Megan Whalen Turner Quotes & Sayings

Who am I, that you should love me?"
"You are My Queen," said Eugenides. She sat perfectly still, looking at him without moving as his words dropped like water into dry earth.
"Do you believe me?" he asked.
"Yes," she answered.
"Do you love me?"
"Yes."
"I love you."
And she believed him. — Megan Whalen Turner

You don't know what I mean. She is so strong, and you assume that strength has no end, no breaking point. You and Teleus are among the few she still trusts enough to love, and you say yes, she should have you tortured and killed. What were you thinking? — Megan Whalen Turner

He couldn't know that I'd overstayed my welcome one night while creeping through his megaron and had crawled up through the space where the pipes of the hypocaust ran to hide in his treasure room. I had slept for a day in stuffy darkness on the ridged tops of his treasure trunks. — Megan Whalen Turner

Because not wanting the prize the gods have arranged for you - that just might offend the hell right out of them. — Megan Whalen Turner

That is ridiculous," she said.
The king agreed. "Like falling in love with a landslide. Only you could fail to notice. — Megan Whalen Turner

He looked gravely at the king. "It isn't an easy thing to give your loyalty to someone you don't know, especially when that person chooses to reveal nothing of himself. But no matter, Your Majesty. You are revealed at last."
The king looked down at his nakedness and back at the captain.
"Was that a joke?" he asked. — Megan Whalen Turner

Why didn't you tell me to take Attolia's advice from the beginning?"
"I thought you should figure it out. What you learn for yourself, you will know forever," said Eugenides.
"Pol used to say that," said Sounis, surprised.
"I learned it from him. I just wish to my god that I had his patience for the process. — Megan Whalen Turner

You will make the boy Thief king?" he [Nahuseresh] said. "When you could have had me?"
Attolia allowed a slight smile.
"A fine revenge for the loss of a hand," said the Mede, close to snarling.
"I will have my sovereignty," said Attolia thinly.
"Oh, yes, a fine one-handed figurehead he will make," spat Nahuseresh. Then he remembered Attolia's flattery earlier that morning. "Or do I insult your lover?" he asked.
"Not a lover," said Attolia. "Merely my choice for king. — Megan Whalen Turner

She was the stone-faced queen, then and ever after. She had needed the mask to rule, and she had been glad to have it. She wondered if Eugenides was glad of his. — Megan Whalen Turner

If these were death agonies, they were fake ones, Costis thought, and was sure of it when they reached the shallow stair at the far end of the reflecting pool. No one on the verge of death has the strength to pile one foul word on top of another like a man compiling a layered pastry of obscene language, from the the bottom step all the way to the top. — Megan Whalen Turner

That one,"-he nodded toward the closed door-" will rule more than just Attolia before he is done. He is an Annux, a king of kings. — Megan Whalen Turner

The only thing I knew was that I didn't know anything, really, about the king of the Attolians, and I didn't trust him. — Megan Whalen Turner

Your Majesty, what I am saying is that I have never seen him driven, and rarely led either. However, if you were to twist him around your finger and could conceivably grind him under your heel in the process, you have to know that I would be eternally grateful. I would die a happy man. — Megan Whalen Turner

A natural! A natural! — Megan Whalen Turner

No man can choose to serve only himself when he has something to offer his state. No one can put his own wishes above the needs of so many. — Megan Whalen Turner

How do you know that, Philo, dear?"
But Philologos had had enough of being condescended to. "Because, Lamion, I am not as dumb as you think I am, even if you are."
By the time Lamion had parsed this to make sure that there was in fact an insult at the end of it, Hilarion had laid a restraining hand on his arm. — Megan Whalen Turner

If there is anything else you desire, Your - " "I desire" - the king interrupted in a level voice - "never again to see your living face. — Megan Whalen Turner

Everything I said he agreed with, which was trying, and his flute playing would make the deaf wince, but I think the real problem with Hyacinth was that he reminded me of myself. He read poetry. He flinched at loud noises. In addition to having no musical skills, he had no martial skills. He avoided any situation that might require physical effort on his part. Seeing him, I found it no wonder that my father despised me. — Megan Whalen Turner

