The Firebird Quotes
"He sent his mind in search of me that morning."
"Sorry. Not a spoken word, but still I heard the faint regretful tone of his familiar voice."
"The morning was a lovely one for August."
"I caught my thoughts before they had a chance to wander further and betray me."
"I could feel the glances of the people walking closest to me, wondering if I were off my trolley."
"My organized nature appealed to his strong sense of order."
"He looked at it with a commendable blend of admiration and regret."
"If I sell the thing, then I'll have only satisfied one client."
"If I were to hold it again, and to concentrate, I might find some information imprinted upon it."
"Nobody needed to know, I assured myself."
"I had to close my eyes and truly focus now to use my ‘gift’."
"She had to be at least a decade older than myself."
"It’s a magic wolf, Rob. He runs faster than any horse ever could."
"Go get the bird, but whatever you do, don’t touch the golden cage."
"He was caught again, but the owner of the horse with the golden mane told Ivan he would forgive him and let him keep the horse, if he’d first journey to this other land and bring back the tsarevna there, Yelena the Beautiful…"
"The grey wolf came back, and found Ivan in pieces—'And ate him.' 'No. He brought Ivan to life again, and Ivan went to his father’s court and reclaimed all that his brothers had stolen: the horse with the gold mane, Yelena the Beautiful, even the Firebird.'"
"The horse says, 'Leave the feather where it lies, for it will only bring you trouble.'"
"The archer built the magic horse a stable made entirely of gold."
"The Firebird drops a feather, and if you’re fool enough to pick it up and chase the bird itself, you’re in for trouble."
"What you bring back with you in the end, might not be what you started out in search of to begin with."
"We could be up to Cruden Bay by teatime."
"Her father’s own grandfather was a great soldier – the Black Pate, they called him."
"It’s a shame. All of the fighting they did, and for nothing."
"Well, they’d not have seen it that way. It was James the Eighth’s throne, he’d been born to it, and in their view there was no act of parliament could change that fact. They were fighting for honour and justice. Not bad things to fight for."
"I’ve killed many men, and aye, a few of those were killed for vengeance, but I’m just as plagued by ghosts now as I ever was. Maybe more so."
"Ye’ll have the fighting never end, then, taking one eye for another. Do ye think your daddie’s soul will rest the better if ye do avenge it? I can tell ye it will not."
"There will always be bad men. But Colonel Graeme and myself will never let them do ye harm. Nor will the nuns."
"You’re ower thinking. Trust your feelings."
"You’ll never ken half of the things ye can do, if you won’t try."
"The world becomes a wider place, with but a little learning."
"I’ve never made a promise yet that I’ve not kept."
"Men can bear most hurts, lass, but there’s few of us can bear to see the ones we love best made to suffer for our sake."
"And what mark would ye give them, then? Perhaps it is their brave hearts that would mark them, like the Bruce."
"You underestimate yourself, I think. Most skills are learnt. Or at the very least, developed."
"A soldier has no choice. And nor do you."
You’re an optimist." It came out as an accusation. "Anyway, it’s not a good analogy. You’re working with a cello, I’ve just got a ukulele.
"You read my mind." A wave of warmth rode with those words, and then his thoughts withdrew.
Anything you want to. That’s the point," he said, "of having one.
"I’ve never made a promise yet that I’ve not kept," and truly she believed him.
"We merely seek to live more fully in the world, without distraction, so we may more clearly hear God’s voice and do His bidding."
"The real world, I knew, would intrude soon enough. But for now, just for now, I was here on a plane next to Rob, and I didn’t want to think further ahead."
"I’d known that it had risen quickly from the barren, unforgiving land that had, till then, been nothing more than swamp and scrub ringed round by thin birch forests where the wolves had prowled and waited."
"It’s not the way it happens, for me. I need to be touching something."
"When you first got on that train to Dundee, when you first made the decision to go help your Margaret by holding the Firebird, surely you thought, deep inside, that you could?"
"But using my gift’s not the same thing as using your own, is it?"
"Would it really be so terrible, to be like me?"
"You feel frozen. These clothes, they are not made for warmth."
"Thus I can destroy the thing of greatest beauty in my palace!"
"And if I shall go, and prepare a place for you, I will come again, and will take you to myself; that where I am, you also may be."
"So also you now indeed have sorrow; but I will see you again, and your heart shall rejoice; and your joy no man shall take from you."
"Because He loved us very much. And when you love somebody very much, you do what you must do to keep them safe."
"It is the price of raising children that we must one day release them, sons to their own destinies, and daughters to the hands of others whom we hope will love and care for them. We can but try, along the way, to choose what we think best for them. And no choice is an easy one."
"It is a burden for the man, and for his family."
"The secret to keeping one’s actions concealed from the enemy is, in most cases, to learn what he thinks you will do, and then seem to be doing it, for that is what he’ll believe."
"It is a hard thing, is it not, to leave one’s home and come to live with strangers?"
"Afflictions pass, Mr O’Connor, just as surely as the winter brings the spring."
"You Scots and we Irish, and even the English, we’re islanders all. We’re surrounded by seas and we’d seek to know what lies beyond them, and where those wide waters might carry us." - Edmund
"A good name, Captain Deane, must first be earned, before it can be slandered." - Anna
"Some things weren’t meant to live in cages." - Edmund
"’Tis your blood, same as mine." - Edmund to Anna
"It is a shame that you did not return while yet the tsar was living, for I should expect your welcome then would have been even warmer." - Anna to Captain Deane
"You were a topic of discussion over dinner." - Anna to Captain Deane
"St Francis would teach us that we cannot know a man’s nature when all does go well with him, but when those people he thinks will assist him oppose him instead, then we know, for a man has the patience and humility that he shows then, and no more." - Father Dominic
"No one ever would suspect you, sir, of acting like a lady." - Anna to Edmund
"But it is by our actions, surely, and not by our words, that we reveal our worth." - Anna
"Remember the faith you were raised in, my child, and love not in word or in tongue, but in deed and in truth."
"Remember, everyone’s afraid to fall, but sometimes you just have to take the stabilizers off your bike and try to ride on two wheels."
"If we cannot be what we were born to be, the whole of it, we die a little on the inside, every day we live the lie."
"I’d rather play poorly and lose by my own efforts than win by dishonesty."
"Her mother smiled, and straightening the seam at Anna’s shoulder said, ‘If I could give you one piece of advice, my dear, it would be that you should never give your hand to any man unless he also holds your heart.’"
"‘Men and their secrets,’ Mrs Lacy had said, and she had shaken her head and given Anna one more kiss and had assured her she’d be perfectly all right with Mary Gordon coming now to keep her company until the baby’s birth."
"‘You have done well, my lad. I’m proud of you, as would your father be.’"
"‘We’re all interwoven, I think,’ said Sir Harry. And then, as though that had reminded him, ‘I was sorry to hear that my stepmother, your brother’s wife, had passed on. Has he married again?’"
"‘A merchant, if you please,’ Sir Harry said, and smiled. ‘And with much business to attend to.’"
"‘You’re fierce as well, then, are you?’ ‘Aye. All fighters are, I’m told.’"
"‘A lie the English would believe,’ he said, ‘because it was exactly what they thought we would be doing. Misdirection, Mistress Jamieson, can be a useful thing.’"
"‘I am always as I am. People will see me as they want to see me. But never before in my whole life,’ he told her, ‘have I had a person who wanted to see me as good.’"
"‘I’ll wait,’ he said, gently, ‘for you to come home.’"