Whalen Quotes & Sayings

Ornon said, I have seen him jump across atriums four stories above the ground, a distance that would make your blood freeze, and I heard him once confess that he sometimes thinks the distance is beyond him. He always jumps, Your Majesty. The Thieves are not trained in self-preservation. I beg you would take my advice. — Megan Whalen Turner

He said the only thin worse than being wrong in a family argument was being right. — 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

I didn't think about being king," he said, his voice hoarse.
Eddis stared. "Your capacity to land yourself in a mess because you didn't think first, Eugenides, will never cease to amaze me. What do you mean you didn't think about being king? Is Attolia going to marry you and move into my library? — Megan Whalen Turner

No friend had I made there, but I wasn't with this group to make friends, and besides, he sneered too much. I've found that people who sneer are almost always sneering at me. — Megan Whalen Turner

Eddis looked around as if recalling a question that had nagged at her for several hours. "Where's Eugenides?" she asked.
For a moment the Attolian queen was immobile, her smile gone as if it had never been. The horse under her threw up its head as if the bit had twitched against its delicate mouth.
"Locked in a room," Attolia said flatly. "In Ephrata."
The smile faded from Eddis' face.
"I ordered the other prisoners released," Attolia explained. "I forgot that I had him locked up separately. I doubt my sensechal will have released him without my specific instruction to do so."
"You forgot?" Eddis asked.
"I forgot," Attolia said firmly, daring Eddis to contradict her.
"You will marry him?" Eddis asked, hesitant again.
"I said I would," snapped Attolia, and turned her horse away. Eddis followed. When they joined their officers, Attolia gave brisk orders and then rode on, heading back toward Ephrata without waiting for Eddis. — Megan Whalen Turner

What would you do if you were King's Thief, Gen? Chew with your mouth open in the royal presence? Chat with the court ladies, dropping the h's at the beginning of your words and garbling the ends of most of them? Everything about you reveals your low birth. You'd never be comfortable at the court. — Megan Whalen Turner

The Attolian king obviously had a deep well of spite and I would've appreciated his low cunning more if I hadn't thought the Attolian was about to wring my neck. — Megan Whalen Turner

I stayed only two days in the capital. I was welcomed by a cheering citizenry, who threw flowers at my head. It was disconcerting to think I could have put almost any young man in my retinue on a white horse and they would have thrown flowers at him instead. It was not me they cared about, only what I meant to them: a cessation of hostilities, a chance for prosperity, food on the table. — 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

A little danger adds spice to life. — Megan Whalen Turner

Sugar, the things we hold closest to our hearts are the things we just can't seem to see. Jackson Whalen — Suzanne Palmieri

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

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

I think a good book is a good book forever.
I don't think they get less good because times change. — Megan Whalen Turner

My gift is that I always know when I've made an ass of myself. — Megan Whalen Turner

To make war you need three things: one, money; two, money; and three, money. — Megan Whalen Turner

She thought of the hardness and the coldness she had cultivated over those years and wondered if they were the mask she wore or if the mask had become her self. If the longing inside her for kindness, for warmth, for compassion, was the last seed of hope for her, she didn't know how to nurture it or if it could live. — 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

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

When I am actually willing to marry you, I will wear your earrings. Don't wait for it, Thief. — Megan Whalen Turner

I am not sure I trust you."
"You can trust me with your life, My King."
"But not with my wine, obviously. Give it back. — Megan Whalen Turner

I wanted Ambiades to understand that I considered myself a hierarchy of one. — Megan Whalen Turner

The queen was settling on the edge of the bed, ungainly with hesitation and at the same time exquisite in her grace, like a heron landing in a treetop. — 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

Who knows but that you will get up to find that the world has inverted itself yet again? — Megan Whalen Turner

You are wary of treachery?"
"More wary of stupidity. — 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

Treachery," said the Mede.
"Diplomacy," said Attolia, "in my own name. — Megan Whalen Turner

We are not philosophers, we are sovereigns. The rules that govern our behavior are not the rules for other men, and our honor, I think, is a different thing entirely, difficult for anyone but the historians and the gods to judge. — Megan Whalen Turner

The magus said thoughtfully, "That lying little monster complained about everything: the food, the horses, the blankets, the company. He even found fault with the stories I told by the fire but I cannot recall that he ever once complained about the climbing."
"So many things are obvious in retrospect, aren't they?" I said. — Megan Whalen Turner

I sometimes believe his lies are the truth, but I have never mistaken his truth for a lie. — Megan Whalen Turner

Maybe I can stalk you again sometime."
"Absolutely. — Katie Klein

Ah," said the magus, understanding at once. "I see that he means to be prepared if he meets him again."
"Surely that's unlikely," said Sounis.
"I don't think unlikely means to him what it does to the rest of us," said the magus. — 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

