Rachel Hartman > Quotes

“I am the prayer.”
― Rachel Hartman, Tess of the Road

“First, I gave you two choices as a test: there are never just two choices. That is a lie to keep you from thinking too deeply. Second, and more important: the body is innocent. Deeply, beautifully, fundamentally innocent.”
― Rachel Hartman, Tess of the Road

“A keen wit stabs harder than a finely honed argument.”
― Rachel Hartman, Tess of the Road

“I smiled into the darkness. There was nothing "just" about metaphors, I was beginning to think; they followed me everywhere, illuminating and failing and illuminating again.”
― Rachel Hartman, Shadow Scale

“Thou mayest reach Heaven only by the mercy of the fallen.”
― Rachel Hartman, Tess of the Road

“Invisible factors in my life would inevitably lead to my downfall. I felt I had known this all along. There was no escape.”
― Rachel Hartman, Seraphina

“So if the Infernum is an empy interior, what's Heaven in their conception?" I asked, nudging him.
"A second inside-out house, inside, or rather 'outside' the first," he said. "If you cross its threshold, you realize our world, for all its wonder, has been but a shdow, another kind of empitness. Heaven is more than this.”
― rachel hartman, Shadow Scale

“Your very presence makes other people feel awkward. You stand out when in fact you'd rather not.”
― Rachel Hartman, Seraphina

“From some angles, up is toward the earth and down toward the sky, and everything—people, horses, cathedrals, dreams—is suspended over the ceaseless void, barely hanging on.”
― Rachel Hartman, Tess of the Road

“Beggars, alas, could not be choosers.”
― Rachel Hartman, Tess of the Road

“I became the very air; I was full of stars. I was the soaring spaces between the spires of the cathedral, the solemn breath of chimneys, a whispered prayer upon the winter wind. I was silence, and I was music, one clear transcendent chord rising toward Heaven.”
― Rachel Hartman, Seraphina

“I’m not saying don’t run—or walk, as you say—only that it sounds incomplete, as a life’s philosophy. I meant to prompt you to think further. What do you do when you get there?”
“You don’t get there. You’re on the Road, and the Road goes ever on and on.”
― Rachel Hartman, Tess of the Road

“You were naming my life, which is similar but not identical to saving.
We name something to make it real, to give it meaning. You can name my life and I might still die. Those aren’t mutually exclusive.”
― Rachel Hartman, Tess of the Road

“She liked fog. In the city, she’d always found it cozy, filling the spaces between known objects and making the world feel closer and smaller. It was like a veil over a familiar face. Now she had no notion what might lie behind the gray. Maybe wonders and dangers yet unimagined; maybe nothing at all. She imagined the world didn’t exist, that the fog congealed as she walked into it and created everything on the fly—a logical blocky barn, the fanciful fingers of trees. The mists imagined objects into being as she passed. What a wonder, to walk into the unseen unknown. Nothing was set in stone.”
― Rachel Hartman, Tess of the Road

“Your life is not a tragedy. It’s history, and it’s yours.”
― Rachel Hartman, Tess of the Road

“Swept away was a fortuitous choice of words: it made her mad. She’d been swept away once—she’d let herself be, hoped and desired to be; that’s how it always went in romantic stories.
She’d never be that passive again. It was far, far better to choose,”
― Rachel Hartman, Tess of the Road

“...our shadows stretched before us across the surface of the world.”
― Rachel Hartman, The Audition

“He steadied himself with one great hand against the city wall. He had told me he'd never stop growing. He'd meant it literally. What had I been addressing all these years? His finger?”
― Rachel Hartman, Shadow Scale

“But are you finding monastic history a very compelling reason to live?"
"I'm not human," he said. "I don't require a reason to live. Living is my default condition."
I couldn't help it; I laughed, and tears welled in my eyes. That answer was quintessentially Orma, distilled to his elemental Orma-ness.”
― rachel hartman, Shadow Scale

“What’s a mother for but to be blamed?”
― Rachel Hartman, Tess of the Road

“This is my road. I’m so happy you came and traveled with me.”
― Rachel Hartman, Tess of the Road

“Do not bring violence to the sword. Do not bring heartbreak or anger or passion. You hold in your hand the steel of rationality.”
― Rachel Hartman, In the Serpent's Wake

“No penance could be more terrible than this. Her very heart was dead.”
― Rachel Hartman, Tess of the Road

“You are all that is left of Lynn. Her own people won't even say her name. I... I value your continued existence."
I could not speak. He had pierced me to my very heart.”
― Rachel Hartman, Seraphina

“There are two sacred causes in this world,” he said, holding up his pinkie and ring finger. “Chance and necessity. By chance, I was there to help when you had need.”
― Rachel Hartman, Seraphina

“That was basic hound logic, learned from Faffy: if you ran, you were prey.”
― Rachel Hartman, Tess of the Road

“Around us the darkness hovered tenderly. We passed through it.”
― Rachel Hartman, Shadow Scale

“I also tend to blame myself first," said Camba. Her head was still shaved for mourning, though she'd rehung her golden earrings. "The world is seldom so simple that it hinges on us alone. Pende played his own part. He told you your mind was bound and that it was problem, but did he make even the slightest attempt to help you?"

"He doesn't deserve this," I said, unsure where her argument was leading.

"Of course not," said Camba. "And neither do you deserve all the blame. Sometimes everyone does their best and things still end up wrong.”
― Rachel Hartman, Shadow Scale

“There's nothing "just" about stories. Stories are the most real.”
― Rachel Hartman, Tess of the Road

“Dragons aren't good at metaphor.”
― Rachel Hartman, Seraphina