Kristin Cashore Quotes & Sayings

#1. Apparently there was such a thing as love at first sight; or love at first spit, anyway.

Kristin Cashore

#2. But you're better than I am, Katsa. And it doesn't humiliate me. It humbles me. But it doesn't humiliate me.

Kristin Cashore

#3. I thought it was supposed to be impossible to sneak up on you. Eyes of a hawk and ears of a wolf and all.

Kristin Cashore

#4. Part of avoiding thoughts about something was not encouraging opportunities for that something to makes itself felt.

Kristin Cashore

#5. I must stop wishing for things to happen. Because something will happen eventually, and when it does, I'll be bound to wish it hadn't.

Kristin Cashore

#6. For now, Lady Queen," he said, "allow us to continue to obey you. But give us honorable instructions, Lady Queen," he said, turning a flushed face to hers. "Ask us to do honorable things, so that we may have the honor of obeying you.

Kristin Cashore

#7. How acutely sometimes the presence or absence of people mattered

Kristin Cashore

#8. Circumstances don't always align themselves with human intention.

Kristin Cashore

#9. Archer, is there a servant girl in my fortress you haven't taken to bed? I announce you're leaving and within minutes two of them are at each other's throats, and another is crying her eyes out in the scullery. Honestly. You've been here all of nine days."
- Roen, "Fire

Kristin Cashore

#10. There are no medicines to bring a dead thing back to life.

Kristin Cashore

#11. You're astonishing, Fire," he'd said. "You're a constant source of wonder to me. I'm never more happy than when I've made you happy. Isn't it peculiar?" he'd said, laughing. "Do you really like it, darling?

Kristin Cashore

#12. Go safely. Go safely, she thought to him. What a silly, empty thing it was to say to anyone, anywhere.

Kristin Cashore

#13. It has been a hard lesson to learn, that greatness requires suffering.

Kristin Cashore

#14. There are bears in the mountains,

Kristin Cashore

#15. You're in fine temper," Raffin said.
"Your hair is blue," she snapped back.

Kristin Cashore

#16. But that's how memory works," Bitterblue said quietly. "Things disappear without your permission, then come back again without your permission." And sometimes they came back incomplete and warped.

Kristin Cashore

#17. Are you determined to leave me in this world to live without my heart?

Kristin Cashore

#18. She couldn't steal herself back from Randa only to give herself away again - belong to another person, be answerable to another person, build her very being around another person.

Kristin Cashore

#19. Waste is Criminal.

Kristin Cashore

#20. This may be a thing you neither want nor need," she said. "But I'd rather you have it, wishing didn't, than not have it and wish you did.

Kristin Cashore

#21. The fellow who tends the greenhouse gardens? Trust me, Lady, you'd let him stake your tomatoes.

Kristin Cashore

#22. She'd lost her fury, somewhere, as they'd talked. She didn't feel it anymore. She wished she did, because she preferred it to the emptiness that had settled in its place.

Kristin Cashore

#23. Bitterblue had never seen a man naked, and she was curious. She decided the universe owed her a few minutes, just a few, to satisfy her curiosity. So she went to him and knelt, which shut him up.

Kristin Cashore

#24. He raised his eyebrows"you could kill me"
"i couldn't"she said"for you would know I meant to kill you, and you'd escape me. You'd stay far away from me, always"
"Ah, but i wouldn't"
"Yes, you would",she said,"if i wished to kill you"
"I wouldn't

Kristin Cashore

#25. That's how memory works ... Things disappear without your permission, then come back again without your permission.

Kristin Cashore

#26. My life is an apology for the life of my father.

Kristin Cashore

#27. Flame was the way, in the Dells, to send the bodies of the dead where their souls had gone, into nothingness. To respect that all things ended, except the world.

Kristin Cashore

#28. Every configuration of people is an entirely new universe unto itself.

Kristin Cashore

#29. Have you ridden over anyone you shouldn't?

Kristin Cashore

#30. Because Roen is a strong-minded woman, and there's something consoling in the regard of a woman. Roen never desires me, or if she ever does, it's not the same.

Kristin Cashore

#31. Katsa sat in the darkness of the Sunderan forest and understood three truths. She loved Po. She wanted Po. And she could never be anyone's but her own.

Kristin Cashore

#32. 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.

Kristin Cashore

#33. Po looked at her, but he didn't see her. His eyes snapped, silver ice and gold fire.

