Tress Of The Emerald Sea Quotes
"In the middle of the ocean, there was a girl who lived upon a rock."
"Men often described the girl as having hair the color of wheat."
"The girl had been given the unfortunate name of Glorf upon her birth."
"The island was shaped rather like an old man’s crooked finger, emerging from the ocean to point toward the horizon."
"As the sun set, Tress would wonder about the people who visited the Rock in their ships."
"Dominating your view, like a wart on your eyeball."
"This isn’t the part of the story where you ask questions."
"Tress wasn’t your ordinary heroine—in that she was in fact decidedly ordinary."
"The duke faded into the shadows of the house, but his presence loomed over Tress."
"Lem was not poor, he simply didn’t have a lot of money."
"Brace yourself, I don’t have anything to cut that cage free, so..."
"It might seem that the person who can feel for others is doomed in life. Isn’t one person’s pain enough? Why must a person like Tress feel for two, or more? Yet I’ve found that the people who are the happiest are the ones who learn best how to feel."
"Empathy is an emotional loss leader. It pays for itself eventually."
"The greatest mistake people make: assuming that someone who does menial work does not like thinking. Physical labor is great for the mind, as it leaves all kinds of time to consider the world."
"If you wish to become a storyteller, sell your labor, but not your mind. Give me ten hours a day scrubbing a deck, and oh the stories I could imagine."
"You’d be surprised how common the name is across worlds. Once a society reaches peak Doug, it’s time for it to go sit in the corner and think about what it has done."
"Civilization exists because everyone wants to keep their innards in’r innards."
"One of the great tragedies of life is knowing how many people in the world are made to soar, paint, sing, or steer—except they never get the chance to find out."
"Whenever one discovers a moment of joy, beauty enters the world. Human beings can’t create energy; we can only harness it. But we can create light."
"The wisdom of complaints taught her the hierarchy of a ship’s crew. Most of the sailors would be equals, save for the officers."
"You will never find a murderess more intoxicating, more entrancing, than the sea."
"People rarely watch you as much as you think; they’re too busy worrying whether you are watching them."
"You’d look badass with a scar or two on your face."
"Anyone can blow their face off by accident—I mean, who hasn’t—but if you do it twice in a row, you look really silly."
"But the person who is willing to reconsider their assumptions? The hero who can sit down and reevaluate their life? Well, now that is a gemstone that truly glitters, friend."
"Do you know how many grand romances would have avoided tragedy if the hero had thought, ‘You know, maybe I should ask her if she likes me first’?"
"Like a fish trying very hard to jump out of its tank in order to escape, she’d been trying to solve a problem before stopping to wonder if she even understood her situation."
"The true monster is the one in that drawer next to you. I gave it seven different faces."
"The Sorceress doesn’t ask for money as ransom. She asks for souls, usually from the royal bloodline."
"That woman has worse aim than a drunk man riding a three-legged llama."
"Temporary immortality does not make one able to trim the sails all by one’s self, as the old adage goes."
"Yes, it was utilitarian in design, but so was Tress herself. She’d hate to have either be wasted."
"There is a malevolence to the way [the moons] hover so close."
"People generally don’t know what they want, though they almost uniformly hate being told what it should be."
"The hardest part of any task is getting yourself to start it."
"They were all for the greater good, yes, but the aforementioned tiger might also believe that said gnawing was for the greater good."
"People are not separated into simple groups of liars and non-liars."
"Even small actions have consequences. And while we can often choose our actions, we rarely get to choose our consequences."
"Worry has weight, and is an infinitely renewable resource."
"A picture is an object, easy to define and contain, while a person is a soul—and is therefore neither of those things."
"Making decisions was easier around [Charlie]—as if he were an emotional lubricant easing the machinery of the heart as it labored through difficult tasks."
"Most people never live, Tress, because they’re afraid of losing the years they have left…years that also will be spent not living."
"You can’t taste a memory without tainting it with who you have become."
"Our memories are our ballads, and if we tweak them a little with every performance…well, that’s all in the name of good drama."
