Uprooted QUOTES

2 " I didn't properly think about what was happening even as I kissed him back, my laughter spilling into his mouth and making stutters of my kisses. I was still bound up with him, our magic snarled up into great messy tangled knots. I didn't have anything to compare that intimacy to. I'd felt the hot embarrassment of it, but I'd thought of it vaguely like being naked in front of a stranger. I hadn't connected it to sex—sex was poetic references in songs, my mother's practical instructions, and those few awful hideous moments in the tower with Prince Marek, where I might as well have been a rag doll as far as he'd cared. But now I toppled the Dragon over, clutching at his shoulders. As we fell his thigh pressed between mine, through my skirts, and in one shuddering jolt I began to form a startled new understanding. "

― Naomi Novik , Uprooted

4 " It's a lie that matches his desire. "

― Naomi Novik , Uprooted

6 " But none of that matters at all.” His head raised to stare balefully at me, but I said, incoherent yet convinced, “It’s just—a way to go. There isn’t only one way to go.” I waved at his notes. “You’re trying to find a road where there isn’t one. It’s like—it’s gleaning in the woods,” I said abruptly. “You have to pick your way through the thickets and the trees, and it’s different every time. "

― Naomi Novik , Uprooted

8 " If you don't want a man dead, don't bludgeon him over the head repeatedly. "

― Naomi Novik , Uprooted

10 " And I wasn't old enough to be wise, so I loved her more, not less, because I knew she would be taken from me soon. "

― Naomi Novik , Uprooted

12 " I was a glaring blot on the perfection. But I didn't care: I didn't feel I owed him beauty. "

― Naomi Novik , Uprooted

14 " I don't want more sense!" I said loudly, beating against the silence of the room. "Not if sense means I'll stop loving anyone. What is there besides people that's worth holding on to? "

― Naomi Novik , Uprooted

16 " I leaned against his side, his irritation oddly comforting. After a moment he grudgingly put his arm around me. The deep quiet was already settling back upon the grove, as if all the fire and rage we'd brought could make only a brief interruption in its peace. "

― Naomi Novik , Uprooted

18 " They all had stories. They had mothers or fathers, sisters or lovers. They weren't alone in the world, mattering to no one but themselves. It seemed utterly wrong to treat them like pennies in a purse. I felt the soldiers understood perfectly well that we were making sums out of them-- this many safe to spend, this number too high, as if each one wasn't a whole man. "

― Naomi Novik , Uprooted

20 " I wanted to rub handprints through his dust "

― Naomi Novik , Uprooted