If I couldn't be Eddis, I would be Attolia. If they needed to see my uncle in me, then I would show him to them. And I would take Attolia's advice because if I identified my enemy and destroyed him, Sounis would be safe. — Megan Whalen Turner

The Attolian waited, far and away the best non-speaker I think I have ever known. — Megan Whalen Turner

I am very good at groveling. — Megan Whalen Turner

My writing is a picture of the mind moving. — Philip Whalen

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

We might someday attain a relationship of mutual respect," he said softly. First, I thought, I will see gods walking the earth. He went on. "For now I will have your obedience." His ability to convey a world of threat in so few words was remarkable. — Megan Whalen Turner

Relius lay alone with his thoughts. What kind of man, he wondered, referred to himself as "safely dead"? — Megan Whalen Turner

Your Majesty, please get down. My friend Aris is really a very good man, and if you fall off that wall he's going to hang for it, and so will his squad, most of whom are also nice men, and though I can't say I really care if your attendants hang, there are probably many people that do care, and would you please, please get down?"
The king looked at him, eyes narrowed. "I don't think I've ever heard you say that many words in a row. You sounded almost articulate. — Megan Whalen Turner

Cherry trees will blossom every year; But I'll disappear for good, One of these days. — Philip Whalen

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

Costis flinched and looked away from this compensation to the king's handicap, only to find himself looking into the king's face instead. Eugenides matched Costis look for look, his expression grave, his eyes like pools of darkness deeper than Costis could penetrate. For a moment Costis could see, not so much what was hidden but that there were things hidden that the king did not choose to reveal. Things that were not for Costis to see. There was no understanding him, but Costis knew he would march into hell for this fathomless king. — Megan Whalen Turner

Servants, in my experience, always know everything. — 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

Who am I, that you should love me? — 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

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

Your Majesty, you just-" Costis stopped.
"Just what?" the king prompted wickedly.
Nothing would induce Costis to say out loud that the king had almost fallen from the palace wall and that Costis had seen him manifestly saved by the God of Thieves.
The king smiled. "Cat got your tongue?"
"Your Majesty, you are drunk," Costis pleaded.
"I am. What's your excuse? — Megan Whalen Turner

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

There are a lot of things a person with two hands couldn't steal," Eddis said.
"So?"
"If it's impossible to steal them with two hands, it's no more impossible to steal them with one. Steal peace, Eugenides. Steal me some time. — Megan Whalen Turner

Discretion prevented me from saying that I thought she was a fiend from the underworld and that mountain lions couldn't force me to enter her service. — Megan Whalen Turner

I am a master of foolhardy plans. — Megan Whalen Turner

Ten thousand!" I shouted at the walls, back in the room with the wooden shutters, now open, so that anyone could hear me, on the porch or probably across the compound. "That arrogant bastard landed ten thousand men at Tas-Elisa. In my port! Mine!" When I was a child and playmates snatched my toys out of my hands, I tended to smile weakly and give in. Years later I was acting the way I should have as a child. Probably not the most mature behavior for a king, but I was still cursing as I swung around to find a delegation of barons in the doorway behind me. My father, Baron Comeneus, and Baron Xorcheus among them.
They thought it was how a king behaved.
I ran my fingers through my hair and tried to pursue a more reasonable line of thought, but more reasonable thoughts made me angry again. — Megan Whalen Turner

I love stupid plans. — Megan Whalen Turner

Wrong arm, dear. — Megan Whalen Turner

He loves me, and I reward his love by forcing on him something he hates. In the evening, after we dance, he rarely returns to the throne; he dances with others or moves from place to place through the room. The court thinks he is trying to be gracious, sharing his attention. Only I see that he moves always to the empty spot and the court always moves after him. He is like a dog trying to escape his own tail. He indulged himself in one brief moment of privacy, and almost died of it. Relius, he hates being king. — Megan Whalen Turner

Ever since the gods created the world, mortals have been forgetting from where their blessings come. — 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

Why did you come if not to murder my king?"
"I came to steal his magus."
"You can't," said the magus in question.
"I can steal anything," Eugenides corrected him, "even with one hand. — Megan Whalen Turner

All of my own impulses to balance and move seemed to conflict with those of the guards, and I was jerked and jostled down the portico, just as graceful as a sick cat. — Megan Whalen Turner

Only through pain can you be sure of the truth — Megan Whalen Turner

The Lord of Rags and Tatters. — Megan Whalen Turner

Eddis stared at him for a long time, knowing that forgiving someone because you have to is not forgiving him at all. — Megan Whalen Turner

So Sophos thinks you're going to marry me."
"While I think you'll marry Sophos."
"I might. We'll see what he's like when he grows up. — Megan Whalen Turner