Relius looked away. "He said that you ... cried," he said softly.
"But not that he cried as well," said the queen, amused at the memory. "We were very lachrymose ... would you like to hear more romance of the evening? He told me the Guard should be reduced by half, and I threw an ink jar at his head."
"Is that when he cried?"
"He ducked," said Attolia dryly.
"I had not pictured you for a fishwife."
"Lo, the transforming power of love. — Megan Whalen Turner

The queen had passed him, so close he'd felt the stir of air, and he guessed that if she had turned her head, only a little, and met his eyes, he might have died right there. — Megan Whalen Turner

The clear light of the library was slanting in through the glass-paneled doorway to my right, falling on the table between my tutor and me and on dust motes hung in the air. The tiny flecks drew my eye, and I watched as they dipped and swirled in invisible currents.
"They are beautiful in the light, are they not?" my tutor asked. They were, catching the sun and shining like tiny stars themselves.
"You know, there are just as many outside the sun's rays that are invisible," she said. Then, in the way of dreams, she lifted her hand into the air and moved a single dust mote into the light. "And you?" she asked. She lifted her hand again, just beyond the edge of the light, and I knew she held another mote and could move it as easily into the way of the sun, and I said, "No, thank you. I am content where I am. — Megan Whalen Turner

What a strange world it is, where prisoners are left their weapons and the written word is a mortal danger. — Megan Whalen Turner

He should have said something, why hadn't he? Costis wondered. In fact, the king had. He had complained at every step all the way across the palace, and they'd ignored it. If he'd been stoic and denied the pain, the entire palace would have been in a panic already, Eddisian soldiers on the move. He'd meant to deceive them, and he'd succeeded. It made Costis wonder for the first time just how much the stoic man really wants to hide when he unsuccessfully pretends not to be in pain. — Megan Whalen Turner

As soon as the guards where gone, I lay down on my stone bench and dumped the king and his threats out of my head without ceremony. They were too unpleasant to worry over anyway. — Megan Whalen Turner

Her queen danced like a flame in the wind, and the mercurial king like the weight at the center of the earth ... — Megan Whalen Turner

I didn't really care much about anything, so I guess I felt fine. — Megan Whalen Turner

She pulled the bedclothes up as far as they would go and suppressed a perverse wish to have her old nurse come to chase away the darkness, perverse because she didn't know if she wanted the shadows to be empty or not. — Megan Whalen Turner

One cannot toss ambassadors back like bad fish," said Eugenides. "You treat them with care, or you'll find you've committed an act of war. — Megan Whalen Turner

I have a whole guard room full of brawny veterans who'd enjoy a chance to drag two Eddisians out of here, particularly if you kicked a lot and they could kick you back. — Megan Whalen Turner

She reached out and touched the king's face, cupping his cheek in her hand.
"Just a nightmare," he said, his voice still rough.
The queen's voice was cool. "How embarrassing," she said, looking at his maimed arm.
The king looked up then, and followed her gaze. If it was embarrassing to wake like a child screaming from a nightmare, how much more embarrassing to be the reason your husband woke screaming. A quick smile visited the king's face. "Ouch," he said, referring to more than the pain in his side. "Ouch," he said again as the queen gathered him into her arms. — Megan Whalen Turner

Weak kings who lost their tempers were notoriously destructive. — Megan Whalen Turner

All the things man has made are eventually destroyed. — Megan Whalen Turner

She is not so secure on her throne that she can risk offending her people's gods. No woman can be. — Megan Whalen Turner

You learn something new everyday." "What are you learning?" Sophos asked. "To keep my mouth shut, I hope. — Megan Whalen Turner

He looked at their shabby clothes in puzzlement.
"We were traveling anonymously for safety - " explained the magus.
"But surely - "
" - and then we were robbed on the road."
"Ah," said the king, "the danger in being anonymous. — Megan Whalen Turner

Rae Carson's heroine is a perfect blend of the ordinary and the extraordinary. I loved her. — Megan Whalen Turner

where there is no peace, there are no trees. — Megan Whalen Turner

Finally I went and found my hat and skewered it on my head with a four-inch hat pin. I wore the hat because I knew my mother never visited without one. The pin I thought would be a comfort in case of emergency. — Megan Whalen Turner

