Top 100 Naomi Novik Quotes
#1. 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
#2. I needn't be offended every time I have to look at you
Naomi Novik
#3. he thought how little the rest of the world should matter to him, when he was secure in the good opinion of those he valued most, and in the knowledge that he was doing his duty.
Naomi Novik
#4. I'm an engineer and a writer. And I find that those two things are not uncomplementary.
Naomi Novik
#5. 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
#6. 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
#7. Truth didn't mean anything without someone to share it with; you could shout truth into the air forever, and spend your life doing it, if someone didn't come and listen.
Naomi Novik
#8. That was a story, too; they all had stories.
Naomi Novik
#9. he would not neglect what he considered his duty for the sake of being liked.
Naomi Novik
#10. We're meant to go. We're not meant to stay forever.
Naomi Novik
#11. I'm not your dear girl, Kasia said, with a bite in her tone that silenced him.
Naomi Novik
#13. 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
#14. 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
#15. 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
#16. Solya may not be wicked, but he likes to be too clever for everyone's good.
Naomi Novik
#17. We may meet again; the world is not after all so very large a place." He
Naomi Novik
#18. 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
#19. 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
#20. I wanted to rub handprints through his dust
Naomi Novik
#21. They come and go like seasons, the winter that gives no thought to the spring.
Naomi Novik
#23. 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
#24. Keep your eyes on him, you wretched vainglorious creature,
Naomi Novik
#25. What perfectly sensible advice. It sat in my stomach, an indigestible lump.
Naomi Novik
#26. I should rather have you than a heap of gold, even if it were very comfortable to sleep on.
Naomi Novik
#27. I tried to make him a young court-wizard in my mind - he almost looked the part in his fine clothes, pursuing some lovely noblewoman - and there my imagination stumbled. He was a thing of books and alembics to me, library and laboratory.
Naomi Novik
#28. 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
#29. 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
#30. 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
#31. And yet Praecursoris is not punished the same way, only because it is not practical, and he is needed for breeding?
Naomi Novik
#32. Her fire was roaring, her silhouette raising showers of orange sparks with a hammer made of shadow.
Naomi Novik
#33. They moved out of Jena early the next morning, with Prince Louis and the rest of the advance guard, for the town of Saalfeld,
Naomi Novik
#34. 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
#35. 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
#36. 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
#37. 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
#38. It felt like a war between two endless things, between a bottomless chasm and a running river.
Naomi Novik
#39. I don't like to be coarse, but if I did, I would be!
-Granby commenting on something Rankin has said.
Naomi Novik
#40. 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
#41. 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
#42. We leave tonight," he continued, very cold and calm, "and we take the eggs with us.
Naomi Novik
#43. 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
#44. I had forgotten to fear him, from too much time spent too close.
Naomi Novik
#45. Temeraire
Never fear; I am going; the Son of Heaven will not tolerate delays, and Barham gives me leave. Allegiance will carry us! Pray eat something
L.
Naomi Novik
#46. 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
#47. 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
#48. 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
#49. He held his hand out to me across the table.
It was harder to take it this time, to make that deliberate choice, without the useful distraction of desperation.
Naomi Novik
#50. 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
#51. 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
#52. Would you believe it's harder to find a virgin than a unicorn in New York?
Naomi Novik
#53. Let her out!" I screamed at the tree. I beat on its trunk with my muddy fists. "Let her out, or I'll bring you down! Fulmia!" I cried out in rage ...
Naomi Novik
#54. There's no kindness in offering false hope.
Naomi Novik
#55. 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
#56. Feiglings!" Eroica bellowed after them at the top of his lungs as they clawed and scattered his wing dragons.
Naomi Novik
#57. It is quite uninteresting; that is why one comes out.
- Temeraire, on being inside an egg
Naomi Novik
#58. What an unequaled gift for disaster you have.
Naomi Novik
#59. I am beginning to feel the need of a glass of wine to fortify myself against this conversation.
Naomi Novik
#60. 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
#61. 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
#62. 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
#63. 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
#64. Gentleness shown once is mercy, shown twice is folly.
Naomi Novik
#65. The cows were all running around their pen in manic terror.
Naomi Novik
#66. 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
#67. Now come on. Let's find the baby unicorns and get out of here.
Naomi Novik
#68. I hated her; I wanted her to burn, the way so many of the corrupted had burned, because she'd put her hold on them. But wanting cruelty felt like another wrong answer in an endless chain.
Naomi Novik
#69. I missed home like the ache of hunger, something in me left empty. I'd missed it every day since we crossed out of the valley, going over the mountains. Roots - yes. There were roots in my heart, as deep as any corruption could go.
Naomi Novik
#70. 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
#71. 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
#72. He wasn't a person, he was a lord and a wizard, a strange creature on another plane entirely, as far removed as storms and pestilence.
Naomi Novik
#73. 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
#74. 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
#76. 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
#77. 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
#78. It seems to me that if you wish to apply laws to us, it were only reasonable to consult us on them, and from what you have read to me about Parliament, I do not think any dragons are invited to go there
Naomi Novik
#79. After a moment, he said, in almost marveling tones, 'Are you deranged?
Naomi Novik
#80. 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
#81. The river flows to the sea, whatever the wind says about it
Naomi Novik
#82. 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
#83. 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
#84. 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
#85. There was a song in this forest, too, but it was a savage song, whispering of madness and tearing and rage.
Naomi Novik
#86. It seems perfectly plain to me that it is war itself which must be halted, without wanting one side or another defeated in particular.
Naomi Novik
#87. I was a glaring blot on the perfection. But I didn't care: I didn't feel I owed him beauty.
Naomi Novik
#88. Listen, you impossible creature," he said, "I'm a century and more older than
"
"Oh, be quiet," I said impatiently.
Naomi Novik
#89. 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
#90. 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
#91. . . . 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
#92. 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
#93. (Temeraire "Can one hire a translator to say things properly?"
"Yes; they are called lawyers," Tharkay said, and laughed softly to himself.
Naomi Novik
#94. 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
#95. His name tasted of fire and wings, of curling smoke, of subtlety and strength and the rasping whisper of scales. He eyed me and said stiffly, Don't land yourself into a boiling-pot, and as difficult as you may find it, try and present a respectable appearance.
Naomi Novik
#96. I had hated him, but I wouldn't have reproached him, any more than I would have reproached a bolt of lightning for striking my house. He wasn't a person ...
Naomi Novik
#97. 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
#98. So I put together a street-going rig and came up with the courier.
Naomi Novik
#99. and if they were both outcast for the same reason, they might at least have the pleasure of each other's society for compensation.
Naomi Novik
#100. 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
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