Nettle & Bone Quotes
"The trees were full of crows and the woods were full of madmen. The pit was full of bones and her hands were full of wires."
"The only song the harp would play was O! The dreadful wind and rain..."
"A little wildness would not be out of place at all."
"I could sit here for the rest of my life, with my hands full of wire, building dogs out of bone. And then the crows will eat me and I will fall into the pit and we shall all be bones together ..."
"The love of a bone dog, she thought, bending her head down over the paw again. All that I am worth these days."
"Then again, few humans were truly worth the love of a living dog. Some gifts you could never deserve."
"This is what I get for expecting bones to be loyal, just because I brought them back and wired them up. What does a dog know about resurrection?"
"She was thirty years old, and all that was left of that girl now were the bones."
"Sometimes we get novices who have never worked. Some of them fear hard work. Then you get some who do not feel work should apply to them. And then again, some who wallow in it, who treat it like mortification of the flesh."
"You do the work because it needs to be done, and it is satisfying to have it done for a little while."
"We’re a mystery religion, for people who have too much work to do to bother with mysteries. So we simply get along as best we can."
"I had not realized that a nun had more power than a princess, that she could close a door."
"Her heart healed, as hearts almost always do."
"Listen! If I die, don’t let her marry you off to the prince. Run away. Ruin yourself. Whatever it takes."
"The dead don’t always lie easy, particularly kings, and they don’t always approve of the way their descendants are running things, so they come up and walk around and disapprove."
"I shall serve her as I have served all her line, my life bound to theirs. No foreign magic shall harm them. No enemy shall topple their throne."
"And I do not know that I would wish it on you, niece, but I am only a youngest daughter dressed up as a nun, and no one cares what I think either way."
"It’s a fair bit of design. I wonder if I could do that…"
"He’s hurting her. There were marks. We have to get her away."
"Think, Marra! We are a very small kingdom and his knife is at our throat."
"If we defy Vorling before he has an heir that might conceivably inherit our throne, he well might decide to march on us himself and raze this entire city to the ground in a single bloody day."
"Is threading a very dangerous needle right now."
"There was nothing in her heart or her history that told her what to do with this new knowledge. It was too big."
"Marra, love, do you think a man who tortures his wife and would wipe out a kingdom on a whim would be stopped by an abbey’s walls?"
"She is riding a dragon, and all of us in the kingdom are riding along with her."
"You’re kicking against the world, that’s all."
"Rage was only useful if you were allowed to do anything with it."
"It was hard to be frightened of the unknown when the unknown kept chickens."
"I didn’t want to do this. That’s why I gave you the impossible tasks, so you’d fail and go away and not ask any more."
"You give someone an impossible task so that they won’t be able to do it."
"He killed Damia. He’s torturing Kania. He deserves to die."
"It would probably kill you in a week or so. You’d get a taste for human flesh first, though, which would be exciting for everyone."
"The moon is full and the goblin market’s still in season."
"If we can find a stream, it’s easier to get there. If not, we’ll go by fire."
"The rules change in the dark, and sometimes they change minute to minute. Full and waxing are more forgiving."
"The ones who die by water go bad as often as not. Something about the water turns them dark. Give me bones in the ground any day."
"You want to kill a prince. Don’t get squeamish now."
"Directions," said the dust-wife. "Which he gave, although he would have liked to pull a much higher price than I was willing to pay."
"Hold your breath," she said, almost as an afterthought.
"Girl, have I given you any indication in the last week that I joke about anything?"
"Some things come into being once it’s inevitable that they will exist."
"Don’t stare," murmured the dust-wife, "but don’t look away if someone looks at you. Show as little weakness as you can. Agree to nothing and accept nothing until you know the price."
"That’s the price in this place, unless you’ve something to barter."
"You wouldn’t give up two weeks of your life for your sister? To save her from losing all the weeks of hers?"
"Shows you what you need," said the woman behind the table.
"Please," she whispered to the moth, "find me what I need to help my sister."
"Even here in the goblin market where all the rules were different, you shouldn’t be able to buy people."
"I don’t know if I even know what I think of us…"
"So here I am. I was in the goblin market for a long time and I am very tired."
"What little honor I have left is yours, and if I can be of service, I will."
"He killed my sister," she said. "And my other sister... his now wife... he... he hurts her."
"Men like that never stop. If they can be isolated or thrown at the enemy, it is for the best, and then the clan gets some good of them in the end."
"It’s a fool’s errand and we’ll probably all die," said the dust-wife.
"Health’s not so little a thing," said the dust-wife. "Compared to the alternative, anyway."
"People who won’t shut up in life rarely shut up in death."
"We do not believe, but you still wouldn’t cut trees from a fairy mound or spend the night in one. Just in case there is something there, whether you believe in it or not."
"The dead are there, whether you believe in them or not."
"I am not afraid of what lies in the grave, but it would be dishonorable. Disgusting, even. I do not fear retribution; I fear what sort of person I would become by doing it."
"You are still wrong, Hardishman," she said. "But you are wrong in an interesting way."
"Five is a fist. Five is a hand on the enemy’s throat."
"No death-and-glory final stands unless we have no other options."
"Armies of the dead seem like a good idea, until you’re standing in front of a thousand blind, withered husks who only know how to kill."
"Some things I expect you don’t know until you’re doing them."
"We’re here for a straightforward regicide, not to level the city."
"There is something pleasant about chopping wood. If I miss a stroke, nothing awful happens."
"Embroidery doesn’t do anything. It isn’t anything but what it is, and I don’t have to worry that I’m doing something terribly wrong."
"Freed of all our duties, we charge headlong to take on another responsibility."
"Most likely we’ll get into the city, and talk and plan and talk some more, and eventually realize there’s nothing we can actually do."
"There are good men in the world, and I have met one. And he is my friend, whatever else happens."
"You wove a cloak with nettle thread, and built your own dog out of bones, and now you are concerned about what is impossible?"
"What good is it? I’m not going to go around punishing children for being born."
"I am giving up my power in order to be decent."
"You watched him chop firewood the other day."
"If you would like to open the earth and let it swallow me whole, now would be an excellent time."
"Nothing is fair, except that we try to make it so."
"We can only save people who want to be saved."
"Magic never seemed to be much use at doing the things you wanted done in a reasonable time frame."
"Only a little of it. It won’t mind. The moon loves things like this."
"Curses against graverobbers. Threats to tear your soul out and sentence you to wander for all eternity—that sort of thing."
"Injustice and the desire for revenge age the body, but they keep the soul going halfway to forever."
"We do not allow the living to serve the dead forever."
"Wait and see. The world is not always cruel."
"You can't keep bringing statues to life for religion. Sooner or later they figure out they don’t have souls, and then things go very badly for everyone."
"It probably shouldn’t have worked. But the guards blinked at her and then at each other and she moved between them."
"Thank the Lady of Grackles, there was a footman that she recognized just beyond the guards."
"You are not so big. You are only a living king. I saw an old woman defeat a dead one."
"This gift I give you, You shall grow up fatherless. And healthy."
"Fenris had his hand on the king’s shoulder, almost a friendly gesture, except for the foot of steel protruding from Vorling’s chest."
"You are now the sister of the queen regent of the Northern Kingdom, and you are no longer staying unwed to appease Vorling’s paranoia."
"This is a standard part of the authorial process, and of course the questions got answered and the book got written eventually."
"I hope your dogs are all loyal and goofy and good-natured and that your chickens remain free of demons."