Fire Quotes
"Such a good-natured baby, so calm. His gurgles and coos so musical, and his eyes deep brown like the eyes of his dead mother."
"Every morning she examined the baby’s eyes, as was the unspoken custom of all new parents in the seven kingdoms, and every morning she breathed more easily once she’d confirmed that nothing had changed."
"Birdies love treetops to whirl themselves through, for inside of their heads they are birds."
"A GRACE was a particular skill far surpassing the capability of a normal human being."
"It’s what they do, Father. It’s part of their monstrous power. They stun you with their beauty, and then they overwhelm your mind and make you stupid."
"His last thought was that it hadn’t been stupidity that had allowed his son to enchant him so easily with words. It had been love."
"What surprised her was that he shot her by accident."
"Fire’s thoughts scrambled. Had he not meant to strike her? Did he not know who she was?"
"He knows the way, she thought tiredly, and then she let the thought go. It didn’t matter who he was or where he came from."
"She ate in bed, and he sat with her. He cut her meat and encouraged her. Eating hurt, everything hurt."
"Her nightmares were always worse on days when she’d spent time down among the cages, for that was where her father had died."
"She thought of them as beautiful creatures, burning and cold; each solitary, and bleak, and silent like her."
"In one way or another, all that was wrong in the Dells could be traced back to Cansrel."
"Even when she did not like Archer, she loved him."
"I can’t remember. It’s not a thing that happens very often."
"It’ll put you to sleep while making you clever and unbeatable."
"It’s rewarding to make you smile. The pain in your face drops away."
"Nax didn’t inherit his father’s strength, and you know as well as anyone that Cansrel didn’t inherit even a touch of his father’s empathy."
"From the start, Cansrel used Nax to get everything he wanted, and all Cansrel ever wanted was his own pleasure."
"But darling, Nax and Cansrel were two other creatures entirely."
"Beauty has rights that plainness never will."
"Cansrel could sit with Fire and do something no one else could: give her lessons to improve the skill of her mind."
"Poor fellow," he said, stroking Small’s nose. "We woke you. Go back to sleep."
"Apologize to me. I’ve had enough of this. Apologize."
"She didn’t even need to reach for his mind to know that it was closed to her control, a walled fortress with not a single crack."
"His superior display of strength was humiliating, and he was hurting her more even than he knew."
"You’re a bit of a disappointment, aren’t you? People talk about you as if you’re something special, but there’s nothing special about a man who pushes a defenseless woman around and calls her names. It’s plain ordinary."
"I don’t stand in opposition to this kingdom. At least, she added, no more so than you, Brigandell."
"I can see that you studied the example of your father before deciding the man you wanted to become."
"You’re inhuman. You do nothing but hurt people. You’re the monster, not I."
"You’re beautiful in the morning. You’re impossibly sweet in my shirt."
"But fifty men total to two hundred raptors? Are they mad?"
"Let me do this. My life is mine to risk, as yours is yours."
"Her hair billowed down over her shoulders like a river of flame."
"He trusted her, for he knew that she used her power for good and never to harm."
"She’s astonishing, Fire. You’re a constant source of wonder to me. I’m never more happy than when I’ve made you happy."
"I must find my even temper. What is it I’m hoping for, anyway?"
"The First Branch was a wonder of organization: a moving base divided into sections, divided again into small units."
"The commander doesn’t use one, Lady. He keeps track in his head."
"Twenty-five hundred women who had volunteered to live on a horse’s back, and fight, and eat, dress, sleep in a mob of males."
"She didn’t know enough about armies to extrapolate."
"Fire pictured Archer riding through his fields at day’s end."
"She leaned into Small and whispered to him, comforted herself with the feel of him, the only familiar heart in a sea of strangers."
"The consciousnesses of five thousand men pressed in on her."
"Fire understood then that she had been afraid of Brigan, of her heart being injured by the hatred of a person she couldn’t help but like."
"A monster drew out all that was vile, especially a female monster, because of the desire, and the endless perverted channels for the expression of malice."
"It was her father’s dying eyes that never let her sleep."
"Cansrel’s mind was strong as a bear and hard as the steel of a trap."
"Fire fell into a routine—if a continuum of unsettling experiences could be called a routine."
"If we knew a person was going to die, we’d hold harder to the memories."
"It was worse than a bandage that chafed at a wound, her endless lack of solitude."
"Welkley came with four fiddles after dinner... They were the best he’d been able to find in such a short time."
"This one, she thought to herself. This is the one. Its only flaw, she told Welkley, was that it was too good for her skill."
