Top 100 Naomi Novik Quotes
#1. I should like to know if he has sunk a frigate, alone, with a Fleur-de-Nuit on his back; and as for distinction, my ancestors were scholars in China while his were starving in pits.
Naomi Novik
#3. I do not think you are in any danger of starving," Maximus said. "The surgeon said only two weeks ago that you are too fat."
"The devil!" Berkley said indignantly, sitting up; and Maximus snorted in amusement at having provoked him.
Naomi Novik
#4. I grabbed back at him just as incautiously with my hand and my magic both, even as he pressed magic on me from his side as well. His breath huffed out sharply, and our workings caught on one another, magic gushing into them.
Naomi Novik
#5. Laurence felt his face going red; she was sitting there in breeches that showed every inch of her leg, with a shirt held closed only by a neckcloth; he shifted his gaze to the unalarming top of her head and managed to say, Your servant, Miss Harcourt.
Naomi Novik
#6. Those men want to take Laurence from me, and put him in prison, and execute him, and I will not let them, ever, and I do not care if Laurence tells me not to squash you, he added, fiercely, to Lord Barham.
- Temeraire
Naomi Novik
#7. Now come on. Let's find the baby unicorns and get out of here.
Naomi Novik
#8. I watched them roam awhile, and had a small weep, but even grief had its limits. By dinner-time I was horribly bored.
Naomi Novik
#9. The cows were all running around their pen in manic terror.
Naomi Novik
#10. I'm not stupid, nor a liar," I said, "and if I can't do any good, I can at least do something
Naomi Novik
#11. All those stories must have ended this same way, with someone tired going home from a field full of death, but no one ever sang this part.
Naomi Novik
#12. But she hadn't been able to take root. She'd remembered the wrong things, and forgotten too much. She'd remembered how to kill and how to hate, and she'd forgotten how to grow.
Naomi Novik
#13. I will tell you what we shall do: if ever you need to rescue Catherine, or you Berkley, Maximus, I will help you, and you will do as much for me. Then we do not need to worry, I do not suppose anyone could stop all three of us, at least not before we can escape
Naomi Novik
#14. He snorted. "He thinks killing a day-old hydra has made him a hero." None of the songs had ever mentioned the Vandalus Hydra being one day old: it diminished the story more than a little.
Naomi Novik
#15. I am beginning to feel the need of a glass of wine to fortify myself against this conversation.
Naomi Novik
#16. What an unequaled gift for disaster you have.
Naomi Novik
#17. Feiglings!" Eroica bellowed after them at the top of his lungs as they clawed and scattered his wing dragons.
Naomi Novik
#18. It wasn't that I wanted a husband and a baby; I didn't, or rather, I only wanted them the way I wanted to live to a hundred: someday, far off, never thinking about the particulars.
Naomi Novik
#19. There's no kindness in offering false hope.
Naomi Novik
#20. Would you believe it's harder to find a virgin than a unicorn in New York?
Naomi Novik
#21. Well, I don't know, yet," the dragonet said, "but I mean to find a way: just because the business will be difficult is no excuse for not making the attempt.
Naomi Novik
#22. No, my dear," he said at last, softly, knowing it was only the truth. "I would rather have you than any ship in the Navy.
Naomi Novik
#23. I do not know that the Chinese system is any worse; there is a limit to the evil one despot alone can do, and if he is truly vicious he can be overthrown; a hundred corrupt members of Parliament may together do as much injustice or more, and be the less easy to uproot.
Naomi Novik
#24. Dragon intelligence was a mystery to men who made a study of the subject; he had no idea how much the dragon would hear or understand, but thought it better to avoid the risk of giving offense.
Naomi Novik
#25. . . . though if Fanshawe had not spoken in so unbecoming a way, Laurence would have liked to keep Carver out of it, as he knew the boy had a poor head for heights, which struck him as a grave impediment for an aviator.
Naomi Novik
#26. No; they nearly drowned you, and not even on purpose but only through carelessness. I am not letting them have you back, Temeraire said.
Naomi Novik
#27. I don't think I can do it alone, I said. I had a feeling the Summoning wasn't really meant to be cast alone: as if truth didn't mean anything without someone to share it with.
Naomi Novik
#28. There was a song in this forest, too, but it was a savage song, whispering of madness and tearing and rage.
Naomi Novik
#29. The Magicians brilliantly explores the hidden underbelly of fantasy and easy magic, taking what's simple on the surface and turning it over to show us the complicated writhing mess beneath. It's like seeing the worlds of Narnia and Harry Potter through a 3-D magnifying glass.
Naomi Novik
#30. I am of the opinion", Tharkay said, "that you ought not assign to free will something more likely the consequence of a sharp blow to the skull.
Naomi Novik
#31. No one was enchanted beyond saving in the songs. The hero always saved them. There was no ugly moment in a dark cellar where the countess wept and cried out protest while three wizards put the count to death, and then made court politics out of it.