The room was full of people. "Ninety-eight days," said the queen, folding her hands in her lap. "You said it would take six months." Eugenides picked at a nub in the coverlet. "I like to give myself a margin. When I can." "I didn't believe you," the queen admitted with a delicate smile. "Now you know better." The king smiled back. They might as well have been alone. The queen turned her head to listen. There was shouting in the guardroom. Costis tensed. His hand went to his belt, looking for his sword. "That will be Dite," said the king. "He must have been in the outer rooms. I may as well see him." The queen rose and stepped behind the embroidered screen in front of the fireplace. Her attendants withdrew. The king's attendants remained, digesting the fact that their helpless, inept king had promised his wife to destroy the house of Erondites in six months and had done it in ninety-eight days. — Megan Whalen Turner

I never understood why she didn't marry you."
The king settled further into the seat with a snort. "Maybe the prospect of being driven out of her mind put her off. — Megan Whalen Turner

You are treasure beyond any price. — Megan Whalen Turner

His forehead was covered by wrinkles brought on by a lot of sun and too much frowning. — Megan Whalen Turner

I wonder if people always choose what will make them unhappy. — Megan Whalen Turner

My opponent's self-confidence is usually my best asset. — Megan Whalen Turner

The prison keeper choose an inopportune time to look around the doorway into the cell. He and the king locked gazes, and the king's eyes narrowed while the prison keeper's widened. — Megan Whalen Turner

Staring at the wall opposite him he presented the queen with a view of his ear and awaited her orders. — Megan Whalen Turner

if you tease a dog, it bites. — Megan Whalen Turner

If Attolia could look like a queen, Eugenides was like a god revealed, transformed into something wholly unfamiliar, surrounded by the cloth-of-gold bedcover like a deity on an altar, passionless and calculating. — Megan Whalen Turner

I was captivated. My own hair was easily as long as Olga's, but it frizzed and knotted at every opportunity. When it was combed, it didn't float in perfect fans down to my shoulders. — Megan Whalen Turner

Power. What men like best for themselves and least in their women. — Megan Whalen Turner

And the Earth had no name. The gods know themselves and have no need of names. It is man who names all things, even gods. — Megan Whalen Turner

Sounis had been thinking of Ambiades. "He would have been a better man under different circumstances."
Gen looked at him. "True enough," he said. "But does a good man let his circumstances determine his character? — Megan Whalen Turner

Sophos, you sleep with a knife under your pillow? I'm hurt."
"I'm sorry," said Sounis, afraid that he had made contact with his wild swing.
"I was joking. Wake up the rest of the way, would you?"
"Gen, it's the middle of the night."
"I know," said the king of Attolia.
Sounis tried to rub the sleep out of his eyes. He was sitting up in his bed. The sky was still entirely dark, and he couldn't have been asleep for long. He suspected that he had just dropped off. The bare knife was still in his hand, he realized, and he rooted under his pillow for the sheath.
"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. — Megan Whalen Turner

A thief never makes a noise by accident. — Megan Whalen Turner

These people make my family look easy to get along with. — Megan Whalen Turner

Pol knew," said Sophos from the window. — Megan Whalen Turner

Damn him, damn him, damn him. — Megan Whalen Turner

I do believe that Akretenesh saw no differences between a woman who was a queen and one who was a seamstress, though he would recognize all the differences in the world between a prince and a farmer. — Megan Whalen Turner

Muse of poetry, come to his aid, I thought. Could the man produce one more metaphor of husbandry? He seemed to be trying.
"Green wood," I suggested, but even he sensed that there was something unfortunate about a metaphor for a king in which you dry out your royalty before you set fire to it. — Megan Whalen Turner

Who was the Thief that she would love him? A youth, just a boy with hardly a beard and no sense at all ... A liar, she thought, an enemy, a threat. He was brave, a voice inside her said, he was loyal ... A fool, she answered back. A fool and a dead one. She ached with emptiness. — Megan Whalen Turner

Don't match your weakness against your opponent's strength — Megan Whalen Turner

It isn't deep," the Eddisian Ambassador said from the other side of the bed. He was leaning over the wound, looking critical and mildly disappointed. Eugenides didn't miss a beat.
"It is ... too ... deep!" he insisted, outraged. — Megan Whalen Turner

