Lirah Quotes & Sayings

Are you a slave?" she asked harshly. "In Serker, only slaves are etched."
"With the names of the men that own them," he said, his eyes meeting her. It sickened him to think of Lirah being owned by anyone.
"I am a Serker, Lirah," he said softly. "My body is etched with the names of the three women that own me. My queen. My mother. My woman. — Melina Marchetta

Don't look down,' Perabo warned them when they almost reached the top and the view from the archways became imposing.

Froi sensed Perabo was instructing himself more than the others.

'You obviously haven't been imprisoned on the roof of a castle in the Citavita, Perabo,' Lirah said.

'Or hung upside down over a balconette staring down into the gravina, waiting to die,' Gargarin added.

'Nothing worse than being chained to the balconette with your head facing down over that abyss,' Arjuro joined in, not one to be outdone in the misery stakes.

'Try balancing on a piece of granite between the godshouse and the palace with nothing beneath you but air,' Froi said.

Perabo stopped and took a deep breath and looked as if he was going to be sick.

'Don't look down, Perabo,' Froi advised. — Melina Marchetta

No. We were jealous that Lirah had Gargarin. Cold, cold Lirah, who was bitter towards all men, loved my brother with all her heart. It made me hate her even more, because I knew this union was not one of the flesh. She hated the touch of men. He barely tolerated the touch of anyone. I couldn't bear the idea of him loving someone as much as he loved me. -Arjuro of Abroi — Melina Marchetta

Stayed. I feel like life happens to other people, and I drift in and out of their lives without ever making any kind of impact. I want to matter to someone. — Sarra Manning

Froi woke to see five faces staring down at him.
"You fainted," Lirah said.
"No, I didn't."
"Yes, you did," Gargarin argued.
"You climbed down well enough, but the moment we touched the ground, you fainted," Finnikin said.
"I've never fainted a day in my life. — Melina Marchetta

The mark of a good marriage is when only one of you goes crazy at a time! — Heinz Kohut

To fight the violence we must be brave, hold on strong to the love God gave. — Elton John

You said to me once that you weren't what I dreamed of. You were right. You surpass everything I dreamed of. Even the rot in you that's caused you to do shameful things. Some men let the rot and guilt fester into something ugly beyond words. Few men can turn it into worth and substance. If you're gods' blessed for no other reason, it's for that. — Melina Marchetta

Nothing is to wonderful to be true — Michael Faraday

American pictures usually have no subject, only a story. A pretty woman is not a subject. Julia Roberts doing this and that is not a subject. — Jean-Luc Godard

Be careful what you wish for, you might just get it — Charlotte Symonds

How could the Law of Retribution function properly when one party in a dispute was so wealthy and so powerful as to be virtually untouchable? — Reza Aslan

I wanted to slap him, and then pull him up by his shirt and lick his neck. — Christina Lauren

Nothing can kill me."
"Everyone has a weakness."
He stared at her. "I have no weakness of flesh. Only a weakness of you. — Anne Zoelle

We could look at the side of wonder,' Gargarin said.
'What?' Froi asked, as if Gargarin had gone insane.
'Well, let's say that instead of losing her, you gave her a chance to escape,' Gargarin explained. 'That's the side of wonder.'
Froi heard a sound behind them and Lirah was there.
'Since when do you look at the side of wonder?' Froi asked.
'I'm trying very hard,' Gargarin said, scowling. 'It's irritating me, but I'm not giving up. I try to think of a wondrous thought every day when I wake, if you'd really like to know. — Melina Marchetta

The problem isn't the simplicity of the code but the implicity of the code (to coin a phrase): the degree to which the context is not explicit in the code itself. — Robert C. Martin

They all turned to Lirah, waiting.
"We'll kill each other, Priestling," she said softly, but her eyes were bright.
"I'll win most arguments, but you'll get used to it," he said.
She came to him and pressed a kiss to his cheek. "Thank you." She kissed De Lancey as well. "And thank you."
Gargarin took her hand. "And what about mine?" he asked. "I'm the brilliant architect. — Melina Marchetta

The phobic has no other object than the abject. But that word, "fear"- a fluid haze an elusive clamminess- no sooner has it cropped up than it shades off like a mirage and permeates all words of the language with nonexistence, with a hallucinatory, ghostly glimmer. Thus, fear having been bracketed, discourse will seem tenable only if it ceaselessly confront that otherness, a burden both repellent and repelled, a deep well of memory that is unapproachable and intimate: the abject. — Julia Kristeva

Froi didn't know where home was anymore. He wanted to return to Lumatere, and he wanted to stay in Charyn. What strangeness was that? To belong in two kingdoms. He felt a sob rise within him that he swallowed hard the moment he felt Lirah and Gargarin at his shoulders. — Melina Marchetta

We are no longer quite ourselves. As we step out of the house on a fine evening between four and six, we shed the self our friends know us by and become part of that vast republican army of anonymous trampers, whose society is so agreeable after the solitude of one's own room." Here she describes a form of society that doesn't enforce identity but liberates it, the society of strangers, the republic of the streets, the experience of being anonymous and free that big cities invented. — Rebecca Solnit

Froi noticed that she said "carrying mine," not "carrying you." Lirah and Gargarin still had not acknowledged him as theirs, and he realized that he wanted more from them than they were willing to give. But they seemed broken people who were not good with words, so he kept his silence. — Melina Marchetta

Most times he knew there was no hope for Arjuro and Gargarin and Lirah and De Lancey. Too much pain in the past and too much power working against them in the present day. But as he watched Arjuro prop up De Lancey to better remove the arrow, Froi saw the foolishness of dreamers, and he decided he'd like to die so foolish. With a dream in his heart about possibilities rather than a chain of hopelessness. Finnikin had once said that was the only way to live. That he wanted to drown in hope rather than wallow in despair. — Melina Marchetta

Love is stealthy hiding under ribs. — Veda Hille

Why are you smiling?' Gargarin asked Froi, from across the balconette. 'When you're going to have to learn a lesson in diplomacy today and choose between the gardens of two women?'
Froi laughed, his chin resting on Quintana's head, his eyes taking in the joy of his son, despite the ridiculous cap that covered the babe's head. He looked across at Lirah and Arjuro and Rafuel, and then back to Gargarin who was smiling himself, because he knew the answer to his own question.
'Because today, I think I'm leaning on the side of wonder. — Melina Marchetta

Everyone else would have danced around the truth for too long a time. Lirah, was able to slap them in the face with it until it could be avoided no longer. — Melina Marchetta

Werewolves are not the subject of academe," she said, "but you know what the professors would be saying if they were. 'Monsters die out when the collective imagination no longer needs them. Species death like this is nothing more than a shift in the aggregate psychic agenda. In ages past the beast in man was hidden in the dark, disavowed. The transparency of modern history makes that impossible: We've seen ourselves in concentration camps, the gulags, the jungles, the killing fields, we've read ourselves in the annals of True Crime. Technology turned up the lights and now there's no getting away from the fact: The beast is redundant. It's been us all along. — Glen Duncan