Naomi Novik
#32. The river flows to the sea, whatever the wind says about it
Naomi Novik
#33. Laurence could make no real quarrel with the aims, which were natural and just; but England was at war, after all, and he was conscious, as Temeraire was not, of the impudence in demanding concessions from their own Government under such circumstances: very like mutiny. Yet
Naomi Novik
#34. After a moment, he said, in almost marveling tones, 'Are you deranged?
Naomi Novik
#35. She's been living alone with a man for ten years, so of course she's ruined, even though the girls all say he never puts a hand on them.
Naomi Novik
#36. I don't like to be coarse, but if I did, I would be!
-Granby commenting on something Rankin has said.
Naomi Novik
#37. What perfectly sensible advice. It sat in my stomach, an indigestible lump.
Naomi Novik
#38. Keep your eyes on him, you wretched vainglorious creature,
Naomi Novik
#39. And listen to me: what you've done here carries power with it, of a different sort. Don't let Solya take all the credit, and don't be shy of using it.
Naomi Novik
#41. I wanted to rub handprints through his dust
Naomi Novik
#42. Next you will cry about taxation without representation, and throw a basket of tea into the harbor. You are indeed a very Jacobin at heart, and I think I must give up trying to cure you of it; I can but wash my hands and deny responsibility
Naomi Novik
#43. Something about that whole process of building the structure of that game turned into a real kind of lightbulb moment for me as a writer.
Naomi Novik
#44. Solya may not be wicked, but he likes to be too clever for everyone's good.
Naomi Novik
#45. He roared at me furiously for ten minutes after he finally managed to put out the sulky and determined fire, calling me a witless muttonheaded spawn of pig farmers-"My father's a wood-cutter," I said- "adOf axe-swinging lummocks!" he snarled.
Naomi Novik
#46. And we must still try or we would be leaving our friends to fight without us. I think this is what you have meant by duty, all along; I do understand, at least this much of it.
Naomi Novik
#47. As happy as I would be to forgo the very doubtful pleasure of watching you flop about like an exhausted eel over the least cantrip," he bit out, "we've already seen the consequences of leaving you to your own devices.
Naomi Novik
#48. We're meant to go. We're not meant to stay forever.
Naomi Novik
#49. he would not neglect what he considered his duty for the sake of being liked.
Naomi Novik
#50. That was a story, too; they all had stories.
Naomi Novik
#51. And I wasn't old enough to be wise, so I loved her more, not less, because I knew she would be taken from me soon.
Naomi Novik
#52. Justice is expensive. That is why there is so little of it, and it is reserved for those few with enough money and influence to afford it.
Naomi Novik
#53. I'm an engineer and a writer. And I find that those two things are not uncomplementary.
Naomi Novik
#54. I needn't be offended every time I have to look at you
Naomi Novik
#55. And it came out that this King Arthur and his knights had done nothing of real note but to kill innocent dragons all around Britain: almost certainly a pack of lies, as Forthing admitted they had not possessed even any guns at the time, and unpleasant lies at that.
Naomi Novik
#56. No one had made her talk to me, or be in my company. I couldn't understand why she would have gone to the trouble just to be unpleasant.
Naomi Novik
#57. Could have devoured the rest of the valley overnight. But a tree isn't a woman; it doesn't bear a single seed. It scatters as many of them as it can, and hopes for some of them to grow.
Naomi Novik
#58. All maps are fiction when the world is seen from the sky. But if ten thousand dragons choose to believe in this one, I think you will find it nearer truth than otherwise.
Naomi Novik
#59. For a moment ... I might have been the daughter she'd hoped for ... she might have been my teacher and my guide ... We might never have been enemies at all.
Naomi Novik
#60. I had forgotten to fear him, from too much time spent too close.
Naomi Novik
#61. Two lords and an archduke had asked her to marry them, and so, she wrote to me in outrage, had Solya.
Can you imagine? I told him I thought he was a lunatic, and he said he would live in hope. Alosha laughed for ten minutes without stopping except to cough when I told her ...
Naomi Novik
#62. We were of the valley. Born in the valley, of families planted too deep to leave even when they knew their daughter might be taken; raised in the valley, drinking of whatever power also fed the Wood.
Naomi Novik
#63. It seems to me after a fellow has been mutinied against three or four times, there is something to it besides bad luck.
Naomi Novik
#64. I should rather have you than a heap of gold, even if it were very comfortable to sleep on.
Naomi Novik
#65. It felt like a war between two endless things, between a bottomless chasm and a running river.
Naomi Novik
#66. I remembered when my oldest brother married Malgosia, and suddenly the two of them stopped running around with us and started sitting with the parents: a very solemn kind of alchemy, one that I felt shouldn't have been able to just sneak up on me.
