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Twenty-five star systems. Trillions of people. You and Phrygian think you can handle it.

“My heart is a fish.” Tisarwat’s voice thin and breathy. A shallow gasp. “Hiding in the water-grass.” Another. “In the green.”
“Well, that one’s all right,” Nine admitted. “Though it does get stuck in my head something fierce.”

“But,” Tahr said, kissing her next pawn in thought, “they always come back to each other. That’s better than being inseparable, I think. To be separable, but bound.”

Say, Himemiya… these paintings… the model in them… is it you?

Isn’t that a little lonely, though?
It’s just true. We come into this world completely alone, and that's how we leave it. Most people spent their whole lives pretending that's not true. But I don't pretend. I never have.

“This is the end, thought Melena. Her brain was too foggy to think anything else, and she said it again and again, as if to prevent it from being true.
This is the beginning, thought Frex, but of what?

“The common people pray for rain, healthy children, and a summer that never ends,” Ser Jorah told her. “It is no matter to them if the high lords play their game of thrones, so long as they are left in peace.” He gave a shrug. “They never are.”

As she strode through the forecourt of Colwen Grounds, she crossed paths once again with Glinda. But both women averted their eyes and hurried their feet along their opposing ways. For the Witch, the sky was a huge boulder pressing down on her. For Glinda it was much the same.

It was her, Grace. The glow on the bank. The pull from the trees. She's not of this place.

She's fun, she makes me laugh, I like her ridiculous plans. I think she's complicated and layered. I dunno.

You’re an organ in the working body of this world, Mallory Glass. No amount of scornful looks and sour remarks is going to change that. You’re no better than what’s come before, and you’re no better than what’s coming after.

I admire that in you. In my loneliness, I got angry and turned to bad things, but in your loneliness, you turned to creativity. I think that's beautiful. I really do.

This is kind of how we get through our lives: we tell ourselves stories so that what’s happening becomes something we can live with. Necessary fictions.

Light is the left hand of darkness
and darkness the right hand of light.
Two are one, life and death, lying
together like lovers in kemmer,
like hands joined together,
like the end and the way.

Our entire pattern of socio-sexual interaction is nonexistent here. They cannot play the game. They do not see one another as men or women. This is almost impossible for our imagination to accept. What is the first question we ask about a newborn baby?

To be in Martinaise, where no one goes. At the run-off point of a long forgotten canal, in the whitest part of town. In the shadow of the day the Revolution failed.

icon of their differences. Neither one could retreat, or move forward. It was silly, and they were stuck, and someone needed to break the spell. But all the Witch could do was insist, “I want those shoes.

Glinda reached out and touched the Witch’s elbow. “They won’t make your father love you any better,” she said.
The Witch pulled back. They stood glaring at each other. They had too much common history to come apart over a pair of shoes, yet the shoes were planted between them, a grotesque

It doesn't matter what they do to us, you know? You look out for me, and I look out for you. Nothing really bad can happen as long as we have each other.

I could be her beacon.

Gucci: We can't stop you from doing this. I can't talk you down.
Brnine: No.
Gucci: What do you need?

“It's all right.” Lieutenant Awn shifted her grip, put her arms around the new segment, pulled me in closer. It was shivering, still cold from suspension, and from terror. “It's all right. It'll be all right.”

All my life, I’ve endeavored to serve both my house and the realm. And somehow none of it matters. We are cast aside, or hated.

“Being unexpectedly loved is so wonderful or terrible, isn’t it?”
“Wonderful, I think,” she said.

In what sense are they your parents? What’s an example?

Then I suppose someday, you will become my enemy as well. But I don’t care. Because even then, I will continue to wish for a world in which you will be happy.

Is that… a witch?
Please try not to look scared. Despite her appearance, she’s the most hurt.

Seivarden needs to find a way she can belong somewhere. To Radchaai eyes, you look like you’re offering that to her.

Apocalypse. That’s such a white thing. The world ends over and over again, and rebirths itself the same way. The wheel turns, the cycle continues. The forests die back and regrow. The sun is chosen again and again. There is no big finale.

Say, Himemiya… these paintings… the model in them… is it you?