Strange The Dreamer Quotes
"Turn back now if you know what’s good for you."
"I think you should believe every story you’ve ever heard about the Tizerkane, and turn around and go home!"
"What had happened? Did the city still exist?"
"His mind gleamed with ancient wars and winged beings, a mountain of melted demon bones and the city on the far side of it—a city that had vanished in the mists of time."
"The streets of the city, Brother Cyrus said, were tiled with lapis lazuli and kept scrupulously clean so as not to soil the long, long hair the ladies wore loose and trailing behind them like bolts of blackest silk."
"You haven’t lived until you’ve laid your head on a nice, soft—"
"What’s a horizon? Is it like the end of an aisle of books?"
"The spirit grows sluggish when you neglect the passions."
"Remember: The spirit grows sluggish when you neglect the passions."
"They tried to fight, but they were no match for him. His swords flashed lightning as, two by two, he disarmed them all."
"Because you can’t expect me to do in a year what no one has ever done before."
"And what’s the point of being young if you can’t ignore all advice?"
"I had to name so many babies that year I went with whatever popped into my head."
"Sometimes a moment is so remarkable that it carves out a space in time and spins there, while the world rushes on around it."
"It’s been a very long time since we heard new stories."
"All the best stories are beautiful and full of monsters."
"You call it an open mind to believe men and women flew down from the skies on fiery wings?"
"Farewell, good coin, for I shall never see thee more."
"The end of wondering, he thought, but not of wonder. That was just beginning. He was certain of it."
"Lest you forget you are an abomination, here’s an old woman who’ll wail at the sight of you. Here’s a young man who’ll think he’s in hell."
"The shadow of our dark time still haunts us."
"The imagination, he thought, no matter how vivid, was still tethered in some measure to the known, and this was beyond anything he could have imagined."
"If the Godslayer couldn’t keep his countenance, how could anyone else?"
"It turned his blood cold to even think of closing his eyes in the city."
"And what tatters remained of Sarai’s belief deserted her."
"You think they don’t fall off the trees by themselves? Oh look, a plum! Must be someone living up there! Let’s go kill them!"
"I hardly think a plum would survive the fall."
"If we could control mesarthium, we could do a lot more than shut the doors."
"The function of hate, as Sarai saw it, was to stamp out compassion—to close a door in one’s own self and forget it was ever there."
"The whole dream shrank to a sphere around the pair of them, and there could be no question that the witchlight was for her."
"What’s wrong with you? Why are you so pleased?"
"Skathis controlled mesarthium, and so he controlled… everything."
"It wasn’t the perfect place he had imagined as a boy. Of course it wasn’t. If it ever had been, it had gone through far too much to stay that way."
"We are all children in the dark, here in Weep."
"And Sathaz and the moon are living happily together in a cave somewhere."
"What’s the use of having an army if you don’t get to use it?"
"How many humans can we kill before we are? Is there a number? Five? Fifty? Once you start, there’s no stopping."
"But what else can we do? We might be looking at years of effort."
"You don’t want to be jabbed with bones when you—"
"Anything dismissed by scholars as too fun to be important, they put it down here and forget it."
"I have a name that tells the world I have no name. It’s like a sign around my neck that reads ‘No one.’"
"I think the citizens of Weep would say [a name] is important."
"When Letha took a memory, she ate it and it was gone forever. That was her gift. Eradication."
"I’m not a foundling," he said, looking up again. "I have no family, and no name."
"I lived seven years inside these books. My body may have been going about its duties in the library, but my mind was here."
"I walked around wondering what kind of wings I would buy if the wingsmiths came to town."
"Good people do all the things bad people do, Lazlo. It’s just that when they do them, they call it justice."
"I’m not a ghost," said Sarai. "But I am godspawn, and you must see that there’s a difference between being alive and having a life."
"Hate won," she said. "Isagol left it there for her amusement, and for three years he fought a war within himself."
"Their tears are the mirrors of their memories."
"Love was no match for what burned in Eril-Fane when he heard Azareen’s first screams."
"Some things are too terrible to forgive. But I think... I think I can understand what they felt that day."
"I feel a little like him sometimes, the love and hate side by side. It’s not easy having a paradox at the core of one’s own being."
"You ruin nothing. I might be asleep, but this has still been the best night of my life."
"You know, I thought it was foolish, that he was hiding from his nightmares. But he was right."
"I did it to myself. I was so young when I began, and no one ever told me to consider the consequences."
"The bizarre, tenuous nature of their connection struck him with new force—that a moth should be their only link. That they could be sharing such a moment and lose it in an instant because he rolled over on his pillow and crushed a moth."
"There were no children on the high wires, and all the market stalls were bare. Some even looked burned, and there wasn’t a sound to be heard."
"He realized, once he was settled, that he’d left enough room on the bed for Sarai—on the side she’d chosen in the dream—though all that was needed was his brow for her moths to perch on."
"The ground beneath their feet might have been the city’s floor, but it was also a roof, the roof of something vast and deep: an unmapped world of shimmering tunnels where the Uzumark flowed dark and mythic monsters swam in sealed caverns."
""You know I don’t know," he had told Thyon, uncomfortable. "What are you suggesting?""
"The unconscious mind is open terrain—no walls or barriers, for better or worse. Thoughts and feelings are free to wander, like characters leaving their books to taste life in other stories."
"He gave himself over, as he had to the mahalath. Some deep place in his mind had taken control. His palms were pressed full against the mesarthium, and they throbbed with the rhythm of his heartbeats."
"The same unfathomable force that kept the citadel in the sky—and he could feel it all. The four anchors and the great weight they upheld."
"If there was any justice, the scene would be carved into a monument of demonglass and placed here to commemorate the salvation of Weep."
"City and citadel were safe, and all was right. He was suffused with well-being. This was who he was."
"He didn’t grasp the magnitude, quite, of the moment."
"He didn’t feel like a hero, and, well… he didn’t feel like a monster, either."
"In the space where his legend was gathering up words, monster was surely among them."
"Perhaps he ought not have been surprised by what he saw, but he was."
"They stared at him, at his face that was as blue as his hands, and they struggled."
"He didn’t even have to wait for nightfall. He could fly. Right now."
"He laughed out loud. Some of the Tizerkane flinched at the sound."
"Sound and air were stolen, and joy and thought and purpose."
"The plummet, he recalled, sick with sudden memory."
"She slipped out of herself with the sensation of being shed."
"Her soul would go, too. The world would resorb it."
"He was shaking his head. His hands balled into fists."
"She laughed. The sound met the air like a real voice."
"And all the pity and outrage she’d felt on behalf of Minya’s bound ghosts deserted her."
"He bent his head to kiss her shoulder, moving the pink strap aside a fraction with his lips."
"It was a game, she’d said. "Nod if you understand.""