Top 100 Megan Whalen Turner Quotes
#1. We are taught to treat a practice sword with all the respect of a real weapon, so no thoughtless mistakes are made"
"Oh ... In Eddis, we learn to keep tack of the weapon we have in our hand.
Megan Whalen Turner
#2. She was the stone-faced queen, then and ever after. She had needed the mask to rule, and she had been glad to have it. She wondered if Eugenides was glad of his.
Megan Whalen Turner
#4. They're going to leave me. All I wanted to do was lie in the dry prickly grass with my feet in a ditch forever. I could be a convenient sort of milemarker, I thought. Get to the thief and you know you are halfway to Methana. Where ever Methana might be.
Megan Whalen Turner
#6. That prison," I said with heartfelt sincerity, "Was absolutely the most awful thing that has happened to me in my entire life." I could tell by the way he looked at me that he thought my life had been filled with one awful thing after another.
Megan Whalen Turner
#7. He looked at their shabby clothes in puzzlement.
"We were traveling anonymously for safety - " explained the magus.
"But surely - "
" - and then we were robbed on the road."
"Ah," said the king, "the danger in being anonymous.
Megan Whalen Turner
#8. Of course the servants had chosen not to follow me; I'd failed them already by refusing to be a man they could believe in.
Megan Whalen Turner
#10. I have a whole guard room full of brawny veterans who'd enjoy a chance to drag two Eddisians out of here, particularly if you kicked a lot and they could kick you back.
Megan Whalen Turner
#11. I am not sure I trust you."
"You can trust me with your life, My King."
"But not with my wine, obviously. Give it back.
Megan Whalen Turner
#12. In the afternoon, the king and queen sat to hear the business of their kingdom. At least, the queen sat to hear the business; Costis was still not sure what the king was doing.
Megan Whalen Turner
#14. It isn't an easy thing to give your loyalty to someone you don't know, especially when that person chooses to reveal nothing of himself.
Megan Whalen Turner
#16. I know that if you don't look for an alternative, Sophos, you certainly won't find one.
Megan Whalen Turner
#18. Who knows but that you will get up to find that the world has inverted itself yet again?
Megan Whalen Turner
#19. He couldn't know that I'd overstayed my welcome one night while creeping through his megaron and had crawled up through the space where the pipes of the hypocaust ran to hide in his treasure room. I had slept for a day in stuffy darkness on the ridged tops of his treasure trunks.
Megan Whalen Turner
#20. One of us might be assassinated and then my heir will be king. Don't give up hope just because chances are slim."
"For the assassination or the heir, your majesty?
Megan Whalen Turner
#21. I hate horses. I know people who think that they are noble, graceful animals, but regardless of what a horse looks like from a distance, never forget that it's as likely to step on your foot as look at you.
Megan Whalen Turner
#22. Costis, what do you think you are doing?"
"Sparring, Your Majesty."
"Most people cross swords before they spar and they say something introductory like 'Begin!' before they swing.
Megan Whalen Turner
#23. We might someday attain a relationship of mutual respect," he said softly. First, I thought, I will see gods walking the earth. He went on. "For now I will have your obedience." His ability to convey a world of threat in so few words was remarkable.
Megan Whalen Turner
#24. He would go east and fight the emperor's wars, carrying out the bloody business of larger countries eating up the littler ones. It wasn't a matter of theory in a tiny office in the emperor's palace. It was the work of their lives and the end of many of them.
Megan Whalen Turner
#26. And where do I find a notary public?' the enchantress asked. 'Where? They don't grow on trees where I come from, and while I might be able to arrange that one did, it would take time I don't have to waste.
Megan Whalen Turner
#27. He whines, he complains, he ducks out of the most obvious responsibility. He is vain, petty and maddening, but he doesn't ever quit.
Megan Whalen Turner
#30. He thought that when he had healed sufficiently, and withdrawn from the capital, he might write the magus a letter and open a correspondence on Euclid, or Thales, or the new idea from the north, that the sun and not the Earth might be the centre of the universe.
Megan Whalen Turner
#31. We could make a treaty without a marriage."
"No," he said.
"You are sure?"
"Yes," he said.
Megan Whalen Turner
#32. That is ridiculous," she said.
The king agreed. "Like falling in love with a landslide. Only you could fail to notice.
Megan Whalen Turner
#34. One cannot toss ambassadors back like bad fish," said Eugenides. "You treat them with care, or you'll find you've committed an act of war.
