100 Quotes by Patricia A. McKillip

Once I used my powers. Now I feel like a dancing instructor, reminding the queen whom she is dancing with at this hour and with which foot she should begin.''Be thankful,' Gavin advised with a laugh, 'that so far the music is still being played and everyone is trying to dance in harmony.

He smiled again, his eyes still secret, like the well, which, suddenly, was no longer there. “You would know. You are drawn to secrets.

Riding my calm dark mare, I was armed and in disguise: shod, braided, cloaked and hooded in green wool against the rain.

But you must stop playing among his ghosts -- it's stupid and dangerous and completely pointless. He's trying to lay them to rest here, not stir them up, and you seem eager to drag out all the sad old bones of his history and make them dance again. It's not nice, and it's not fair.

[...]at the end of a breathless day when the air seemed so heavy and full of molten light, everyone sweated drops of gold instead of brine.

Words, he decided, were inadequate at best, impossible at worst. They meant too many things. Or they meant nothing at all.

You can weave your life so long—only so long,” Coren says to Sybel, “and then a thing in the world out of your control will tug at one vital thread and leave you patternless and subdued.

At its best, fantasy rewards the reader with a sense of wonder about what lies within the heart of the commonplace world. The greatest tales are told over and over, in many ways, through centuries. Fantasy changes with the changing times, and yet it is still the oldest kind of tale in the world, for it began once upon a time, and we haven't heard the end of it yet.

Here in Raine, I can walk with the sunlight on my face. I can speak to anyone who speaks to me. I can learn my daughter's language. I can be called the name I was given when I was born.Here I am no longer my own secret.Will you let me stay?