Guy Gavriel Kay Quotes

What mortal knew the way their fate line would run?

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

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.

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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

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

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

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

We are the total of our longings.

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]

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

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

There was some sadness in how that could happen, falling out of love with something that had shaped you. Or even people who had.

A hand fought best when it made a fist.

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

By things so achingly small are lives measured and marred.

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

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

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

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.

Ice is for death and endings.

One man sees a riselka: his life forks there. Two men see a riselka: one of them shall die. Three men see a riselka: one is blessed, one forks, one shall die.

There was some sadness in how that could happen, Tai thought: falling out of love with something that had shaped you. Or even people who had? But if you didn't change at least a little, where were the passages of a life? Didn't learning, changing, sometimes mean letting go of what had once been seen as true?

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

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

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

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

One man sees a riselka: his life forks there.  Two men see a riselka: one of them shall die.  Three men see a riselka: one is blessed, one forks, one shall die. One woman sees a riselka: her path comes clear to her.  Two women see a riselka: one of them shall bear a child.  Three women see a riselka: one is blessed, one is clear, one shall bear a child.

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

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

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.

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.

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

Irritation for some men was their response to strain.

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.

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

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

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.