Marie Brennan Quotes & Sayings

There was a brief period of time when I was very young where I thought I wanted to be a veterinarian - largely because I liked cats - but then somebody told me I would have to cut animals open, and that was the end of that. — Marie Brennan

One does not cease to treasure a gem simply because one owns another that is larger. — Marie Brennan

I'm a writer; as soon as I imagine what would happen if I found the fountain of youth, it turns into a dystopia in my head. — Marie Brennan

Given what I do to my characters, I'm not sure I'd want to meet any of them. — Marie Brennan

I honestly cannot tell whether you are the most practical women I have ever met or the most deranged."
"Why can't I be both — Marie Brennan

Why do chickens have wishbones?" I asked her one day. One of the kitchen maids answered me in the fatuous tones of an adult addressing a child. "To make wishes on!" she said brightly, handing me one that had already been dried. "you take one side of it -" "I know what we do with them," I said impatiently, cutting her off without much tact. "That's not what chickens have them for, though, or surely the chicken would have wished not to end up in the pot for our supper. — Marie Brennan

Contrary to popular assumption, going on an expedition around the world is not merely a matter of obtaining a ship and charting a course. There are visas to be considered, and bureaucracy to navigate when those visas fail to arrive in time, expire too soon, or meet with blank stares on the receiving end. The politics of nations and their economic markets may interfere with your journey. In short, you may spend an appalling amount of time mired in stuffy little offices, trying to get permission to be where you are. — Marie Brennan

But coming to terms with one's sorrow is one thing; sharing it with strangers is quite another. — Marie Brennan

The truth is that real history was a lot more complicated than our popular understandings lead us to believe. — Marie Brennan

I sometimes imagine there is a clerk behind a desk situated between the brain and the mouth. It is his job to examine utterances on their way out, and stamp them with approval or send them back for reconsideration. If such a clerk exists, mine must be very harried and overworked; and on occasion he puts his head down on the desk in despair, letting things pass without so much as a second glance. Suhail — Marie Brennan

I find that respectability grows wearisome after a time, when one is accustomed to being a disgrace. — Marie Brennan

So it has been, again and again throughout my life, as I form connections with people and then lose them to distance and time. I mourn those losses, even when I know my erstwhile friends are safe and happy among their own kin. — Marie Brennan

They say there are no atheists in war; I tell you that pantheists abound at the edge of a cliff. I would have taken the blessing of any god I could get. — Marie Brennan

Matriarchy is a time-honored staple for any writer looking to invent an exotic society. — Marie Brennan

(where the more distant phrasing can lend a veneer of respectability to the otherwise prurient-seeming habit of a naturalist spying on other creatures' intimate lives). — Marie Brennan

Nudity, I find, rapidly becomes boring when it is not treated as scandalous. — Marie Brennan

I've only written two novels, neither of them published, where the book is dominated by a male point of view; in the 'Onyx Court' series, it's split roughly 50/50. — Marie Brennan

This will sound peculiar, I know. But this love I have for dragons, my compulsion to understand them ... I have thought of it before as though there were a dragon within me. A part of my spirit. I do not believe it is true in any mystical sense, of course; I am as human as you are. But in the metaphorical sense, yes. 'Dragon-spirited' is a good a term for me as any."
He listened to this in silence, his expression settled into the grave lines it assumed when he was deep in thought. "Do you believe you are neither male nor female?"
I almost gave a malapert answer, but caught myself in time. We had an established habit of intellectual debate, and I valued it; I would not discard it now.
"So long as my society refuses to admit of a concept of femininity that allows for such things," I said, "then one could indeed say that I stand in between. — Marie Brennan

At one point in the 'Onyx Court' series, I think during 'In Ashes Lie', I suggested that Lune might come to love someone else eventually. Which was me pushing back against the narrative trope that people only get one True Love in their entire lives - an idea I think is kind of pernicious - but in retrospect, I wish I hadn't done it there. — Marie Brennan

Our wisdom grows not by staking out claims and defending them against all comers, but by sharing information freely, so that we may work together for the betterment of all. — Marie Brennan

There is no faster way to harden my determination than to assume I will fail at something. — Marie Brennan

Schools are compulsory for about ten years of a person's life. They are, perhaps, the only compulsory institutions for all citizens, although those with full membership in schools are not yet treated as full citizens of our society ... — Marie Brennan

I spoke with the assurance of a young woman who thought her experience with natural history and ad hoc education in other subjects more than qualified her to hold forth on topics she knew nothing about at all. The truth is that any such comparison is far more complicated and doubtful than I presented it that evening; but it is also true that no one in my audience knew any more about it than I did, and most of them knew less. My assertion was therefore allowed to stand unchallenged. For — Marie Brennan

