Dead Country Quotes

“But you are my blood and his, and we were glorious together. We were the kind of heroes each age sees once or twice before it goes, not because we won kingdoms or made our rivals weep, but because the whole world set out to kills us and we did not die.”
― Max Gladstone, Dead Country

“He was … He was a genius. I worked hard to get into his lab, and when he doubted me I worked harder to prove my worth. And he used me. He used all his students. He took over our minds. He drained our souls, used our dreams for his projects, bent our spirits through his will. He worked us like puppets until we broke. And then he threw us away.” Dawn sat very still. Tara wondered what expression was on her face, but she couldn’t look. She kept her eyes on the tips of her fingers. “I freed myself. I set his lab on fire. I broke his hold over the other students. I denounced him before the board. But they already knew. They knew, and let him work, for decades. They guided students from influential families away from his lab—but not even those kids were completely safe. The board protected him. They didn’t protect us. “You have to understand that these people I’m talking about aren’t outliers. They’re not stuck on the sidelines. They’re giants in their field, influential faculty at the most selective, most elite Craftwork school in the world. Professor Denovo’s gone now, but the people who protected him and worked with him are still right there. So. You can’t trust the Hidden Schools. And if you can’t trust them, I don’t know who you can trust.”
― Max Gladstone, Dead Country

“When Tara arrived at the Hidden Schools she’d been just this voracious, insatiable, and terrified. Yes, the Schools had answered her call, and yes, she’d made it through the Labyrinth in record time, but surely there must have been some mistake. Country girls just didn’t go to the Hidden Schools. She threw herself into work. If she was good enough she’d graduate before they noticed she shouldn’t have been there at all. When professors assigned chapters she read the whole book; when they assigned books she read three more by the same author. She learned languages when she could have muddled by with phonetic pronunciation. She asked for advice, she attended office hours, she pushed against the horizons of her understanding.”
― Max Gladstone, Dead Country

“He blamed them, Baker, the Pastor, even Cavanaugh, for chasing you off. You’d come home, you were trying to build a life here, and they were so small they couldn’t understand. He was so proud of you, forging your way back east, like he’d tried to before the Wars. Were you supposed to leave all that and come back here to help people who hated you for what you’d made yourself?”
― Max Gladstone, Dead Country

“She recognized her mother’s indrawn breath. She did that herself, in court and boardroom argument, to break rhythm and steal time for her thoughts to gather. She hadn’t thought it came from anywhere, and only realized it was a tell when one of her Alt Coulumb friends pointed it out with a viciously accurate impression. So: she’d learned it here.”
― Max Gladstone, Dead Country

“The tea was her favorite for late nights, not a proper tea, in point of fact (she’d learned the difference from snoots and know-it-alls at school) but an infusion of rich, deep vanilla, dried redroot and berries, a hint of rose.”
― Max Gladstone, Dead Country

“Edgemont did not know her. At home she’d laughed, fibbed sometimes, tickled, let Tara’s father whirl her through the kitchen and dip her and kiss her like a swashbuckling hero as Tara rolled her eyes. In public she kept herself composed, walked stately and erect with an instinct for command, trailing straightened backs and respect. She was a teacher, she explained, that was part of it, and she understood that respect attached to a role only so long as the role was performed.”
― Max Gladstone, Dead Country

“Tara tried with all her courtroom art and skill to look like she knew what she was doing.”
― Max Gladstone, Dead Country

“rocks, naturally, think only rocks can talk, and they’re right, at timescales meaningful to rock.”
― Max Gladstone, Dead Country

“The sun was a long slow explosion far away, burning to death under its own weight.”
― Max Gladstone, Dead Country

“the whole world set out to kill us and we did not die.”
― Max Gladstone, Dead Country