Sharon Shinn

But I am king. And the well-being of my kingdom depends on my sound judgment and clear head. And those things depend on my state of happiness. And I have known for a long time that my state of happiness depends on you.

You have not traveled enough," she said. "Or you'd know that every journeymakes its own map across your heart.

Are you asking me if there is a god?' he said, still in that soft voice. 'All I can say is, I believe there is. I feel him when I sing. He has responded to my prayers countless times. He guides my actions and he dwells in my heart. I know he is there.

I've remembered that most of life is about small, essential connections, so unobtrusive, so elastic, that you scarcely realize they're actually holding you together. The big ones-the great, grand emotional bonds-those are the ones that break, the ones that fail you, the ones that give way and send you careening toward the foot of the bleak and jagged canyon. It's the tough, gnarled, unadorned ties that really do bind, that never let you fall all the way down into darkness.

There is nothing but heartache for a coru woman and a hunti man," she said, deliberately contrary. "He cannot control her and she cannot change him.""He never fails her and she always moves him," Darien corrected. "She can trust his strength, and he can be lifted by her joy.

Your wedding completely changes the direction of your life, you know, no matter how greatly you desire it. I think that moment of doubt and faintness comes from all those imagined and now impossible futures all pressing in on you at once. It is your last chance to experience them, you see, and they all want to be lived at that moment.

A truth that no one knows is still the truth.

I'm fascinated by the idea of disparate, difficult people learning to trust each other when they're thrust into hellish circumstances.

You can hardly walk up to complete strangers and say, "Good for you! You've risked banishment and brutality and ostracism just to be together, and I applaud your choice! You're in the vanguard of social change, and even though it's hard on you, the generations that come after you will have an easier time of it because you were brave enough to fall in love." So instead I told them I liked their baby. It means the same thing, but it's more socially acceptable.

I was Amazement--I was Desire--I was Ecstasy and Rapture and the slightest bit of Greed.

she had something I could not have, and so I resented her__ut I realized the fault was mine and not hers.

Amalie took his hand and spread it against her heart. Her smile was utterly tranquil. 'The world changes and the world stays the same', she told him, ... 'The old moon sets. New moon rises.

For people who make up stories for a living, that is the ultimate success: knowing that, when the book closes, when the series ends, the adventure is not over. It goes on without the creator, in the minds of the people who love it. You can__ stop the signal. Once it__ broadcast, it continues on forever, pulsing past star clusters, lighting up new worlds, collecting new fans, till the end of time itself.

If mankind's greatest achievement is to produce more spaces for mankind to live in, I do not think I am so impressed.

And how is your head? Better?" he asked."Very much. Sometimes it hurts." Right now it was throbbing. "But every day I am much improved.""Where did you hit it? Are you bruised?"I put a hand to the back of my head, a little to the left, where I had landed with such jarring force. "Here," I said. "It's still a little tender."And leaning forward, he touched my hair right where I had just laid my hand. Such was he glamour that attended him that I expected the ache to instantly melt away, healed by his royal caress. But in fact, I felt a sudden leap in my heart that made the pain briefly more intense.

And you're not leaving," she said. "Promise me."It was as if she had asked him to promise to keep breathing, to notice sunshine, to permit the spinning of the earth. What choice did he have? Even if he left her, she would be camped in his heart, an insistent and willful presence. She would match her strides to his on any journey he ever took; she would lie beside him on any bed.Amalie, he said, "that's the easiest promise I've ever had to make.

You must welcome bounty whenever it comes, hunti man. It is often inconvenient. But if you insist on accepting it only when it suits your schedule, you will find yourself very poor.

You almost threw it back!' she repeated, and her voice filled with mock horror.'You foolish boy! Are you always so careless with items of value?''No,' he said, abruptly sober. 'I know what matters. And I never throw those things away. I hold on to them as long as I can.