"The past is boring anyway. We always pretend the ideals and culture of the past have aged like wine, but in truth, the ideas of the past tend to age more like biscuits. They simply get stale."
"Memories are fossils, the bones left by dead versions of ourselves."
"It seemed random to her, but Salay was calling orders nearby, and the Dougs obeyed, managing the sails."
"Salay didn’t particularly care if her death was meaningless or deliberate. Provided it was a long time coming."
"A sailing ship isn’t like most vehicles; it takes time and effort to change its momentum."
"You don’t normally get true waves on the spore seas—not like you do on liquid oceans—but when you do, they’re extremely dangerous."
"Through it all, Salay kept shouting orders. It was almost as if she kept the ship from capsizing through sheer force of will."
"In the midst of this dreary scene, the ship ground to a halt. The stilling had arrived."
"I know the cosmology and arcanum of Tress’s planet quite well, and I’m confident that no entity directs its storms."
"A storm is a living thing, even when not specifically Invested."
"Every person has a story, Dougs included."
"It’s really interesting how much we can smell of the world that you don’t seem to be able to."
"A window washer can think, same as anyone else, and their lives are no less complex."
"It is a great irony that society tends to look down on those who sell their bodies, but not on those who lease out their minds."
"Strange desperation is exactly the state that often leads to genius."
"Heroes are the ones who have thought about what they’re going to do, and who have trained to do it."
"Heroism is often the seemingly spontaneous result of a lifetime of preparation."
"If you want to create heroes, don’t give them something to fight for. Give them someone to fight for."
"Fear and knowledge often play on different sides of the net."
"Certain individual humans, like certain sausages, break this convention."
"For humans at large, knowledge usually equates to empathy, and empathy leads to understanding."
"I’m trying to figure out why it says ‘Ask nicely’ on your forehead, Tress," Ann said.
"Growing a tree of verdant vines?" Tress said. "To reach the top, and get in that way? I thought of that, Ann, but surely the Sorceress keeps the door locked."
"We need someone small," Salay said, "to sneak into the Sorceress’s tower through her raven window."
"It’s all right," Tress said to Huck. "You don’t need to do it if you don’t want to. I’d hate to force you into anything. But…it is a good solution. You’re good at sneaking, Huck."
"Midnight spores behave differently than the others. The others all have an immediate, almost chemical reaction to water. But these spores, they seem almost alive. Like they want something."
"It’s looking for a host," Tress said. "Or…a buyer. The monsters that roam the Midnight Sea? This is what they are. Creations of the Sorceress, bound to her. I wonder how she feeds so many…"
"I demand," he said, "that you shoot me."
"You’d do that for me? Imprison me instead of kill me?"
"I’m not going to kill you. I was never going to kill you. I didn’t even kill Crow."
"Let’s keep going, Captain," the lead Doug said. "If you don’t mind. Let’s keep sailing, and go save that man of yours."
"I had to throw the jugs out," I explained, "as the food is lonely on the bottom of the sea. Also, Tress, how does your uncle feel about seagulls taking his jobs and/or sandwiches?"
"I can’t let myself create more hardship for any of you," Tress said. "I need to do this next part alone."
"We’re going to find out," Tress said, standing up. "How long until—"
"I demand to be shot. Get it over with. Be forthright. Shoot me."
"You’re wrong," he said. "I’m still a rat, and will remain one. Because for my curse to be broken, I have to bring her the person I love to the Sorceress."
"I’ve discovered," she said, "that our food stores are frighteningly low. Somehow, we lost count of how much we had. It seems…we have barely enough to make it to the Verdant Sea, should we turn back now."
"Thank you," Tress said. "Now, please prepare the launch. I will be going alone into the Midnight Sea to test my theories about controlling the spore monsters there."
"But Tress," he said, "I feel like you should be excited. Maybe enthusiastic. Certainly relieved. Yet…"
"I’ve discovered that it’s all right to need help. So long as you’ve lived your life as the kind of person who deserves to be rescued."