"From the warmth of her fondness for her horse she constructed a fragile and changeable thing that almost resembled courage."
"I hate bullies, she thought at him furiously."
"I’m not that kind of monster, she said miserably."
"Mirrors were useless, irritating devices. She should have known better."
"I wanted to see what it was like to hurt someone, she spat at him, like you always tell me to. And now I know, and I’m horrified with both of us, and I’ll never do it again, not to anyone."
"Everyone wants a bit of something beautiful."
"You’re wasting something you have, Something the rest of us could only imagine possessing. Waste is criminal."
"Taking someone's very mind and changing it is a trespass. A violence."
"I understand you. I know what it’s like to be capable of horrors."
"You honor me. I accept your promise, and I give you my own in return."
"I’ve been afraid of being Cansrel. But I’m not Cansrel."
"I’m doing this to protect the Dells from those who would destroy it."
"Not all people who inspired devotion were monsters."
"A prison with a monster on its staff of interrogators is not likely to grow a reputation for kindness."
"The love I give you, you take, and you use it against me."
"Every regard you’ve ever shown me has been a gift undeserved."
"You were my loyal friend even before I could walk."
"You’ve always been far more afraid of yourself than of any of the terrors in the world outside yourself. Were it the other way around, we’d both have peace."
"Sometimes in the courtyards or the hallways, I’ve taken to changing people’s attentions so they don’t notice me."
"It’s been some time since I did anyone any good. When my father arrives I won’t be able to look him in the face. I’m dying to do something worthwhile, something I needn’t be ashamed of."
"I believe you have shouldered a great deal of pain for the sake of other people. I believe you’re as strong and as brave as anyone I’ve met or heard of. And wise and generous in the use of your power."
"I never saw this coming. And now that we’re here, you’re such a sight I’m intimidated."
"But you’ve flapped me, monster Lady. I told myself all these years you were Cansrel’s daughter, and not truly Jessa’s. A monster, not a girl, that we were better off without."
"I’ve grown quite fond of your warhorse Big. Will you give her to me?"
"All right, all right. I was only testing that you were awake and in your right mind."
"Have we any secrets you haven’t told yet to the king’s monster pet?"
"Mydogg thinks the crown will send reinforcements south to Fort Flood when we attack. Maybe even a whole branch of the King’s Army, if not two branches."
"I won’t let you be ashamed before me. Please, Brigan. We’re the same. What I do only looks less horrible."
"Blood was in her mouth, dripping down the back of her throat."
"For a moment at the edges of her perception she thought that someone felt wrong, out of place."
"Our army is greatly outnumbered," she said. "Everywhere."
"It was difficult for Fire to wipe blood from her nose without touching it."
"I won’t let you fall," Brigan said quietly. "Nor will Clara. Do you understand?"
"And so, when she stepped out of the window onto the rope ladder and heard a strange bleating on the ground below... it was not intelligence that led her to climb down toward Blotchy, rather than up to her rooms and the safety of her guards. It was dumb bleariness that sent her downward, a dull, dumb need to make sure the dog was all right."
"I’m being stolen away," she thought wonderingly, in a boat. "But I can’t be. I need to go back to the palace, I need to watch Lady Murgda. The war. Brigan. Brigan needs me!"
"It’s been no easy task stealing you, girl, especially since you’ve taken up residence in the king’s palace."
"What we do with her remains to be seen," the boy said.
"I’m what is known as a Graceling," he said. "My name used to be Immiker. Now it is Leck."
"She was too far beyond surprise and feeling to be startled when children appeared moments later climbing from a crevice in the ground, three of them, paler than Pikkians, black-haired, blurry at the edges from the glow of the rising sun."
"It was comforting. It gave her permission to give up."
"It was the worst night she’d ever known, skimming hour after hour between wakefulness and sleep, jerking from dream after dream of Archer alive to remember that he was dead."
"She played her mind through the building and the grounds, as she’d been doing since she’d come in range of the place."
"Fire understood, with her new waking logic that was blunt and unsympathetic, that she was going to die soon, from one thing or another."
"She tried not to think about the night that would come at the end of this day, because she had no flint, and she had never started a fire without one."
"Some part of her mind felt it was necessary and would not let her stop, though her body and the rest of her mind begged to be left alone."
"It must be nerve-racking, Fire thought, to be able to manipulate minds but not sense the state of them."
"But they were almost upon Cutter now, and she supposed it was best to submit herself to being taken to him. Her escape would be faster on a horse she could steal from Cutter."