Megan Whalen Turner
#35. He lies to himself. If Eugenides talked in his sleep, he'd lie then, too.
Megan Whalen Turner
#36. I did not say that I am afraid. He is, though, I think. Afraid of his own desire for power.
Megan Whalen Turner
#37. No friend had I made there, but I wasn't with this group to make friends, and besides, he sneered too much. I've found that people who sneer are almost always sneering at me.
Megan Whalen Turner
#38. And she had the most appealing of feminine virtues, especially in a queen. She's easily led.
Megan Whalen Turner
#39. He said the only thin worse than being wrong in a family argument was being right.
Megan Whalen Turner
#40. There are a lot of things a person with two hands couldn't steal," Eddis said.
"So?"
"If it's impossible to steal them with two hands, it's no more impossible to steal them with one. Steal peace, Eugenides. Steal me some time.
Megan Whalen Turner
#41. Useless the Elder was looking at me in amusement. "Not exactly stalwart, are you?" he said.
Megan Whalen Turner
#44. He didn't want to talk to Pol. Pol would want him to go somewhere on the back of a horse.
Megan Whalen Turner
#45. Will there be poppy juice in it?"
Phresine shook her head.
"Good. My wife and I agreed that only my wine was to be poisoned.
Megan Whalen Turner
#46. But there are other words for privacy and independence. They are isolation and loneliness.
Megan Whalen Turner
#47. Oh, Lady," said the woodcutter, "my hurt is overwhelming because it is someone else's pain that makes me cry.
Megan Whalen Turner
#48. If I couldn't be Eddis, I would be Attolia. If they needed to see my uncle in me, then I would show him to them. And I would take Attolia's advice because if I identified my enemy and destroyed him, Sounis would be safe.
Megan Whalen Turner
#49. The Thieves of Eddis don't have breaking points. We have flash points instead, like gunpowder.
Megan Whalen Turner
#51. The Attolian waited, far and away the best non-speaker I think I have ever known.
Megan Whalen Turner
#53. Before you make a decision," he said, "I want you to know that I love you.
Megan Whalen Turner
#54. I think a good book is a good book forever.
I don't think they get less good because times change.
Megan Whalen Turner
#56. If I was going to climb onto an animal eight times my size, I wanted to plan the attempt first.
Megan Whalen Turner
#57. Were you lying?"
"I never lie," he said piously. "About what?"
"The sand, the snake."
For a young man who never lied, he seemed surprisingly unoffended by the question.
Megan Whalen Turner
#58. Your Majesty, what I am saying is that I have never seen him driven, and rarely led either. However, if you were to twist him around your finger and could conceivably grind him under your heel in the process, you have to know that I would be eternally grateful. I would die a happy man.
Megan Whalen Turner
#59. That was the message. For me, alone among mortals, the gods send their messenger to tell me to stop whining. That'll teach me to go hide in a temple.
Megan Whalen Turner
#61. I asked Ochto what in the name of all that was sacred he thought he was doing.
"Helping you," said Dirnes.
"Why?"
They put the soldier down, and Ochto straightened to look me in the eye. "Because I know nothing about kings and princes, but I know men.
Megan Whalen Turner
#62. Then come out," said the king, helping him, "knowing you'll never die of a fall unless the god himself drops you.
Megan Whalen Turner
#63. And the Earth had no name. The gods know themselves and have no need of names. It is man who names all things, even gods.
Megan Whalen Turner
#65. Ah," said the magus, understanding at once. "I see that he means to be prepared if he meets him again."
"Surely that's unlikely," said Sounis.
"I don't think unlikely means to him what it does to the rest of us," said the magus.
Megan Whalen Turner
#66. You're awake," he said. "Phresine is not," pointed out the queen. "Oh?" "You gave her lethium." "She gave it to me first.
Megan Whalen Turner
#67. He reached for a tabletop and ran his hands over it, clutching the edge until his knuckles turned white.
He wanted to know that it was solid. Eddis knew that all the world would seem to him insubstantial, as if it might tear away and reveal something else infinitely larger and more terrifying.
Megan Whalen Turner
#68. I never understood why she didn't marry you."
The king settled further into the seat with a snort. "Maybe the prospect of being driven out of her mind put her off.
Megan Whalen Turner
#69. I spent hours dreaming of the sunshine, the way it soaked into the city walls and made the yellow stones hot to lean on hours after the day had ended
Megan Whalen Turner
#70. It was a race between the tortoise and the hare, but the tortoise had just enough head start, and he had the magus to drag him along.
