Esther Friesner Quotes

Faith gagged again, in earnest. Amanda had let her to believe that she was anything but pure, purity no longer being the fashion. Yet here was Geordie, carrying on over her in a style that was popular in the Middle Ages, when you had to adore your lady from afar because if you did it from anear, you’d get her Daddy’s sword in your belly.

Innocence is only a matter of not being able to believe in a possibility you can’t imagine.

Melisan frowned and informed her leader that politics was the answer to every demon’s fondest dreams. Politics, she said, meant less work for Mother. It covered all the bases when it came to the Seven Top Deadly Sins.
“You get a minor political conflict, like, say, an argument over candidates at a cocktail party,” said Melisan, who only knew about such gatherings from Murakh, “and right away you generate a whole room full of Wrath. Then you move on to elections, and you get the bunch that won’t vote at all because they don’t like either candidate and besides, they figure one vote’s not important.”
“Ahhh,” sighed Horgist, eyes moist with yearning. “Sloth!”
“Exactly, my love. Then someone wins the election, and you’ve got the ones who voted for him swelled with pride and the ones who didn’t consumed with Envy. Avarice, Lechery, and Gluttony come after he’s in office, and that’s just what happens in a minor political situation! When you’ve got Avarice and Gluttony working on the grand, international scale, you’ve got the way paved for all-out war, and when what they call National Pride shows up, you’ve got guaranteed Gehenna.”

When the majority is crazy, the sane ones are kept in asylums. She knew that well; she’d majored in World History.

For magic wears a thousand masks, but love is magic of its own and wears a myriad more.

Dignity and self-assurance are everything to a woman, especially a naked one.

“I won’t do it,” said Barti.
“Then we’ll kill you,” replied Aliska, who had grasped the fundamentals of religious debate pretty quickly.

Better a live whore than a dead virgin!

Children, the gods call us when they choose, but not even the priests are eager to answer.

If we could all pick our fathers there might be ten men on earth who would have families.

Monkeys and mortals are attracted to sparkly things. What makes us different from the apes is that we sometimes crack the shiny shell and see there’s nothing inside.

I knew the Cardinal Rule of Experiments from Master Urion’s house: The wise mage never tampers with the order of things unless his circumstances are such that the worst possible result of the experiment will be no more disastrous than not performing the experiment at all.

Scratch a minstrel, find a pimp!

Little ones, if any mortal under the age of ninety ever tells you, “I always learned my lessons the first time, before it was too late,” mark that person well. He lies.

I think the pampered highborn like the fantasy of equality.