Jacqueline Carey Quotes

Fear and lies fester in darkness. The truth may wound, but it cuts clean.

People believe what they are told.

Your dreaming self seeks to tell you something your waking ears will not hear

If you thought better of me, you would not be so surprised

It is not everyday that one learns an entire militia has sworn unbeknownest to obey you

I seek words of such surpassing beauty that they might melt the hardest heart of stone.

There is no fulfillment that is not made sweeter for the prolonging of desire

Yes my lord, but questions are dangerous, for they have answers

Stand at the crossroads if you will, but if you'll not choose, I'll move on without you

Pain obliterates everything else. In pain, there is only the eternal present.

It is a scholar's weakness, to run narrow and deep.

All exiles carry a map within them that points the way homeward.

Mercy and compassion are all the grace left to us.

Without plenty, the wealthy lack compassion for the poor, hoarding without sharing. Without law, the strong bully the weak, stealing by force.

Those that yield are not always weak

Our eyes met. We had so very many shared memories between us, Bao and I. Some were wonderous, and some were terrible. Some were both.

Beauty is at its most poignant when the cold hand of Death holds poised to wither it imminently.

A pretty sight; it would have surprised me, if my capacity for surprise wasn't flattened.

You're better off," d'Aiglemort said dryly. "Steel and faith are an unnatural mix.

Garner knowledge, by any means possible

And for a price, I will pretend absolutely nothing.

It is my observations, though, that happiness limits the amount of suffering one is willing to inflict upon others

Wars come and go; politics endure.

To recongnize that the treachery of one member of a house does not taint all born within it

I have seen the impossible. I have seen great and terrible wonders, and I tell you, the world is a vaster and stranger place than ever I had reckoned.

Always, he whispered. The gods do not always answer, but they are always listening.

When Love cast me out, it was Cruelty who took pity upon me

Truly, it is in loss that we learn a thing's true value.

To fail and persevere is a harder test than any you will meet on the practice-field.

I took a slice of melon and perched on the edge of a couch, watching them both, patently uncomfortable with the undefined nature of my role here.

There are patterns which emerge in one's life, circling and returning anew, an endless variation of a theme

It is all we can do to try. It is enough.

And Kushiel sends no punishment that we are not fit to bear.

I had begun to think my ripening body would wither untasted on the vine.

If I had to fall from Cassiel's grace, at least I know it took a courtesan worthy of Kings to do it.

As often as not, we forge our own chains. And from those, not even Adonai Himself can free us. We must do it ourselves.

The harp sounds at each passing breeze, but that does not mean the tune is masterfully played.

What is fear but courage's shadow?

We pay for sins we do not remember, and seek to do a will we can scarce fathom. That is what it is, to be a god's chosen.

Beauty inspires love; so it is said, in Terre d'Ange. Was it done that we might find this world worthy of loving?

For every victory," Necthana whispered, her great dark eyes shining with a mother's tears, "there is a price.

It was small consolation, but it would have to do. I squeezed his hand once more, in lieu of things unsaid. Come on.

Vampire in real life aren't like the ones in the movies. They weren't going to be playing baseball in a thunderstorm.

I preferred a hard truth to a well-meant lie.

One does not reckon, at such times, the cost to one's limbs and joints; there is a limit to the pliancy of the mortal form.

Battle for the sake of honor may be a fine thing for bards to sing of, but it is no way to preserve one's homeland

There is as much deception in noise as there is in silence

It's funny how despair can soon become an old companion

To have a traitor for an ally is to have an enemy in waiting

Alas for we who are mortal, and are denied the luxury of dramatic license. We mus live, and go onward.

I can see patterns in events, and behaviors; in mathematics, I follow slower

Never before had I used my service to escape any woes that troubled me, but I did that day.

If you will not die for us, you cannot ask us to die for you.

In the arts of covertcy, it is death to second-guess oneself.

A Night-Blooming Flower, a Tsingano witch-boy, and a ... a Cassaline whatever. This is what Ysandre sends me. I must be mad.

We are meant to taste of life ... and drink the cup of it to the dregs, bitter and sweet alike.

I never forgot, never, that it had been he who, with two words, turned my deadliest flaw to a treasure beyond price.

The world began in ending, and it will end in beginning.

And having once chosen, never to seek to return to the crossroads of that decision-for even if one chooses wrongly, the choice cannot be unmade.

If the greatest danger one faces as a slave is displeasing one's masters, this is the second: pleasing them.

Let the warriors clamor after gods of blood and thunder; love is hard, harder than steel and thrice as cruel.

Genius requires an audience.

Stupid to speak of blame when the wills of the immortals are involved.

All paths are present, always ... and we can but choose among them.

There's more to clothing than just adornment. It does more than merely change how the world perceives us. It changes how we perceive ourselves.

Pain redeems all. It is the awareness of life, a reminder of death.

Some chains are forged for us - those are the hardest to bear.

We might embody those qualities we desire to possess by embracing them, over and over, until the line between seeming and being is no more.

A small kindness, a confluence of compassion, had saved his life. Was that strength, or a weakness?

There is no folly like the folly of the wise.

What does it mean to be good?

where power intersects with pleasure, there is danger. Adepts

One must gauge one's trust carefully.

If I'm to be damned for what I've done, I'll be damned in full and not by halves.

But slight mistakes accumulate, and grow to gross errors if unchecked.

For the keeping of secrets from adults is oft the only power a child may hope to possess.

Your goddamn bloodsucking boyfriend's been promising to change you for eight years!" Jen said grimly. "Wake up and smell the plasma, Beth!

Night breeds its own sort of anticipation.

You have given us a part in a story the bards will sing to our children's children.

He nodded at Josceline and me. Keep these two with you, will you? They seem to be damnably hard to kill.

I love you, and I would choose to be with you whether in a slum or a cave or a palace.

Having a literary agent makes a huge difference in submitting work. My agent has access and tremendous passion.

Love as thou wilt

Well, I was living it, but a shared dream half-lived is a hollow thing

A little truth seasons a lie like salt.

Even a stunted tree reaches for sunlight.

Take your happiness where you find it, children, and don't ask too many questions. Life is too short and uncertain to do otherwise.

No two sacrifices are the same, and yet all are, in the end. It is the commitment to belong, wholly, to that which claims one.

That which yields is not always weak.

We speak of stories ending, when in truth it is we who end. The stories go on and on.

Her always is mine

Happiness is the highest form of wisdom.

Love is hard, harder than steel and thrice as cruel. It is inexorable as the tides, and life and death alike follow in its wake.

Somewhat to my surprise, there were several polite golf claps. Vampires.

Are you a minor character in my tale, or am I a lesser figure in yours?

Poetry glories in excess. When it's not extolling the virtues of austerity.

I wish sometimes that the gods would either choose better, or make their wishes clearer

We are alike, Joscelin and I, in that what we do, we do very well.

Ben Lewis. He's in Afghanistan."
"He is?" I blinked. "In the army?"
"Well, he's not there on his honeymoon.

If I have one pride in my calling, it is that I have never judged a patron wrongly - and I have never failed to recognize a patron upon meeting.