Guy Gavriel Kay Quotes

There are no wrong turnings. Only paths we had not known we were meant to walk.

My youngest brother had a wonderful schtick from some time in high school, through to graduating medicine. He had a card in his wallet that read, ‘If I am found with amnesia, please give me the following books to read …’ And it listed half a dozen books where he longed to recapture that first glorious sense of needing to find out ‘what happens next’ … the feeling that keeps you up half the night. The feeling that comes before the plot’s been learned.

When I was 18 years old, in a more innocent time, my first backpacking trip through Europe, I sneaked into the Temple of Saturn in the Roman Forum after nightfall and spent several hours in there avoiding the guards patrolling.

She was owner and captive, both, of a bitterly divided heart.

We salvage what we can, what truly matters to us, even at the gates of despair.

Fantasy is, at its best, the purest access to storytelling that we have. It universalizes a tale, it evokes wonder and timeless narrative power, it touches upon inner journeys, it illuminates our collective and individual pasts, throws a focus beam on the present day, and presages the dangers and promises of the future.

A hard truth: that courage can be without meaning or impact, need not be rewarded, or even known. The world has not been made in that way. Perhaps, however, within the self there might come a resonance, the awareness of having done something difficult, of having done . . . something.

The deeds of men, as footprints in the desert. Nothing under the circling moons is fated to last. Even the sun goes down.

There are kinds of action, for good or ill, that lie so far outside the boundaries of normal behavior that they force us, in acknowledging that they have occurred, to restructure our own understanding of reality. We have to make room for them.

One didn't stop to talk with creatures from one's nightmares.

After a while, you start to realize that you should write a book you would want to read. I try to write a book I would enjoy.

We worship…the powers that speak to our souls, if it seems they do. We do so knowing there is more to the world, and the half-world, and perhaps worlds beyond, than we can grasp. We always knew that. We can’t even stop children from dying, how would we presume to understand the truth of things? Behind things? Does the presence of one power deny another? [p. 176]

You'd never killed anyone. Then you had.

What man would dare believe that all he planned might come to pass?

Ice is for death and endings.

By things so achingly small are lives measured and marred.

A hand fought best when it made a fist.

Words were power, words tried to change you, to shape bridges of longing that no one could ever really cross.

How we remember changes how we have lived. Time runs both ways. We make stories of our lives.

In this world, where we find ourselves, we need compassion more than anything, I think, or we are all alone.

The heart has its own laws... and the truth is... the truth is that you are the law of mine.

Why did becoming accustomed to something have to render its pleasures stale.

most hated by the dark, for their name is light.

We must be what we are, or we become our enemies.

Dave hung up. And unplugged the phone. With a fierce and bitter pain he stared at it, watching how, over and over again, it didn't ring.

We are the total of our longings.

She had been a solitary child, and then solitary as a woman, drawn into an orbit of her own that took her away from others, even those who would be her friends.

But if you couldn't do everything, did that mean you did nothing?

It is always difficult, even with the best will in the world, to look back a long way and see anything resembling the truth.

You have to be afraid for it to count as bravery.

Sometimes you didn't really arrive at a conclusion about your life, you just discovered that you already had.

Do you know the wish of your heart?" - The Darkest Road

Eanna love us, Adaon preserve us, Morian guard our souls.

What mortal knew the way their fate line would run?

Liu Fang is a truly gifted, world-famous player of the pipa and the guzheng, classical Chinese stringed instruments.

It can be hard to write a skillfully entertaining fiction, but a great book wants to be more, and wants more from us.

Irritation for some men was their response to strain.

It was different, though, knowing something in your thoughts and then hearing it confirmed, made real, planted in the world like a tree

As many have noted, the peril for authors is that our work space is too easily our play space.

Weariness, sometimes more than anything else, can bring an end to war.

I have always argued, in a good novel, interesting things happen to interesting people.

The world could bring you poison in a jewelled cup, or surprising gifts. Sometimes you didn't know which of them it was.

Lazy poets try to elicit a reader's response with words designed to tug at the heart.

... everyone knew that all islands were worlds unto themselves, that to come to an island was to come to another world.

I will not say I am sorry, but I can tell you that I grieve.

The military preferred - invariably - those who could be readily defined, assigned roles, understood, and controlled.

Men made wagers with their judgment, their allegiances, their resources.

Writing is never, ever easy but I wake up every morning grateful for the gift of being able to do this.

Some writers later, describing the events of that night and day, wrote that Wan'yen of the Altai had seen a spirit-dragon of the river and become afraid. Writers do that sort of thing. They like dragons in their tales.

We are all shaped by where we grow up, though that shaping takes different forms. I dont think theres any doubt that coming of age in Winnipeg both opened my eyes and made me hungry - if I can subvert all claims to be a real writer by mixing metaphors like that.