Megan Whalen Turner
#71. Keeping a private guard this large is like using a wolf to guard the farm. It may keep off the other wolves, but sooner or later it will eat you.
Megan Whalen Turner
#72. Today, she had yielded the sovereignty of her country to Eugenides, who had given up everything he had ever hoped for, to be her King.
Megan Whalen Turner
#73. All I wanted to do was lie in the dry grass with my feet in a ditch forever. I could be a convenient sort of milemarker, I thought. Get to the thief and you know you're halfway to Methana.
Megan Whalen Turner
#75. He didn't marry you to become king. He became king because he wanted to marry you.
Megan Whalen Turner
#76. Relius lay alone with his thoughts. What kind of man, he wondered, referred to himself as "safely dead"?
Megan Whalen Turner
#77. You learn something new everyday." "What are you learning?" Sophos asked. "To keep my mouth shut, I hope.
Megan Whalen Turner
#79. Eschewing ceremony, Eugenides said, "You shot the ambassador?"
"You gave me the gun," protested Sounis.
"I didn't mean for you to shoot the ambassador with it!" Eugenides told him.
"Oh, how our carefully laid plans go astray," murmured the magus.
"You shut up!" said Gen, laughing.
Megan Whalen Turner
#80. Just asleep, Eddis reassured her.
At the sound of her voice Eugenides's head turned slightly, but he didn't wake. Attolia, seeing the movement, breathed again and pressed her hand to her chest where it hurt.
Megan Whalen Turner
#83. I woke with a terrible headache and wobbled around 'till I fell out the window."
"You what?"
"Fell out the window. That one over there." She [Edwina] gestured to the curtain behind her. "I broke my back. My spine is all wobbly now, but it doesn't hurt.
Megan Whalen Turner
#84. The room was quiet, the others flicking glances at me. I ignored them. After years in Sounis's palaces being eyed with disgust by my uncle and my own father and courtier after courtier, I assure you I am unrivaled at pretending not to notice other people's glances.
Megan Whalen Turner
#85. Are you telling me in your own gentle way to stop whining?"
"Yes."
"I don't feel like a hero. I feel like an idiot."
"I think heroes generally do, but those men believe in you."
"I did wait until I was outside before I threw up.
Megan Whalen Turner
#86. Sounis had been thinking of Ambiades. "He would have been a better man under different circumstances."
Gen looked at him. "True enough," he said. "But does a good man let his circumstances determine his character?
Megan Whalen Turner
#87. We are not philosophers, we are sovereigns. The rules that govern our behavior are not the rules for other men, and our honor, I think, is a different thing entirely, difficult for anyone but the historians and the gods to judge.
Megan Whalen Turner
#89. Teleus, who had faced his failures and his death and the death of his friend and accepted his own salvation at the hand of a man he despised, ran out of the strength to accept any more. He contradicted the king.
Megan Whalen Turner
#90. Costis followed, telling himself that it wasn't true that he and the king and even the stone under their feet were nothing but tissue, transparently thin, and that for a moment, the only real thing in the universe had been there on the parapet with the king.
Megan Whalen Turner
#93. I sometimes believe his lies are the truth, but I have never mistaken his truth for a lie.
Megan Whalen Turner
#94. You don't know what I mean. She is so strong, and you assume that strength has no end, no breaking point. You and Teleus are among the few she still trusts enough to love, and you say yes, she should have you tortured and killed. What were you thinking?
Megan Whalen Turner
#95. So Sophos thinks you're going to marry me."
"While I think you'll marry Sophos."
"I might. We'll see what he's like when he grows up.
Megan Whalen Turner
#96. Nahuseresh had attributed her reluctance to an entirely understandable female timidity. He didn't seem to understand that the people of Eddis had very little to do all winter beyond develop superior artisan skills and train for war.
Megan Whalen Turner
#97. Surely it is counterproductive to expect sense from someone you are beating senseless.
Megan Whalen Turner
#98. I do believe that Akretenesh saw no differences between a woman who was a queen and one who was a seamstress, though he would recognize all the differences in the world between a prince and a farmer.
Megan Whalen Turner
#99. Muse of poetry, come to his aid, I thought. Could the man produce one more metaphor of husbandry? He seemed to be trying.
"Green wood," I suggested, but even he sensed that there was something unfortunate about a metaphor for a king in which you dry out your royalty before you set fire to it.
Megan Whalen Turner
#100. Staring at the wall opposite him he presented the queen with a view of his ear and awaited her orders.
Megan Whalen Turner
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