Naomi Novik Quotes

But I had not known that I was strong enough to do any of those things until they were over and I had done them. I had to do the work first, not knowing.

I should rather have you than a heap of gold, even if it were very comfortable to sleep on.

We're all greedy, but children make it easier to be. We feel it's only right to give them everything we can grab, even when you know that anything you feed your own child still comes out of someone else's mouth.

I love having existential crises at bedtime, it's so restful.

I'd want to. If you want, I want.

A crowd of women around me doing the ocean of women’s work that never subsided and never changed and always swallowed whatever time you gave it and wanted more, another hungry body of water. I submerged into it like a ritual bath and let it close over my head gladly.

Thrice, mortal maiden,” in a rhyme almost like a song, “Thrice you shall turn silver to gold for me, or be changed to ice yourself.

Of course I was afraid. But I had learned to fear other things more: being despised, whittled down one small piece of myself at a time, smirked at and taken advantage of. I put my chin up and said, as cold as I could be in answer, “And what will you give me in return?

A power claimed and challenged and thrice carried out is true

“There’s no such thing as normal people, I said, a desperate flailing. “There’s just people, and some of them are miserable, and some of them are happy, and you’ve the same right to be happy as any of them—no more and no less.

The only thing that had ever done me any good in my father’s house was thinking: no one had cared what I wanted, or whether I was happy. I’d had to find my own way to anything I wanted. I’d never been grateful for that before now, when what I wanted was my life.

You feel like it's going to rain.

Young women aren’t allowed to be selfishly angry. They’re sometimes allowed to be angry in a sort of righteous way for other people, but they are often discouraged from being like, “This is unfair to me. I’m mad for me, and I want these things for me.” I think it’s really important for women to fight against the idea that they’re not allowed to want things for themselves.

I am not your subject or your servant, and if you want a cowering mouse for a wife, go find someone else who can turn silver to gold for you.

But the world I wanted wasn't the world I lived in, and if I would do nothing until I could repair every terrible thing at once, I would do nothing forever.