Just as Manda Lewis's impressions of the world had been informed by her reading
leading her to expect balls, duels, and conveniently timed thunderstorms out of life
so, too, had mine; but what I expected was intellectual commerce between equals. — Marie Brennan

I'd love to see more novels and short stories where the characters have their own folklore that isn't the Plot-Bearing Prophecy of Doom. — Marie Brennan

My mood depends heavily on what happens to me right after I get up. — Marie Brennan

I believed myself to be ready then; now, with the hindsight brought by greater age, I see myself for the naive and inexperienced young woman I was. We all begin in such a manner, though. There is no quick route to experience. — Marie Brennan

There is nothing in the world so enticing as that which you have been told you may not have. — Marie Brennan

Will there not be any scandal if she marries *me*? I asked
not quite believing that living in pseudo-wedlock with a half-human foreign transvestite was any improvement over spinsterhood. — Marie Brennan

Jake shrugged, in the way that only nine-year-old children can manage
and usually male children at that, girls not being permitted the same kind of insouciance. — Marie Brennan

The hunt for spouses is an activity on a par with fox-hunting or hawking, though the weapons and dramatis personae differ. Just as grizzled old men know the habits of hares and quail, so do elegant society gossips know every titbit about the year's eligible men and women. — Marie Brennan

He was a man who did not properly exist in any single world, but he seemed to have found a place between them, and that, more than his past, was who he was. — Marie Brennan

...A widow has freedoms a wife does not. But when I look at you, I do not see obstacles for my career, I see-" My face burned even more. "I see wings. A way to fly higher and further than I can on my own. — Marie Brennan

Be warned, then: the collected volumes of this series will contain frozen mountains, foetid swamps, hostile foreigners, hostile fellow countrymen, the occasional hostile family member, bad decisions, misadventures in orienteering, diseases of an unromantic sort, and a plenitude of mud. — Marie Brennan

I marked the extraordinary lightness of the thing. It was necessary; the weight of an ordinary bone would never have allowed something so large as a dragon to fly. — Marie Brennan

I would choose the heat above an equal degree of chill. The evidence of natural history points to a tropical origin for our species, and I believe it to be true. — Marie Brennan

At no point did I form the conscious intention of founding an ad hoc university in my sitting room. It happened, as it were, by accident. — Marie Brennan

I had rather face wild beasts and diseases than the perils of civilization.
There is a proverb, which Tom was kind enough not to voice: be careful what you wish for. Unfortunately, not only did I get it, but so did those around me. — Marie Brennan

Jake pried the head open, giving me a look when I warned him not to cut himself on the teeth. It is a look I think all children master at about his age - the one that insists the looker needs no warning while, by its very confidence, convincing the one looked at that the warning was very necessary indeed. — Marie Brennan

The roughness on the under side of the wing comes from tiny scales, which are not present on the upper surface. These cover tiny holes that perforate the wing, and are hinged to form tiny scales, which are not present on the upper surface. — Marie Brennan

Its Scaled hide was dull brown That fitted in well with our surrounding, and its eyes a disturbing crimson. The low slung body featured powerful legs ending in scythelike claws anda long, flexible tail that moved hypnotically back and forth, like a cat's. Just behind its shoulders a pair of vestigial wings shifted and settled. — Marie Brennan

Good manners warred with curiosity, and lost. — Marie Brennan

I'm the sort of person who, once I put dragons into the real world, feels obliged to think about how their presence would have changed history. — Marie Brennan

More shouts, and then my father was there, staring down at me in horror: the minor pagan god, appalled at what his worshiper had done. — Marie Brennan

There's a bit of difference between swimming in shark-infested water because you're trying to retrieve something from the bottom, and staying in just because you're already there and haven't been eaten yet. — Marie Brennan

Entomologists trap insects in their killing jars and then pin their corpses to cards, and no one utters a single squeak of protest. For that matter, let a gentleman hunt a tiger for its skin, and everyone applauds his courage. But to shoot a dragon for science? That, for some reason, is cruel. — Marie Brennan

The dragon within my heart stirred, shifting her wings, as if remembering they could be used to fly. — Marie Brennan

All hail that bane of the upper class, a scene. The spectre of being publicly shamed — Marie Brennan

(On no trip before or since have I carried more alcohol than undergarments.) — Marie Brennan

Jake accompanied us as well, having arrived in Akhia shortly before the excavation team departed. I did not tell him our destination until we were safely away from civilization, and found my caution abundantly justified: he whooped and danced about so much, he fell off his camel and broke his left arm. — Marie Brennan

