Megan Whalen Turner Quotes

They looked like business cards. Instead of a printed name, a filigreed gold line wrapped itself in a design in the middle of each white rectangle.:"What are they?" Selene asked.
"Wishes," said the elf prince. "You've got three. Just make a wish and burn a card. It doesn't"-- he looked her over with contempt --"require a college education."
"Thanks, but no, thanks," said Selene, handing the cards back. She'd read about people who were offered three wishes my malevolent spirits. No matter what they wished, something terrible happened. She looked carefully at the man. Behind the nice suit and tie, he was just as she thought a malevolent spirit might appear.
"What do you mean, 'Thanks, but no, thanks'? They are perfectly good wishes, I assure you. They're not cheap 'wish for Popsicles' wishes, young woman. They are very high quality. Here." He pushed them towards her. "Wish for anything. Go ahead."
"I wish for peace on earth," Selene said, and sneaked a look over her shoulder. Her bus was coming up the street, but still two blocks away.
"That's not a thing!" snarled the elf prince. "That's an idea, that's a concept. I didn't say wish for a concept. I said a thing. A material object. Go on."
Selene stood her ground. "I'd rather not."

In the shocked aftermath, I said, "We'll give them a second chance."
With my right hand, I reached to the other pocket. I had known as soon as I lifted the false bottom of the gun case and looked underneath what it meant. I had tried without ceasing to find some alternative to Attolia's ruthless advice, and I had failed. Gen's fit reassured me that I had not failed for lack of trying. He had seen no other solution himself.
I lifted out the matching gun and read the archaic inscription. Realisa onum. Not "The queen made me," but "I make the king."

"I can steal anything."
"So you claimed. It was a wager to that effect that landed you in prison." He picked a pen nib off the desk behind him and turned it in his hands for a moment. "It is too bad for you that intelligence does not always attend gifts such as yours, and fortunate for me that it is not your intelligence I am interested in, but your skill. If you are as good as you say you are."
I repeated myself. "I can steal anything."
"Except yourself out of the king's prison?" the magus asked, lifting one eyebrow this time.
I shrugged. I could do that, too, but it would take time.

Eddis nodded. "Gen leaves the reins in Attolia's hands. Which is not what either I or Attolia recommended, but wisely he ignored us both."
"Wisely?"
Smiling, Eddis said, "He hasn't the temperament. He gets angry. She only ever gets angry at him."
Sounis, having seen the Thief of Eddis lose his temper, could see her point.

I am a master of foolhardy plans, I thought. I have so much practice I consider them professional risks. Sooner or later they would have needed the cell and the chains for someone more important, the minister of the exchequer, for instance, and I would have been moved to another cell. Sooner or later I would have had my chance to escape, if I hadn't died of disease first.

Neither the king's reward nor Pol could stop me, but I wanted to be a kingmaker myself. I wanted to be the first one to steal Hamiathes's Gift in hundreds and hundreds of years. I wanted to be famous. Only I couldn't steal the damned thing if I didn't know where if was, and only the magus could find it for me. I would stay with him until he led me to the stone, but I promised myself that someday I would stick a sharp knife into his arrogance and give it a good twist.

The king paused. "Your master of spies is a liar, and this time he is lying," the king said slowly, "to you." Attolia frowned, then almost imperceptibly shook her head.
"Have him arrested," said the king. After another pause he added unequivocally, "Now."
If he succeeds in having me killed, you could be the next Captain of the Guard. What, then, if the king destroyed Relius? Who would replace him?
Costis hardly breathed. The king hadn't ordered the arrest himself, though he could have, but he had directed the queen to do so, in public. Now they would see if the queen could protect her own or not.

As Attolia spun, she felt a tug at her hair and, turning back, felt another. Then she felt her carefully arranged hair slipping down her neck. Eugenides, minding the pattern with his feet and spinning the queen with one hand, had been pulling out her hairpins one by one when her back was turned. The rest of the pins loosened, and her hair dropped free. It swung out as she spun and the last of the pins bounced and slid across the marble floor.
The queen was several inches taller than Eugenides, and he leaned back to counter her spin. To those watching, it didn't seem possible that he could succeed, but with one hand, and no visible effort, he defied the laws of the natural world. Phresine, the queen's senior attendant, watched them from behind the throne as her queen danced like a flame in the wind, and the mercurial king like the weight at the center of the earth. Faster and faster they moved, never faltering, until the music shrilled at an impossible tempo and the pattern gave way to a long spin, each dancer reaching in with one hand and out with the other, holding tight lest they fall away from the other, until the music stopped abruptly and the dance ended.

"I didn't come to Sounis to blow up His Majesty's warships. I told you someone else had to do that."
"What did you come for if not to murder my king?"
"I came to steal his magus."
"You can't," said the magus in question.
"I can steal anything," Eugenides corrected him. "Even with one hand." He took a step forward into the moonlight and waggled his fingers. The smile on his face made the magus feel worse, not better.

"Eugenides," he said. He had recognized the voice.
"Yes."
"What have you done?"
"Not much yet," answered the Thief from the darkness. "I remain fairly limited in my physical activities." He held up his right arm, and the magus started before realizing that the hand he saw had to be a wooden one, concealed by a glove.
Another booming explosion filled the air, and the magus turned back to the window but could see only a glare reflecting on the whitewashed walls of the buildings below.
"I had to send someone else to light the fuses," Eugenides said behind him.
"Fuses?" asked the magus, with a sick feeling.
"In the powder magazines of your warships," Eugenides explained.
"Powder magazines?"
"You sound like the chorus in a play," said Eugenides.
"And the play is a tragedy, I suppose?"
"A farce," Eugenides suggested, and the magus winced.

"You can always give me some of Ambiades's food."
The magus gave me an ugly look. "You'll get your share and nothing else. No one's going hungry so that you can eat."
:"I don't see why not," I said as I lay down on the grass for a nap. It had dried in the sumer sun to crakling stalks that poked me in the arms and neck. "I'm a lot more important than anyone else here," I told the blue sky above me.

I think he was delighted to see you safe," said the magus, "and grieved that the next time you meet, it must be as king and king and not as friends.

Don't you trust my palace security?"
"Yes, of course," Sounis said, trying to think of some other reason besides mistrust to sleep with a knife. He heard Eugenides laugh.
"My queen and I sleep with a matched set under our pillows, as well as handguns in pockets on the bedposts. Don't be embarrassed."
:"Gen, what are you doing in my bedroom in the middle of the night?" Sounis asked.
"Going out of my mind," said Eugenides promptly. "At least I am on the verge of going out of my mind.

In my experience, the more you know of the gods, the more you know what you cannot understand.

Mother said she couldn't guess what was worse, to be a two-year-old with a cold forever or to live with a two-year-old with a cold forever.