now they could be lost.”
― Guy Gavriel Kay, The Lions of Al-Rassan

“He found himself taking note of the trappings of this, the king’s most private room. [...] the etched windows over the garden, the gilt-edged mirror on the opposite wall, the intricately woven carpets . . . In a way, Mazur ben Avren thought, all these delicate things were bulwarks, the innermost defenses of civilized man against the rain and dark, and ignorance.”
― Guy Gavriel Kay, The Lions of Al-Rassan

“The two men were still in the habit of taking this last glass together; the depth and endurance of friendship marked as much in their silence as in the words.”
― Guy Gavriel Kay, The Lions of Al-Rassan

“A dangerous man.”
“Most useful men are dangerous.”
― Guy Gavriel Kay, The Lions of Al-Rassan

“It was upon them.
Who knows love?
Who says he knows love?
What is love, tell me.
An old song. A child’s song.”
― Guy Gavriel Kay, The Lions of Al-Rassan

“And then, after another moment, holding as tightly as she could to the thing suspended there, ‘Goodbye.’
With her words the moment passed, the world moved on again: time, the flowing river, the moons. And the delicate thing that had been in the air between them - whatever it might have been named - fell, as it seemed to Jehane, softly to rest in the grass by the water.
‘Goodbye,’ he said. ‘Be always blessed, on all the paths of your life. My dear.’ And then he said her name.”
― Guy Gavriel Kay, The Lions of Al-Rassan

“Twice now, then. Twice in fifteen years he had murdered the most powerful monarch in the land. A khalif and a king.

I am increasingly unlikely to be best remembered, ibn Khairan decided ruefully, entering his home, for my poetry.”
― Guy Gavriel Kay, The Lions of Al-Rassan