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1 " Li Du said, “Chinese scholars and bureaucrats can be fearful of what they do not themselves know. But in my opinion, an empire is like a carpet, most beautiful when woven into a pattern. Languages are the colored threads, and without them the empire would be very dull. "
― Elsa Hart , Jade Dragon Mountain (Li Du, #1)
2 " He imagined then that the shifting clouds contained thousands of years, and that he had seen the same tree in two different times. What if every moment of that tree's existence, the whole of its past and its future, existed at once, here in this blank and infinite cloud? An eerie suggestion of his own insubstantiality pulled at him. He, too, was inside the void. "
3 " Ambassadors. Trade. Diplomacy. These subjects make me feel that I have fallen into a swamp and am breathing mud. I will go to the mansion and eavesdrop on the servants. "
4 " The universal villains, heroes, and clowns have no power if no one recognises them. "
5 " For those in power, facts were merely materials that could be used, modified, or ignored for the purpose of maintaining control. "
6 " A friend of mine once told me that an object exists in as many forms as there are perspectives from which to view it. "
― Elsa Hart , The White Mirror (Li Du, #2)
7 " Memories, I have always thought, is like deepening waters, and every day the sunken objects on the sea floor are a farther and more frightening journey away. I know that they are there, but I don’t look at them. "
8 " Ah. You think I am unwise? But I am an old man, too old to worry about words that powerful people do not want spoken. In my final years I have no wish to waste time and thought on what I should not say. "
9 " ...I urge you to put your anger to a use that may, in time, be treasured by those not yet born. Write something that will be a counter to the other books - the ones written to preserve the deceptions and protect them through the passage of time. Write the truth. Or, at least, write your truth. "
10 " The sun set and the moon rose parchment yellow, the marks on its surface like traces of lead someone had tried to rub away. Li Du walked alone on the path to the mountain. A painter could have captured it well: a defeated curve of shoulders at odds with a determined stride against a mountain that filled the sky.” - p 83 "
11 " . . . [H]e was beginning to see the face of the killer, as yet a shadowy form that crept through the alleys of memory and imagination, narrow and lantern lit like Dayan’s labyrinthine streets. It stared at him, this visage whose features he could almost trace. It was as maddening as holding a book to a twilit window, seeing the black ink of words across the page but finding them unreadable, as if he was again a child and the characters were only dancing insects with no meaning. Li Du shuddered a little as the figure in his mind backed slowly out of sight again, to wander freely and unobserved in the back corners of his thoughts.” - p 221-222 "
12 " The features that had eluded Li Du were becoming more clear. It was a forger who waited in the shadows, a forger not only of ink and paper, but of worlds. Like painted screens placed in front of a real landscape, these altered realities were moved softly, silently into place.” - p 254 "
13 " The Dolphin was an old inn, the structure of which had survived the fire that had devoured so much of the city three decades before. Its worn beams and crooked windows made it a comfortably creaking establishment that regarded both guests and passersby with an expression of cheerful expectation. It looked as if it wanted to tell stories of what it had seen, and was waiting patiently for someone to realize it could talk. "
― Elsa Hart , The Cabinets of Barnaby Mayne
14 " When I die, please protect me from the actions of the faithful. "
15 " I must burden you with a few details of history. You are about to embark on your own adventure, and your mind is on what’s ahead. But you must never neglect the past. It pulls at our decisions like a magnet, and can block our progress as if it were in front of us, not behind. "
16 " He wanted to say that he had made a life for himself, a solitary one, but one with which he was, in his own way, entirely satisfied. "
17 " The bright moon still shines. The clear wind cannot blow it away. "
18 " Have I taught you nothing? These details they tell us are so important - our birth, our fertility, our beauty. Everything is negotiable, and everyone can be manipulated. Men more easily than women. "
― Elsa Hart
