Guy Gavriel Kay Quotes
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Dave hung up. And unplugged the phone. With a fierce and bitter pain he stared at it, watching how, over and over again, it didn't ring.
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Fantasy is, at its best, the purest access to storytelling that we have. It universalizes a tale, it evokes wonder and timeless narrative power, it touches upon inner journeys, it illuminates our collective and individual pasts, throws a focus beam on the present day, and presages the dangers and promises of the future.
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You have to be afraid for it to count as bravery.
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One man sees a riselka: his life forks there. Two men see a riselka: one of them shall die. Three men see a riselka: one is blessed, one forks, one shall die. One woman sees a riselka: her path comes clear to her. Two women see a riselka: one of them shall bear a child. Three women see a riselka: one is blessed, one is clear, one shall bear a child.
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We must be what we are, or we become our enemies.
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Some writers later, describing the events of that night and day, wrote that Wan'yen of the Altai had seen a spirit-dragon of the river and become afraid. Writers do that sort of thing. They like dragons in their tales.
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When I'm all grown up, come what may, I'll build a boat to carry me away
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Lazy poets try to elicit a reader's response with words designed to tug at the heart.
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What mortal knew the way their fate line would run?
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We are the total of our longings.
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You'd never killed anyone. Then you had.
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My youngest brother had a wonderful schtick from some time in high school, through to graduating medicine. He had a card in his wallet that read, ‘If I am found with amnesia, please give me the following books to read …’ And it listed half a dozen books where he longed to recapture that first glorious sense of needing to find out ‘what happens next’ … the feeling that keeps you up half the night. The feeling that comes before the plot’s been learned.
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Do you know the wish of your heart?" - The Darkest Road
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It can be hard to write a skillfully entertaining fiction, but a great book wants to be more, and wants more from us.
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The deeds of men, as footprints in the desert. Nothing under the circling moons is fated to last. Even the sun goes down.
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We worship…the powers that speak to our souls, if it seems they do. We do so knowing there is more to the world, and the half-world, and perhaps worlds beyond, than we can grasp. We always knew that. We can’t even stop children from dying, how would we presume to understand the truth of things? Behind things? Does the presence of one power deny another? [p. 176]
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After a while, you start to realize that you should write a book you would want to read. I try to write a book I would enjoy.
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She was owner and captive, both, of a bitterly divided heart.
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By things so achingly small are lives measured and marred.
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most hated by the dark, for their name is light.
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There are no wrong turnings. Only paths we had not known we were meant to walk.
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Sometimes you didn't really arrive at a conclusion about your life, you just discovered that you already had.
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Words were power, words tried to change you, to shape bridges of longing that no one could ever really cross.
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The military preferred - invariably - those who could be readily defined, assigned roles, understood, and controlled.
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Liu Fang is a truly gifted, world-famous player of the pipa and the guzheng, classical Chinese stringed instruments.
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... everyone knew that all islands were worlds unto themselves, that to come to an island was to come to another world.
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How we remember changes how we have lived. Time runs both ways. We make stories of our lives.
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A hard truth: that courage can be without meaning or impact, need not be rewarded, or even known. The world has not been made in that way. Perhaps, however, within the self there might come a resonance, the awareness of having done something difficult, of having done . . . something.
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She had been a solitary child, and then solitary as a woman, drawn into an orbit of her own that took her away from others, even those who would be her friends.
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We salvage what we can, what truly matters to us, even at the gates of despair.
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