Top 100 Guy Gavriel Kay Quotes
#1. I have always argued, in a good novel, interesting things happen to interesting people.
Guy Gavriel Kay
#2. I don't know a writer who doesn't feel some sense of glamour and magic and a complex, wistful sadness emanating from the expats of the twenties in France. Some of the sadness, of course, is that we weren't there.
Guy Gavriel Kay
#3. I'm still proud of the 'Fionavar Tapestry.' The fact I don't write the same way is as much as anything else the fact a man in his 50s doesn't write the way a man in his 20s does - or he shouldn't.
Guy Gavriel Kay
#4. The deeds of men, as footprints in the desert.
Nothing under the circling moons is fated to last.
Even the sun goes down.
Guy Gavriel Kay
#5. It is not easy, she thinks, to make your way in the world while insisting on a new path.
Guy Gavriel Kay
#6. His intelligence stretched her to the limits, and then changed what those limits were.
Guy Gavriel Kay
#7. Sometimes you didn't really arrive at a conclusion about your life, you just discovered that you already had.
Guy Gavriel Kay
#8. Men made wagers with their judgment, their allegiances, their resources.
Guy Gavriel Kay
#9. Liu Fang is a truly gifted, world-famous player of the pipa and the guzheng, classical Chinese stringed instruments.
Guy Gavriel Kay
#10. The world could bring you poison in a jewelled cup, or surprising gifts. Sometimes you didn't know which of them it was.
Guy Gavriel Kay
#11. Weariness, sometimes more than anything else, can bring an end to war.
Guy Gavriel Kay
#12. Lazy poets try to elicit a reader's response with words designed to tug at the heart.
Guy Gavriel Kay
#14. When I am reading for research and making notes, I use a cleverly designed curved lap-desk, and I sit up dutifully, mindful of ergonomics and suchlike concepts. When reading for pleasure, I take advantage of the 'recline' in recliner.
Guy Gavriel Kay
#15. 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.
Guy Gavriel Kay
#16. What man would dare believe that all he planned might come to pass?
Guy Gavriel Kay
#17. When I was 18 years old, in a more innocent time, my first backpacking trip through Europe, I sneaked into the Temple of Saturn in the Roman Forum after nightfall and spent several hours in there avoiding the guards patrolling.
Guy Gavriel Kay
#18. We are all shaped by where we grow up, though that shaping takes different forms. I don't think there's any doubt that coming of age in Winnipeg both opened my eyes and made me hungry - if I can subvert all claims to be a real writer by mixing metaphors like that.
Guy Gavriel Kay
#19. Catriana sighed. "I'm hard to make friends with," she said at length. "I doubt it's worth your effort.
Guy Gavriel Kay
#20. I don't plan ahead; each book finds me. History itself, the resonance of the past with the present, is the common denominator in all of them.
Guy Gavriel Kay
#21. I cannot speak for those who come after, or what the world will be. We are not made that way.
Guy Gavriel Kay
#22. In summer darkness, stars in her south-facing window, she makes - or accepts - a decision in her heart. There is fear again with it, and sorrow, but also a kind of easing of disquiet and distress, which is what acceptance is said to bring, is it not?
Guy Gavriel Kay
#23. We are not gods. We make mistakes. We do not live very long.
Sometimes someone grinds ink, mixes it with water, arranges paper, takes up a brush to record our time, our days, and we are given another life in those words.
Guy Gavriel Kay
#24. 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.
Guy Gavriel Kay
#26. Reading is a collaboration between the writer and reader. Both parties must keep that in mind when dealing with a work of fiction."
{Guy Gavriel Kay}
Guy Gavriel Kay
#27. I say 'as it were' or 'so to speak' too often because puns and double entendres keep insinuating themselves into my consciousness as I'm talking.
Guy Gavriel Kay
#28. He sang one whole verse directly to her, then, in fidelity to the song, he sent his vision inward to where his purest music was always found, and he looked at no one at all as he sang to Eanna herself, a hymn to names and the naming of things.
Guy Gavriel Kay
#29. I had been obsessed with the Arthurian legends all my life, and I knew that that would work its way into any trilogy I wrote. I was fascinated by the Eddas, the Norse and Icelandic legends, Odin on the world tree.
Guy Gavriel Kay
#32. No man ever truly possesses a woman, anyhow," said Gidas moodily. "He has her body for a time if he's lucky, but only the most fleeting glimpse into her soul." Gidas was a poet, or wanted to be.
