283 Quotes by Marie Rutkoski

The guard hit Kestrel across the face. “I said, what did you give him?”You had a warrior’s heart, even then.Kestrel spat blood. “Nothing,” she told the guard. She thought of her father, she thought of Arin. She told her final lie. “I gave him nothing.

Fairy tales are rife with transformation — from beast to handsome prince, from dirty scullery maid to well-dressed princess. It is perhaps no coincidence that nature in the Cinderella stories facilitates transformation, for nature itself is a changeable thing, from season to season, from a sunny day to rain, from an egg to a flying bird in a matter of weeks.(Source: "The Nature of Cinderella".)

You can't see both sides of one coin at once, can you, child? The god of money always keeps a secret.The god of money was also the god of spies.

It’s a midnight lie... a kind of lie told for someone else’s sake, a lie that sits between goodness and wrong, just as midnight is the moment between night and morning.

People of the hundred," he said, using an ancient Herrani phrase Arin was surprised he knew, "who leads you?"So many cried Arin's name that it no longer sounded like his name.

He'll behave. He has a mien and manners of a prince.""Oh, like you?""I resent your tone.""I'm not sure you can control him.""Has he ever aught but the gentlest of creatures? Would you deny your namesake the chance to bear witness to our victorious celebration? And, of course, to the vision of you and Kestrel: side by side, Herrani and Valorian, a love for the ages. The stuff of songs, Arin! How you'll get married, and make babies --""Gods, Roshar, shut up.

She had dreams that shamed her in the morning, dreams where Ronan gave her a white powdered cake, yet spoke in Arin's voice. I made this for you, he said. Do you like it?The powder was so fine that she inhaled its sweetness, but always woke before she could taste.

Something tugged inside him. A flutter of unease.Do you sing? Those had been her first words to him, the day she had bought him. A band of nausea circled Arin’s throat, just as it had when she had asked him that question, in part for the same reason. She’d had no trace of an accent. She had spoken in perfect, natural, mother-taught Herrani.

Arin, are you all right?""How?" He managed. "How did her arm break?""She fell of a ladder."He must have visibly relaxed, because his cousin raised her brows and looked ready to scold. "I imagined something worse," he tried to explain.She appeared to understand his relief that pain, if it had to come, came this time without malice. Just and accident. Done by no one. The luck, sometimes of life. A bad slip that ends with bread, and someone to bind you.