Naomi Novik
#67. Darby, sir, but Janus they call me," the seaman said, "on account of a surgeon we shipped in the Sophie, a learned bloke, saying I saw both ways like some old Roman cut-up by that name.
Naomi Novik
#68. It comes, I suppose," I said thoughtfully, speaking to the air, "of spending too much time alone indoors, and forgetting that living things don't always stay where you put them.
Naomi Novik
#69. If you will pardon my saying so," Tharkay said, "you will never satisfy them on that point: the last thing you or Temeraire will ever give anyone is quiet obedience. Have you considered it might be better not to try?
Naomi Novik
#70. Her fire was roaring, her silhouette raising showers of orange sparks with a hammer made of shadow.
Naomi Novik
#71. And yet Praecursoris is not punished the same way, only because it is not practical, and he is needed for breeding?
Naomi Novik
#72. Once we're out of the Wood ... , I said, but my voice died in my throat. I felt odd and sick. Did you ever get out of the Wood, if you'd been in it for twenty years?
Naomi Novik
#73. A girl had supposedly disguised herself as a man to fight in her father's stead, had become companion to a military dragon and saved the empire by winning a great battle;
Naomi Novik
#74. You've been inexpressibly lucky," he said finally. "And inexpressibly mad, although in your case the two seem to be the same thing
Naomi Novik
#75. If I were very offensive, do you suppose they would go away now?
Naomi Novik
#76. Temeraire said, 'It is very nice how many books there are, indeed. And on so many subjects!
Naomi Novik
#78. including one gentleman who had been introduced as a poet, although Laurence could not believe this had been an accurate translation: more likely the man was a clerk of some sort.
Naomi Novik
#79. All of a sudden, I sort of started to feel that I was constrained by the characters as opposed to enjoying them. And that remains for me to this day the line that I know where it's like, OK, you're not writing fan fiction anymore.
Naomi Novik
#80. There's a considerable distance between seeking perfection and irretrievable haste,
Naomi Novik
#81. then he spluttered at me, "You impossible, wretched, nonsensical contradiction, what on earth have you done now?" I
Naomi Novik
#82. The Dragon hissed under his breath with annoyance: how dare a chimaera inconvenience him, coming out of season.
Naomi Novik
#83. The French seized his arms and put a blade to his throat, calling to Eroica, "Geben Sie oben,
Naomi Novik
#84. I don't want more sense!" I said loudly, beating against the silence of the room. "Not if sense means I'll stop loving anyone. What is there besides people that's worth holding on to?
Naomi Novik
#85. If Napoleon can seek to ascend all the thrones of Europe, I suppose we may go dragging them out from under him
Naomi Novik
#86. A life before you in the moment isn't worth a hundred elsewhere, three months from now.
Naomi Novik
#87. I leaned against his side, his irritation oddly comforting. After a moment he grudgingly put his arm around me. The deep quiet was already settling back upon the grove, as if all the fire and rage we'd brought could make only a brief interruption in its peace.
Naomi Novik
#88. Everyone says you love a Dragon-born girl differently as she gets older; you can't help it, knowing you so easily might lose her.
Naomi Novik
#89. Well, I would have struck him, but I would have had to get up. You have no notion how difficult it is to arrange skirts when sitting down; it took me five minutes together the first time.
Naomi Novik
#90. I am very tired of this Government, which I have never seen, and which is always insisting that I must do disagreeable things, and does no good to anybody.
Naomi Novik
#91. He says to land," Tharkay translated, with improbable brevity; at Laurence's frowning look he added, "and he calls us a great many impolite names; do you wish them all translated?
Naomi Novik
#92. I was so tired that I was nothing but my body: the steady dull throb in my thighs, the tremor all along my arms, the thick grime of dust muffling my skin.
Naomi Novik
#93. Trying to out-guess Bonaparte; the thought makes my blood run cold.
Naomi Novik
#94. He darted a look at the uncovered basket behind me, saw what I was eating, and glared at me. "That's appalling," he said.
"They're wonderful!" I said. "They're all coming ripe."
"All the better to turn you into a tree," he said.
"I don't want to be a tree yet," I said.
Naomi Novik
#95. Enough of that, you damned conspirators, you will have us hanged a great deal sooner than we will.
Naomi Novik
#96. I will never let Berkley commit treason, ever," Maximus said, "but if he did, I would step on anyone who tried to hang him.
Naomi Novik
#97. If you don't want a man dead, don't bludgeon him over the head repeatedly.
Naomi Novik
#98. Magic was singing in me, through me; I felt the murmur of his power singing back that same song.
Naomi Novik
#99. I am not whimpering, at all," Temeraire muttered, and added, "ow!" There
Naomi Novik
#100. You intolerable lunatic, he snarled at me, and then he caught my face between his hands and kissed me.
Naomi Novik
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