I asked Ochto what in the name of all that was sacred he thought he was doing.
"Helping you," said Dirnes.
"Why?"
They put the soldier down, and Ochto straightened to look me in the eye. "Because I know nothing about kings and princes, but I know men. — Megan Whalen Turner

What kind of man refers to himself as safely dead? — Megan Whalen Turner

No," he said. "Relius was right and I was wrong. You are My Queen. Even though you cut my head from my shoulders, with my last breath as a noose tightens, to the last beat of my heart if I hang from the walls of the palace, you are My Queen. That I have failed you does not change my love for you or my loyalty. — 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

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

They're going to leave me. All I wanted to do was lie in the dry prickly grass with my feet in a ditch forever. I could be a convenient sort of milemarker, I thought. Get to the thief and you know you are halfway to Methana. Where ever Methana might be. — Megan Whalen Turner

You'll have to pardon me," the magus said. "But with your country at war I can't see how any of it really matters."
Standing up, Eugenides pulled the papers from the magus's hands. "It matters, because I can't do anything, anymore, for this country, and it matters," he yelled as he threw the papers back to his desk, "because I only have one hand and it isn't even the right one!" Turning, he picked an inkpot off the desk and threw it to shatter on the door of his wardrobe, spraying black ink across the pale wood and onto the wall. Black drops like rain stained the sheets of his bed.
...
Eddis sighed. "Will you sit down and stop shouting?" she asked.
"I'll stop shouting. I won't sit down. I might need to throw more inkpots. — 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

Upset at the sight of blood?" he said. "Not my wife, Ornon."
"Your blood, " the ambassador pointed out. Eugenides glanced at the hook in his arm and conceded the point. "Yes," he said. — Megan Whalen Turner

You just, barged in and flipped my entire world upside down," he says, voice heated. "I didn't know what to do. — Katie Klein

I would very much like to strangle someone. Why don't you go away until I decide it isn't you? — 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

The only beautiful thing in the whole country was the queen, and she had sold herself into a marriage with the Eddisian Thief, the very one whose hand she had cut off. There was a match made in hell. — Megan Whalen Turner

There is plenty of law at the end of a nightstick. — Grover Whalen

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

We would have died without the additional men," he admitted matter-of-factly. "But we would have taken the entire Mede army with us. Poets would have written about us, and songs would have been sung about us-"
"For all the good that would have done your dead bodies," Eugenides cynically interrupted.
"Well, I wasn't looking forward to it," said Sounis caustically. "But over our dead bodies the Medes would never have been accepted by the people of Sounis. Much more likely that they would have allied with Attolia." He looked at Eugenides, who was still eyeing him in surprise. "I didn't expect to die," he said. "I knew you would send help."
"Why?"
It was Sounis's turn to be surprised. He said, "You told me you needed me to be Sounis. I am. I needed my king to send me help. You did. There had to be reinforcements at Oneia, so they were there." To him it was obvious.
Eugenides swallowed. "I see. — Megan Whalen Turner

Thank you, thief."
"You're welcome, my queen. — Megan Whalen Turner

I was not so comfortable with my new authority that I could say 'We eat the chicken now!' but the magus had seen that I was considering it ...
"My purse is full enough," said the magus, "to keep you supplied with roast chickens."
"So, so, so," I said. "We know who the power behind the throne is," and the magus laughed.
"You eat more than Gen did after prison," he said.
"I have more sympathy with him all the time. Are you going to finish that drumstick?" I asked.
"I am. Stop staring at it. — Megan Whalen Turner

The Thieves of Eddis don't have breaking points. We have flash points instead, like gunpowder. — Megan Whalen Turner

Useless the Elder was looking at me in amusement. "Not exactly stalwart, are you?" he said. — 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'm terrified that if they know how much I hate it, they might take it away. — Megan Whalen Turner

I am an ambassador," Akretenesh warned me, anger bringing his confidence back. "You cannot shoot."
"I don't mean to," I reassured him, still smiling. I adopted his soothing tones. "Indeed, you are the only man I won't shoot. But if I aimed at anyone else, it might give others a dangerously mistaken sense of their own safety." I raised my voice a trifle, though it wasn't really necessary. "We will have another vote, Xorcheus."
They elected me Sounis. It was unanimous. — Megan Whalen Turner

The gossip will carry to Attolian spies, who will report to Relius, Attolia's master of spies, and he will carry the news to her."
"Her secretary of the archives," murmured the magus.
"Hmm?" asked the queen.
"Secretary of the archives, Relius. Master of spies is so-"
"Accurate?"
"Overtly direct," said the magus.
Eddis laughed. — Megan Whalen Turner