Kristin Cashore

#34. Katsa watched the long grass moving around them. The wind pushed it, attacked it, struck it in one place and then another. It rose and fell and rose again. It flowed, like water.

Kristin Cashore

#35. I'm as old as both of you," she said, even though she suspected she
wasn't, "and I'm smarter, and I can probably fight as well as you can.

Kristin Cashore

#36. Ror stood and began to stride around the room. Katsa rose woodenly, in respect for a rising king, but the queen pulled her back down. If we stood every time he marched around we'd always be standing

Kristin Cashore

#37. And the kings were no better to their own people than they were to each others.

Kristin Cashore

#38. Not all people who inspire devotion are monsters.

Kristin Cashore

#39. The Queen of Monsea, in trousers and short hair, looking for all the world like a miniature pirate.

Kristin Cashore

#40. And is it the way, in these kingdoms you fell from, for a woman to join forces with an unnatural child who's murdered her friend? Or is that expectation unique to you, and your infinitesimal heart?

Kristin Cashore

#41. In the morning, coming awake was like drowning.

Kristin Cashore

#42. If I wanted to stun anyone at dinner, I'd hit them in the face.

Kristin Cashore

#43. She knew he was angry, but she couldn't stop laughing. "Forgive me, Po. I was only trying to get your attention."
"And I suppose it never occurs to you to start small. If I told you my roof needed rebuilding, you'd start by knocking down the house.

Kristin Cashore

#44. It seems to me that a fair number of people are happy to be as cruel as their power allows,

Kristin Cashore

#45. She's sleeping now, happy as a kitten in a patch of sun.

Kristin Cashore

#46. It's not fair. It's not fair, she cried, knowing it was a child's argument but not caring, because being childish did not make it untrue.

Kristin Cashore

#47. I sense people when they're near me, thinking and feeling and moving around, their bodies, their physical energy.

Kristin Cashore

#48. The poacher's murderer was a man after Archer's own heart, for Archer also didn't like men to hurt Fire or make her acquaintance.

Kristin Cashore

#49. While I was looking the other way your fire went out
Left me with cinders to kick into dust
What a waste of the wonder you were
In my living fire I will keep your scorn and mine
In my living fire I will keep your heartache and mine
At the disgrace of a waste of a life

Kristin Cashore

#50. If we're to be judged by our parents and grandparents, then we all may as well impale ourselves upon jagged bits of rock.

Kristin Cashore

#51. She groped forward, hands and feet, in search of darkness, distance and solitude.

Kristin Cashore

#52. I hear you're supposed to be good at manipulating people. Try a little harder to make me like you, all right? I'm the queen. Your life will be nicer if I like you.

Kristin Cashore

#53. I was only testing that you were awake and in your right mind. The sight of you taking a nap against the bookshelf doesn't inspire confidence.

Kristin Cashore

#54. Why would he try to ruin something so beautiful? What is the world he was trying, and failing to create?
What is the world Runnemood is trying to create? And why must they both create their worlds by destroying?

Kristin Cashore

#55. I'm not good at love. I'm like a barbed creature. I push everyone I love away.

Kristin Cashore

#56. Well, none of it would ever end if she was too afraid for it to begin.

Kristin Cashore

#57. Some people had too much power and too much cruelty to live. Some people were too horrible, no matter if you loved them; no matter that you had to make yourself terrible too, in order to stop them. Some things just had to be done.
I forgive myself, thought Fire. Today, I forgive myself.

Kristin Cashore

#58. He made her drunk, this man made her drunk; and every time his eyes flashed into hers she could not breathe.

Kristin Cashore

#59. Ideas were growing in all directions and dimensions; they were becoming a sculpture, or a castle. And then everyone left her, to return to their own affairs; and she was alone, and empty and unbelieving again.

Kristin Cashore

#60. Not all sons were like their fathers. A son chose the man he would be.
Not all daughters were like their fathers. A daughter monster chose the monster she would be.

Kristin Cashore

#61. She had learned propriety, which was the same as saying she had learned to trust only herself.

Kristin Cashore

#62. In the end, Leck should have stuck to his lies. For it was the truth he almost told that killed him.

Kristin Cashore

#63. Lady Queen," he said, "You've given me all I want. You're the queen a librarian dreams of.

Kristin Cashore

#64. Living is too hard right now. Dying is easy. Let me die.

Kristin Cashore

#65. It's as if when I open myself up to every perception, things create their own focus.