The flat top of the hill was scattered with the bodies of dead men in the uniforms of Sounis and Eddis. The outposts of both armies had met here. As I stood staring, I thought, These are my dead. All of them. The battle hadn't been unanticipated or forced on me, as the raid in the villa had been. I had chosen it. These men, Eddisian and Sounisian alike, had died for my decisions.
When the magus stepped from the bushes toward the back part of the hill, I was more than horrified. I was perilously close to distraught.
...
When he pulled away and looked into my face, I knew that he would tell me that I was Sounis and that I needed to pull myself together.
"Your uncle," he said, "in all the years I saw him rule, never had a moment of self-doubt. Never a regret for a single life lost. Do you understand?"
I understood that I didn't want to be my uncle. — Megan Whalen Turner

Today, she had yielded the sovereignty of her country to Eugenides, who had given up everything he had ever hoped for, to be her King. — Megan Whalen Turner

I'll be your minister
"
"Of the exchequer? You'd rob me blind."
"I would never steal from you," he'd said hotly.
"Oh? Where is my tourmaline necklace? Where are my missing earrings?"
"That necklace was hideous. It was the only way to keep you from wearing it."
"My earrings?"
"What earrings? — Megan Whalen Turner

Keeping a private guard this large is like using a wolf to guard the farm. It may keep off the other wolves, but sooner or later it will eat you. — Megan Whalen Turner

Mother why does the River not rise
It is not the River's time
Why does the seed not sprout
It is not the seed's time
Why does the rain not fall
the leaf not unfurl itself
Where is the hind and why does she not graze the fields before us
it is not their time

The River knows its time
The seed knows its time
The rain the leaf and the hind
They know their time

The River will rise the seed will sprout
The rains come down and the leaves unfurl
The hind will bring her children to graze before us
All in their time — Megan Whalen Turner

We could make a treaty without a marriage."
"No," he said.
"You are sure?"
"Yes," he said. — Megan Whalen Turner

He could tell her he loved her. He ached to shout it out loud for the gods and everyone to hear. Little good it would do. Better to trust in the moon's promises than in the word of the Thief of Eddis. He was famous in three countries for his lies. — Megan Whalen Turner

Oh, Lady," said the woodcutter, "my hurt is overwhelming because it is someone else's pain that makes me cry. — Megan Whalen Turner

I can't leave her there all alone, surrounded by stone walls ... She's too precious to give up. — Megan Whalen Turner

That was the message. For me, alone among mortals, the gods send their messenger to tell me to stop whining. That'll teach me to go hide in a temple. — Megan Whalen Turner

He didn't want to talk to Pol. Pol would want him to go somewhere on the back of a horse. — Megan Whalen Turner

One of us might be assassinated and then my heir will be king. Don't give up hope just because chances are slim."
"For the assassination or the heir, your majesty? — Megan Whalen Turner

That sort of news travels faster than horses, faster than boats. The messengers of the gods carry rumors through the sky the way bees carry pollen and drop them from their wings onto the earth below. — Megan Whalen Turner

Would you have your hand back, Eugenides? And lose Attolia? And see Attolia lost to the Mede?'
Eugenides's eyes were open. In front of his face the floor was littered with tiny bits of glass that glittered in the candlelight.
'You have your answer, Little Thief. — Megan Whalen Turner

I love stupid plans. — Megan Whalen Turner

Wrong arm, dear. — Megan Whalen Turner

You have to believe him, because he's going to have your entire palace up in arms and your court in chaos and every member of it from the barons to the boot cleaners coming to you for his blood, and you are going to have to deal with it."
Attolia smiled. "You make him sound like more trouble than he is worth.
"No," said Eddis thoughtfully. "Never more than he is worth. — Megan Whalen Turner

He limped slowly over to his own wooden sword and stooped awkwardly to pick it up. Trailing it on the ground behind him, he limped toward the queen, and the courtyard quieted as he approached and was silent again as he dropped to his knees before her and laid the sword across her lap.
"My Queen," he said.
"My King," she said back.
Only those closest saw him nod his rueful acceptance. He lifted his hand to brush her cheek softly. As the entire court listened breathlessly, he said, "I want my breakfast."
The queen's lips thinned, and she shook her head as she said, "You are incorrigible. — Megan Whalen Turner

He reached for a tabletop and ran his hands over it, clutching the edge until his knuckles turned white.
He wanted to know that it was solid. Eddis knew that all the world would seem to him insubstantial, as if it might tear away and reveal something else infinitely larger and more terrifying. — Megan Whalen Turner