Guy Gavriel Kay
#33. We salvage what we can, what truly matters to us, even at the gates of despair.
Guy Gavriel Kay
#34. I want readers turning pages until three o'clock in the morning. I want the themes of books to stick around for a reader. I'm always trying to find a way to balance characters and theme.
Guy Gavriel Kay
#36. There are no wrong turnings. Only paths we had not known we were meant to walk.
Guy Gavriel Kay
#37. Significant consequences can begin very inconsequentially. That's one thing that fascinates me. The other thing that fascinates me is how accident can undermine something that's unfolding, something that might have played out differently otherwise.
Guy Gavriel Kay
#38. Tigana, let my memory of
you be like a blade in my
soul.
Guy Gavriel Kay
#39. It's worth being suspicious of writers - or anyone! - who does that myth-making thing. There's always a tendency to retrospectively impose structures on a life. Life as it's lived has a far more complex shape.
Guy Gavriel Kay
#40. As many have noted, the peril for authors is that our work space is too easily our play space.
Guy Gavriel Kay
#41. But if you couldn't do everything, did that mean you did nothing?
Guy Gavriel Kay
#42. My privacy concerns have to do with the world, other people, technology intruding upon us - what Talmudic scholars once called 'the unwanted gaze.' Here I see major issues and concerns as society evolves, and I've written often on the subject.
Guy Gavriel Kay
#43. A writer's brush is a warrior's bow, the letters it shapes are arrows that must hit the mark on the page. The calligrapher is an archer, or a general on a battlefield. Someone wrote that long ago. She feels that way this morning. She is at war.
Guy Gavriel Kay
#44. We will pick our way through the shards of broken objects folly leaves behind. And some of what breaks will be very beautiful.
Guy Gavriel Kay
#46. Language. The process of sharing with words seemed such a futile exercise sometimes.
Guy Gavriel Kay
#47. Everything you have ever heard about the strangeness of Hollywood is true!
Guy Gavriel Kay
#48. The military preferred - invariably - those who could be readily defined, assigned roles, understood, and controlled.
Guy Gavriel Kay
#49. Battles are won en route, Shalhassan of Cathal though. A worthy thought: he raised his hand in a certain way, and a moment later Razeil galloped up, uneasy on a horse at speed, and the Supreme Lord of Cathal made him write it down.
Guy Gavriel Kay
#50. In this world, where we find ourselves, we need compassion more than anything, I think, or we are all alone.
Guy Gavriel Kay
#51. And surely, surely, if we are not simply animals that live to fight, there must be a reason for bloodshed.
Guy Gavriel Kay
#52. Writing is never, ever easy but I wake up every morning grateful for the gift of being able to do this.
Guy Gavriel Kay
#53. It had taken skill, tact, an ability to choose friends well, and a great deal of luck
Guy Gavriel Kay
#54. Eanna love us, Adaon preserve us, Morian guard our souls.
Guy Gavriel Kay
#55. I've spent my whole literary career blurring boundaries between genres and categories.
Guy Gavriel Kay
#56. One didn't stop to talk with creatures from one's nightmares.
Guy Gavriel Kay
#57. Ambitions and dreams put you at a drinking table with unexpected companions. Cups were filled and refilled, making you drunk with the illusion of changing the world.
Guy Gavriel Kay
#59. Men changed during wars or conflict, sometimes beyond recognition. Tai
Guy Gavriel Kay
#61. We live among mysteries. Love is one, there are others. We must not imagine we understand all there is to know about the world.
Guy Gavriel Kay
#62. The heart has its own laws ... and the truth is ... the truth is that you are the law of mine.
Guy Gavriel Kay
#63. In general, the main themes emerge early for each book, even before the storyline and characters, as I research the time and place I want to draw upon. Having said that, every single book so far has offered me surprises en route, and these include motifs that come forward as I am writing.
Guy Gavriel Kay
#64. Praise be to the Weaver and all the gods!' said Shalhassan of Cathal. 'Finally she's done something adult!
Guy Gavriel Kay
#65. Alluding and attacking, summoning a courage, embodying a gallantry of defiance that hurt to see, it was so noble and so doomed.
Guy Gavriel Kay
#66. It is an old truth that men and women sometimes miss what they hate as much as what they love.