There are proverbs about frying pans and fires that I might have quoted to myself, but I preferred to adapt a different one to my purposes: better the devil that would attack everyone impartially than the devil specifically looking to kill us. — Marie Brennan

diseases of an unromantic sort, — Marie Brennan

For even the best artwork is a static thing of the eye alone, and words are by their nature linear. — Marie Brennan

I think if you write for long enough, you eventually have a problem with everything, because you start figuring out where you could be doing better. But as far back as I can trace, I always wrote clear, grammatical prose. — Marie Brennan

'Fire and Hemlock' is the reason I'm a writer. — Marie Brennan

I have often found this to be true since, that matters which seem terribly important in the early days of such a journey (what will people back home say?) fade into triviality with the passage of time. — Marie Brennan

Science is not separate from politics. As much as I would like it to be a pure thing, existing only in some intellectual realm unsullied by human struggle, it will always be entangled with the world we live in. — Marie Brennan

When I'm working on a novel, I generally do write every day, but in between those marathons, I take breaks. My brain needs time to recharge. — Marie Brennan

You may think you see plenty of stars, friend reader, but you are wrong. Night is both blacker and more brilliant than you can imagine, and the sky a glory that puts to shame the most splendid jewels at Renwick's. — Marie Brennan

Utopias bore me. I'm interested in constructing messy, complicated societies that are full of flaws and then saying, ooh, this is interesting, let's see what happens if I poke it here. And concurrently with this and the previous point, I'm interested in making up cultures that are different — Marie Brennan

A husband willing to fund a library for his bookish wife is not so easy to obtain; most would see it as a pointless expense. You might, however, find one willing to share his library. — Marie Brennan

Their characteristics are well-known. They're beautiful
when they're not astoundingly ugly. They're both goddesses for men to worship, and demons for them to flee. They adore children, sometimes to the point of unhealthy obsession. They have a strong association with nature, from which they're often assumed to draw magical power. Their anger is a terrible thing to behold, and all the more fearsome because anything can spark it; the rules by which these creatures operate are not those of rational men. They are creatures of fanciful whim, and they never, ever, can be understood.
I'm talking, of course, about women. — Marie Brennan

I didn't really distinguish between genre and not-genre as a kid, until I made the transition to adult fantasy via Terry Brooks. — Marie Brennan

I read a lot of the 'Pern books' growing up - basically up through 'All the Weyrs of Pern,' maybe a couple after that. As far as formative dragon influences are concerned, she's probably one of the top ones; I know I read other fantasy novels that had them, but none particularly stick in mind. — Marie Brennan

Characteristic he considered diagnostic of the true dragon. All such Species could expel something additional with their breath, whether it was the legendary fire or otherwise. — Marie Brennan

The lack of a husband was, for some applicants, a selling point. I imagine many of my readers are aware of the awkward position in which governesses often find themselves
or, rather, the awkward position into which their male employers often put them, for it does no one any service to pretend this happens by some natural and inexorable process, devoid of connection with anyone's behaviour. — Marie Brennan

I chose my pen name when I was ten, because I knew even then that my legal name would be more trouble than it was worth. — Marie Brennan

Once we love, we cannot revoke it,' she said. 'We can only glory in what it brings
pain as well as joy, grief as well as hope. — Marie Brennan

That should be my epitaph when I die 'she did not have to do it'. — Marie Brennan

It is not easy to fling oneself down stairs in a skirt; there is always the risk that you will tangle your legs and go headlong. But I made it. — Marie Brennan

I have never attempted to hide that I have had two husbands in my life.
I have, however, neglected to mention that in between them, I had a wife. — Marie Brennan

... There may not be even two men living in the world whom I would have agreed to marry, certainly not on such short notice. But I do not need two; I only need one. — Marie Brennan

I therefore had only enough fear to make myself terrified - not enough to turn back — Marie Brennan

I honestly think anthropology is one of the most useful fields a fantasy writer can study, more so even than history. — Marie Brennan

Miriam snorted. It was not a very ladylike snort. She was the sort of woman one expected to find tramping the countryside in tweeds with a gun under her arm and a bulldog at her side, probably one of her own breeding. — Marie Brennan

This was London, in all its filth and glory. Nostalgic for the past, while yearning to cast off the chains of bygone ages and step forward into the bright utopia of the future. Proud of its achievements, yet despising its own flaws. A monster in both size and nature, that would consume the unwary and spit them out again, in forms unrecognizable and undreamt.
London, the monster city. — Marie Brennan

If you wish, gentle reader, you may augment your mental tableau with dramatic orchestral accompaniment. — Marie Brennan