15 quotes
Anxiety grew, the fear that always comes when an established pattern falters.
The Birthgrave (1975)
It’s legend now, but legend is the smoke from the fire, and the wood that the fire consumes is the substance.
The Birthgrave (1975)
And now, Uastis, get up. This room is architecturally designed to please the eye, and your present position mars it for me.
The Birthgrave (1975)
Strange, that when we feel we understand all things, we understand nothing. Strange, that when we feel we understand nothing, we have begun, at last, to understand.
The Birthgrave (1975)
Sickness, the serpent, is coming to bite you,
Death, the old dark man, is coming to carry you off,
Rest uneasy, you stinking carrion, on your gold beds.
The Birthgrave (1975)
I should have felt pity, but I felt only contempt. I knew had it been a girl she would have mourned less, and it angered me.
The Birthgrave (1975)
True beauty is always oddly surprising.
The Birthgrave (1975)
White was the most fashionable color among the nobility and the rich. Because, of course, white is so easily dirtied, and only the wealthy would do little enough that it could not be spoiled.
The Birthgrave (1975)
“What do I care for the god?” the woman suddenly screamed, catching up her dead child. “What god is he that takes away my son and leaves me nothing?”
The Birthgrave (1975)
I would be a drudge now, among the tents, and I would kneel before the warriors, and run from them when they shouted at me. I would be a woman, as women were reckoned in this place, a half-souled, witless animal, created to bear and pleasure men: an afterthought of the god.
The Birthgrave (1975)
I am alone. No one stands beside me. I have no Dark Prince to ride in my chariot, to walk with me, to hold me to him. I have no one. And yet. I myself, at last, I have myself. And to me, at this time, it seems enough. It seems more, much more, than enough.
The Birthgrave (1975)
I do not know why it distressed me so much to see an animal die when human death did not move me. Perhaps because they were more beautiful, and there is no corruption in them, while in the best of men there can always be found some guilt or wickedness which seems to have earned him death.
The Birthgrave (1975)
Vazkor had picked his creatures well—narrow, unintelligent men, good fighters, unafraid because they had no imagination, loyal because they responded to their own sense, and until now, there had always been enough food and wine, women and prestige; trustworthy in this last extremity because the old order had been good to them, and Vazkor seemed able to restore it.
The Birthgrave (1975)
“All my life,” I said, “knowledge has come to me for which I was not ready.”
The Birthgrave (1975)
We are the sum of our achievements, nothing more and nothing less. The mountain road which led us here was built by a dead people none of us would remember otherwise. What we create is the only part of us which can survive, or has the right to. Man is nothing, except to other men.
The Birthgrave (1975)