Guy Gavriel Kay
#67. When I'm all grown up, come what may,
I'll build a boat to carry me away
Guy Gavriel Kay
#68. I will not say I am sorry, but I can tell you that I grieve.
Guy Gavriel Kay
#69. I know love,"
Says the littlest one.
"Love is like a flower."
"Why is love a flower?
Little one tell me."
"Love is a flower
For the sweetness it gives
Before it dies away.
Guy Gavriel Kay
#70. The very best way I can make any reader believe in the nuts and bolts of an art form ... is to know the mechanics, to make the characters grounded in convincing detail.
Guy Gavriel Kay
#71. Will there ever be a time when it is not a curse to be born a woman? When we can do no more, than stand by and be extremely brave and watch them die?
Guy Gavriel Kay
#72. 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.
Guy Gavriel Kay
#73. Devin wondered how often men did what they did, made the choices of their lives, for reasons that were clean and uncomplicated and easily understood as they were happening
Guy Gavriel Kay
#74. You have no idea how dearly I wish you were of my blood. My daughter, granddaughter. Will you allow me to take pride in what you are?
Sandre to Catriana
Guy Gavriel Kay
#75. The poems were the only thing I wrote that was not for everyone else. Then my editors at Penguin, who were also friends and had seen several of them, aggressively urged me to do a book. Editors can be aggressive, especially after drinks. That's how 'Beyond This Dark House' appeared.
Guy Gavriel Kay
#77. Not every man or woman sailing down the river will be a figure of force or significance. Some are merely in the boat with all of us.
Guy Gavriel Kay
#78. You had to grow into your own significance - or come to terms with the lack of it.
Guy Gavriel Kay
#79. All the roads are dark. Only at the end is there a hope of light.
Guy Gavriel Kay
#80. I'm happier not pretending I know anything about El Cid in Spain. He's a Spanish national hero. I'd rather invent a character inspired by him but clearly not identical to him. And then I feel liberated creatively.
Guy Gavriel Kay
#81. I am afraid to try for more light lest it mean more dark.
Guy Gavriel Kay
#82. I ruefully admit that if the cat is asleep in my chair - which she regards as hers, of course - I tend to leave her there and take the other one.
Guy Gavriel Kay
#83. I never answer, because I can't, which is my favorite among my own books.
Guy Gavriel Kay
#84. There's a level at which, if you take poetry seriously, the focus it involves ... that never goes away.
Guy Gavriel Kay
#85. I have been made to realize tonight that there are limits to what I wish to do or see done for any cause.
Guy Gavriel Kay
#86. Everyone knew that all islands were worlds unto themselves, that to come to an island was to come to another world.
Guy Gavriel Kay
#87. He didn't look back but he knew his wife and his brother's wife, all the women of the house, would be flying, as if into battle, to make East Slope as ready as it could ever be for what had arrived.
Guy Gavriel Kay
#88. You're too clever to be a soldier." Then she shook her head. "Don't say it. I know. We need our soldiers to be clever. I do know."
"Thank you," he murmured. "You can do all of the conversation. Make it easier for me.
Guy Gavriel Kay
#89. I grew up in a bookish family, so I read very widely. I was omnivorous, really.
Guy Gavriel Kay
#90. It was the doing, he learned quickly enough - in the first inn that refused to serve him his requested flask of Senzio green wine - of the pinch-buttocked, joy-killing priests of Eanna. The
Guy Gavriel Kay
#91. When you didn't say a lot, he thought, you said the important things.
Guy Gavriel Kay
#92. It is always difficult, even with the best will in the world, to look back a long way and see anything resembling the truth.
Guy Gavriel Kay
#93. I never talk about books in progress. I could decide to change it to a series of seafood recipes, after all.
Guy Gavriel Kay
#95. If you so much as start to bow or anything like that, Dave, I'll beat you up. I swear I will.
Guy Gavriel Kay
#96. He had a sense - honed by experience - that what he'd contrived might achieve something of the effect he wanted. That, Martinius had always said, was the best any man in this fallible world could expect. [p. 67]
Guy Gavriel Kay
#98. How we remember changes how we have lived.
Time runs both ways. We make stories of our lives.
Guy Gavriel Kay
#99. Do you know the wish of your heart? - The Darkest Road
Guy Gavriel Kay
#100. EVENTUALLY, MORNING CAME. Morning always comes. There are always losses in the night, a price paid for light.
Guy Gavriel Kay
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