Kristin Cashore

#66. I'm not going to wear a red dress," she said.
"It would look stunning, My Lady," she called.
She spoke to the bubbles gathered on the surface of the water. "If there's anyone I wish to stun at dinner, I'll hit him in the face.

Kristin Cashore

#67. Why does everybody throw every troublesome thing into the river?

Kristin Cashore

#68. Everyone wants a little bit of something beautiful.

Kristin Cashore

#69. Katsa now sat calmly on the stomach of her vanquished foe. "He was handsome," said said.
Po moaned. "Was he beat-to-a-pulp handsome, or perhaps just push-down-a-flight-of-stairs handsome?"
"I would not push a seventy six year old man down a flight of stairs," said Katsa indignantly.

Kristin Cashore

#70. And of course she understood now why her body wanted to run whenever he appeared. It was a correct instinct, for there was nothing to be got from this but sadness.

Kristin Cashore

#71. Some of the smartest men have a hard time comprehending the obvious.

Kristin Cashore

#72. And she would protect him as fiercely, if it were ever his need- if a fight ever became too much for him or if he needed shelter, or food, or a fire in the rain. Or anything she could provide. She would protect him from anything.

Kristin Cashore

#73. When you're a monster, you are thanked and praised for not being a monster.

Kristin Cashore

#74. You won't even take your bow? Are you planning to throttle a moose with your bare hands, then?"
"I've a knife in my boot," she said, and then wondered, for a moment, if she could throttle a moose with her bare hands.

Kristin Cashore

#75. My books are likely to contain food stains and rings from my tea cups. A book is to be lived with and used.

Kristin Cashore

#76. It would be a safe place for the sharing of burdens and capturing memories before they disappeared. It would be called the Ministry of Stories and Truth and it would help her kingdom heal.

Kristin Cashore

#77. Always one of the trials of a new wound: old wounds like to rise up and start hurting again, too.

Kristin Cashore

#78. If she was suggesting she was too wise with the weight of her experience to fall prey to infatuation - well, the disproof was sitting before her in the form of a gray-eyed prince with a thoughtful set to his mouth that she found quite distracting.

Kristin Cashore

#79. And he knew nothing of her, if he thought she desired friends

Kristin Cashore

#80. It's only water," she said.
"Tell that to a drowning man," Giddon said.

Kristin Cashore

#81. Alone with Giddon again, Bitterblue considered him, rather liking the mud streaks on his face. He looked like a handsome sunken rowboat.

Kristin Cashore

#82. Could she be his lover and still belong to herself?

Kristin Cashore

#83. I wouldn't marry Giddon to save my life," Katsa said. "Not even to save yours."
"Well." Raffin's eyes were full of laughter. "I'd leave that part out.

Kristin Cashore

#84. The kingdoms' people were at the mercy of the natures of those who rose to be their rulers. It was a gamble, and the current generation did not make for a winning hand.

Kristin Cashore

#85. Garan snorted. Now that we know about his indigestion, we can torture him with cake.

Kristin Cashore

#86. For a group of people who claimed to be concerned for her safety, they did seem to have developed rather a habit of encouraging uprisings against monarchs.

Kristin Cashore

#87. I wish people would stop hitting Po," whispered Bitterblue.
"Well," Giddon said. "Yes. I'm hoping Skye is following my model. Punch Po; go on a long trip; feel better; come back and make up.

Kristin Cashore

#88. It seems better to me for a child to have these skills and never use them, than not have them and one day need them, she said.

Kristin Cashore

#89. She had thought herself trapped in a place outside the ordinary feeling lives of people; she had not noticed how many other people were trapped in that same place.

Kristin Cashore

#90. She crossed the room to him, put her arms around him, clung to him, turning her face to the side, learning all at once that it was awkward to show a person all of one's love when one's nose was broken.

Kristin Cashore

#91. The girl entered the room, not looking at Fire, glaring mutinously at the feather duster in her own hand. Still, at least she had come. Some of them scurried away, pretending not to hear.

Kristin Cashore

#92. No man is infallible.

Kristin Cashore

#93. I'm mostly unflappable, but you've flapped me, monster lady.

Kristin Cashore

#94. It seemed to Fire it was rarely enough one knew a person one wished to marry. How unjust then to meet that person, and be kept from it because one's bed was made of hay and not feathers.

Kristin Cashore

#95. It's part of their monstrous power. They stun you with their beauty, and then they overwhelm your mind and make you stupid. You must learn to guard your mind against them, as I have.

Kristin Cashore