Dying would have been so much easier. — Megan Whalen Turner

I know that if you don't look for an alternative, Sophos, you certainly won't find one. — Megan Whalen Turner

Being defenseless didn't preclude attack. — Megan Whalen Turner

And she had the most appealing of feminine virtues, especially in a queen. She's easily led. — Megan Whalen Turner

Teleus, who had faced his failures and his death and the death of his friend and accepted his own salvation at the hand of a man he despised, ran out of the strength to accept any more. He contradicted the king. — Megan Whalen Turner

Do not offend one power to attain the favor of another. — Megan Whalen Turner

I will forgive him because I have heard him scream when someone pulled a sword out of him that could have just as easily gone into me.
Sophos — Megan Whalen Turner

She's like a prisoner inside stone walls, and every day the walls get a little thicker, the doorways a little narrower."
"And?" Eddis prompted.
"Well," said Eugenides, "it's a challenge. — Megan Whalen Turner

The pain was as unexpected as a thunderclap in a clear sky. Eddis's chest tightened, as something closed around her heart. A deep breath might have calmed her, but she couldn't draw one. She wondered if she was ill, and she even thought briefly that she might have been poisoned. She felt Attolia reach out and take her hand. To the court it was unexceptional, hardly noticed, but to Eddis it was an anchor, and she held on to it as if to a lifeline. Sounis was looking at her with concern. Her responding smile was artificial. — Megan Whalen Turner

I cut off your hand. I have been living with your grief and your rage and your pain ever since. I don't think-I don't think I had felt anything for a long time before that, but those emotions at least were familiar to me. Love I am not familiar with. I didn't recognize that feeling until I thought I had lost you in Ephrata. And when I thought I was losing you a second time, I realized I would give up anything to keep you-my lip service to other gods, but my pride, too, and my rage at all gods, everything for you. — Megan Whalen Turner

My beautiful queen. Your entire court is staring at you, and I can't blame them.
They were, too. The queen turned to look. Her glance swept through the crowd like a reaping sickle through grain. Mouths slammed shut on every side. There was a scuffling sound as the people in the back shifted, trying to screen themselves from view. The queen looked back at the king, who was broadly smiling. — Megan Whalen Turner

Attolia had brushed Eugenides's cheek almost shyly before sending him with a wave back to his own couch. — Megan Whalen Turner

He watched Attolia out of the corner of his eye. She was still cool, like a breath of winter in the warm evening air, but in the last few days he had begun to sense a subtle humor in her chilly words. When Gen had complained earlier that evening that Petrus, the palace physician, should stop fussing over him like a worried old woman, Attolia had asked, archly,"And me as well?"
"When you stop fussing," Gen had said, slipping to his knees beside her couch, "I will sleep with two knives under my pillow."
Allolia had looked down at him and said sharply, "Don't be ridiculous."
Only when Eugenides laughed had Sounis realized her implication: If she ever turned against Eugenides, a second knife wouldn't save him. He almost swallowed the olive in his mouth unchewed. — Megan Whalen Turner

The gate was made out of blocks of stone bigger across than I am tall. Something else supposedly built by the old gods, it was topped by a solid stone lintel with two carved lions that were supposed to roar if an enemy of the king passed beneath them. At least they were said to be lions. The stone had been weathered by the centuries, and only indistinct monster figures remained, facing each other over a short pillar. They remained silent as we passed under. — Megan Whalen Turner

I'm dying of boredom. Or maybe just dying. — Megan Whalen Turner

Surely it is counterproductive to expect sense from someone you are beating senseless. — Megan Whalen Turner

The king lifted a hand to her cheek and kissed her. It was not a kiss between strangers, not even a kiss between a bride and groom. It was a kiss between a man and his wife, and when it was over, the king closed his eyes and rested his forehead in the hollow of the queen's shoulder, like a man seeking respite, like a man reaching home at the end of the day. — Megan Whalen Turner

He lies to himself. If Eugenides talked in his sleep, he'd lie then, too. — Megan Whalen Turner

Oh, that," said the king with a shrug. "That isn't your honor, Costis. That's the public perception of your honor. It has nothing to do with anything important, except perhaps for manipulating fools who mistake honor for its bright, shiny trappings. You can always change the perceptions of fools. — Megan Whalen Turner