Janet Morris Quotes

Revenge is never the best driver for a battle, but a common one.

I see ranks ready for battle, stretching out. Five, six horses across, ranks in formation. Endlessly.

"Godling? Demigod?" Lysis nearly howled. "You'd be beaten black and blue in Thebes, and staked out overnight for claims like that. In Sparta, the secret police would ambush you, violate you, skin you alive and use your skull for a drinking cup."

Don't forget, Riddler, how I love thee. Or all we shared together. Or that this sea and all other seas can lead you back to me.

Now the Fates are here on the beach, three shadows blacker than black, walking through the dunes and looking for their own. Just shadows, lamb-white hands beneath black robes spun of tears, glide among the celebrants on this night wherein the spirits of Thebes have found a home, if serendipitously.

Niko's angular face caught a flicker of firelight and Tempus saw his future there: sharp purpose, discipline, and power in perfect balance; love of man and gods, and mercy transcending all. If war ever wore a more humane face, this one would make it so.

If you want to write something completely unique, you will probably fail or at best write something without redeeming value. The mind works in certain patterns: the mind organizes facts in story form; it is your commonality with that body of human thought that makes a good book, not its estrangement from the common values that humans share.

These Stepsons tread where mortals don't belong, some of us think. They seek out battle high above their station. Who knows what powers may yet take them and their mystic allies to task, bring them their comeuppance?

Here and now was always where Tempus was, not off somewhere in the realm of Greater Good or Mortal Soul or Eternal Consequence. He'd lost the ability to determine greater good, if there was one; his mortal soul he'd given up on long ago. And as for eternal consequence - he was its embodiment.

Shed your mortal skin and let me take you beneath the waves.

Tempus never left a problem for another to solve. Tempus never let the pain or difficulty of an undertaking persuade him not to pursue a resolution his heart thought was right. Tempus never gave up.

Grab reality by the balls and squeeze.

‎Niko and his women will be the death of all the Stepsons yet.

When the balance is restored, people get hurt.

If the gods sent you to fight here, then the gods are fools.

Some nights, valor and cold purpose aren't enough.

Some nights, one wants to tell beloveds everything that's been waiting to be said. Some nights, a man needs flesh and blood and warm breath and a loving heart.

Fight for life itself and everlasting freedom of the human spirit.

I can start the rain. Bring thunder. Bring lightning. Want to see?

Sometimes a man does what he'd most like to avoid.

There must be love, and understanding, to betray. Most men haven't the wit or the honor for betrayal: not to know it when they see it; not the stomach to apprehend it as they do it. Most men, blind and dumb in their self-centeredness, don't betray: they merely disappoint.

Nothing powers hate better than embarrassment.

If, as Niko asks, you show them mercy, then the gods will be well pleased.

Only so much can be borne from men, so much from gods

I'm just a weapon of the god.

What wastrel mankind destroyed takes time for nature to put to rights.

The two stallions, the silver and the black, represent the equine god (whomsoever horses pray to) in this ritual so ancient that no one knows what god to thank.

I want to live like a man.

Life was never simple, happiness never where you thought you'd left it, and right and wrong no more fixed than clouds in the sky.

The Fates are here because of supernal anger, celestial imbalance, and arrogance of men and gods that must be curbed.

Gods have bloody hands.

So some will be left who remember.

You're talent, and we're the talent scouts.

One man, one horse, one holocaust on demand.

Very little in science fiction can transcend the gimmickry of a technical conceit, yet without that conceit at its heart a book is not truly science fiction. Furthermore, so little emerging thought and technology is employed by sf writers today that the genre is lagging far behind reality both in the cosmology area and the technology area: sf is no longer a place to experiment, but is now very derivative.

Tempus would be protected, better shielded from whatever the Stepson thought threatening, if love could heal and save.

Humiliation sets armies marching, empires falling, breaks hearts and minds and souls.

Then what difference does human striving make: mortal struggle, valor, pain? If you live, then live for the test of spirit, for the celebration of the heart. Live to fight on other days. Lose your beloveds one by one. And remember. Exalt the kiss of friend and horse and wind and sun, which venality cannot cheapen nor stupidity belittle.

Life to you, Riddler, and everlasting glory.

All gods are tricksters, and war gods worst of any.

I'm going to kill that god of yours, next. Then we'll see what you can do, and what you can't.

The universe forgives those who give until their hearts are aching and their spirits weak, and finds a way to renew all strength and cure all ills, in this world or the next, if a soul can just have faith.

"Mercy is not in favor in my heavens today," says Vashanka, unforgiving and combative, folding vast arms and spearing Harmony with lightning that crackles from his gaze.

But we're dying here.

Deception is a tactic: use it. Do whatever it takes to win.

Makes you wonder if the gods are always right.

Wisdom, Niko thought as he leaned his cheek against his long-handled rake, cannot be had without price.

Men may not believe you, my son. But you must always say the truth, when the truth holds no danger for you or your loved ones.