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The Tropic of Serpents (The Memoirs of Lady Trent, #2) QUOTES

The Tropic of Serpents (The Memoirs of Lady Trent, #2) QUOTES

1 " One does not cease to treasure a gem simply because one owns another that is larger. "

― Marie Brennan , The Tropic of Serpents (The Memoirs of Lady Trent, #2)

2 " Your people understand the forest: how the animals behave, where to find them, and so on. I want something similar—but instead of the forest as a whole, I want to understand dragons. They are not only here, you know; there are dragons in the savannah—” Mekeesawa nodded. “Well, there are more than that, all over the world. They live in the mountains and on the plains and maybe even in the ocean. I want to know them as you know the creatures of this forest.”

“But why?” Mekeesawa asked. His eyes were still merry with laughter, but his question was serious. “You don’t live in all those places.”

With the amount of time I have spent traveling in my life, one might make the argument that I do live in all those places, if only temporarily. But Mekeesawa’s point was a good one, and not easily dismissed. The Moulish understood the creatures of the Green Hell because their survival depended on it; my survival did not depend on my traveling the globe to find dragons. (Indeed, it has on more than one occasion nearly been detrimental to my life expectancy.) How could I answer him?

Thinking back on the matter now, it is possible my only true answer to that question is now in its second volume, with more to come. These memoirs are not only an accounting of my life; they are an accounting *for* it. "

― Marie Brennan , The Tropic of Serpents (The Memoirs of Lady Trent, #2)

3 " There is nothing in the world so enticing as that which you have been told you may not have. "

― Marie Brennan , The Tropic of Serpents (The Memoirs of Lady Trent, #2)

4 " Science is not separate from politics. As much as I would like it to be a pure thing, existing only in some intellectual realm unsullied by human struggle, it will always be entangled with the world we live in. "

― Marie Brennan , The Tropic of Serpents (The Memoirs of Lady Trent, #2)

5 " Nudity, I find, rapidly becomes boring when it is not treated as scandalous. "

― Marie Brennan , The Tropic of Serpents (The Memoirs of Lady Trent, #2)

6 " There is no faster way to harden my determination than to assume I will fail at something. "

― Marie Brennan , The Tropic of Serpents (The Memoirs of Lady Trent, #2)

7 " Would that I were a man,’” I said, quoting Sarpalyce’s legend. “Except that I do not wish I were a man. I only wish that being a woman did not limit me so. "

― Marie Brennan , The Tropic of Serpents (The Memoirs of Lady Trent, #2)

8 " (On no trip before or since have I carried more alcohol than undergarments.) "

― Marie Brennan , The Tropic of Serpents (The Memoirs of Lady Trent, #2)

9 " All hail that bane of the upper class, a scene. The spectre of being publicly shamed "

― Marie Brennan , The Tropic of Serpents (The Memoirs of Lady Trent, #2)

10 " Give me dragons any day; I understand their ways far better than those of my fellow human beings. We make our world much too complicated "

― Marie Brennan , The Tropic of Serpents (The Memoirs of Lady Trent, #2)

11 " And all the while I have people telling me, at least you still have something of your husband. Do they mean the book chronicling our work in Vystrana? No, of course not—never mind that we undertook that work together, with intent. That cannot possibly be as valuable as the accidental consequence of biology.”

Very quietly, Tom said, “Is not a child worth more than a book?”

“Yes,” I said violently. “But then for God’s sake let us value my son for himself, and not as some relic of his father. When he is grown enough to read, I will be delighted to share his father’s legacy with him; it is my legacy as well, and I hope he has inherited our curiosity enough to appreciate it. I would not mind a motherhood where that was my purpose—to foster my son’s mind and teach him the intellectual values of his parents. But no; society tells me my role is to change his napkins and coo over the faces he makes, and in so doing abandon the things I want him to treasure when he is grown. "

― Marie Brennan , The Tropic of Serpents (The Memoirs of Lady Trent, #2)

12 " They say there are no atheists in war; I tell you that pantheists abound at the edge of a cliff. I would have taken the blessing of any god I could get. "

― Marie Brennan , The Tropic of Serpents (The Memoirs of Lady Trent, #2)

13 " Are a woman's wishes only fit to be considered when blessed by a male relative? "

― Marie Brennan , The Tropic of Serpents (The Memoirs of Lady Trent, #2)

14 " Another thing to study," Natalie said, amused. "Will you ever be done?"

I smiled into the sun, one hand holding my bonnet against the firm grasp of the wind. "I should hope not. How dreadfully tedious that would be. "

― Marie Brennan , The Tropic of Serpents (The Memoirs of Lady Trent, #2)

15 " So it has been, again and again throughout my life, as I form connections with people and then lose them to distance and time. I mourn those losses, even when I know my erstwhile friends are safe and happy among their own kin. "

― Marie Brennan , The Tropic of Serpents (The Memoirs of Lady Trent, #2)

16 " He was a man who did not properly exist in any single world, but he seemed to have found a place between them, and that, more than his past, was who he was. "

― Marie Brennan , The Tropic of Serpents (The Memoirs of Lady Trent, #2)

17 " I therefore had only enough fear to make myself terrified — not enough to turn back "

― Marie Brennan , The Tropic of Serpents (The Memoirs of Lady Trent, #2)

18 " ...for even the best artwork is a static thing of the eye alone, and words are by their nature linear. "

― Marie Brennan , The Tropic of Serpents (The Memoirs of Lady Trent, #2)

19 " I spoke with the assurance of a young woman who thought her experience with natural history and ad hoc education in other subjects more than qualified her to hold forth on topics she knew nothing about at all. The truth is that any such comparison is far more complicated and doubtful than I presented it that evening; but it is also true that no one in my audience knew any more about it than I did, and most of them knew less. My assertion was therefore allowed to stand unchallenged. For "

― Marie Brennan , The Tropic of Serpents (The Memoirs of Lady Trent, #2)

20 " Our home will eat you. "

― Marie Brennan , The Tropic of Serpents (The Memoirs of Lady Trent, #2)