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Vespertine QUOTES

Vespertine QUOTES

1 " They would martyr me themselves to satisfy their hunger for a saint. "

― Margaret Rogerson , Vespertine

2 " I absorbed its deathly visage, trying and failing to match it with the voice in my head. The revenant had devoured the populations of entire cities; it was also the entity who ordered me to eat my pottage.
‘I’ll have you know that I’m very good-looking by undead standards,’ the revenant remarked, after I had stared for a long time without speaking.
I frowned in annoyance. "

― , Vespertine

3 " You can steal a thing. You can't steal a person. "

― Margaret Rogerson , Vespertine

4 " Silence hardened the air like frost. "

― Margaret Rogerson , Vespertine

5 " Sometimes, if you want to save other people, you need to remember to save yourself first. "

― Margaret Rogerson , Vespertine

6 " If there’s one thing I can always rely upon, it’s the reassuring dependability of human idiocy. Give your kind a century or so, and they’ll happily repeat the exact same mistakes that nearly wiped them all out a few generations before. "

― Margaret Rogerson , Vespertine

7 " I wished I were better at speaking. All those thoughts were in my head, but I didn’t know how to get them out. "

― Margaret Rogerson , Vespertine

8 " This dream again,” he murmured breathlessly. “My favorite.”
“Which dream is that?” My voice sounded hoarse.
“The one in which Saint Artemisia stands over me in judgement.”
“I told you, I’m not a saint.”
“Even in my dreams,” he said softly. “you never cease arguing with me.” He said this with distant wonderment, as though it were a quality he admired. "

― Margaret Rogerson , Vespertine

9 " The first humans who got possessed, the ones who went on to become saints; they weren’t all strong enough to control unbound spirits, were they? They couldn’t have been. At least some of them must have fought with their spirits the same way I do.”
“Yes,” the revenant said, after a long, ancient-feeling pause. “They were our friends.”
“Then does that mean we’re—”
“You had better not push it, nun. I can possess you whenever I want. I could do far worse than make you murder someone. I could make you try on hats. "

― Margaret Rogerson , Vespertine

10 " Me, the goat, the revenant, we weren't very different from each other in the end. Perhaps deep down inside everyone was a just a scared animal afraid of getting hurt, and that explained every confusing and mean and terrible thing we did. "

― Margaret Rogerson , Vespertine

11 " The revenant had devoured the populations of entire cities; it was also the entity who ordered me to eat my pottage. "

― Margaret Rogerson , Vespertine

12 " I’ll have you know that I’m very good-looking by undead standards "

― Margaret Rogerson , Vespertine

13 " Perhaps the decisions that shaped the course of history weren’t made in scenes worthy of stories and tapestries, but in ordinary places like these, driven by desperation and doubt. "

― Margaret Rogerson , Vespertine

14 " The revenant noticed me sizing up an escape route. “You had better not, nun. Ideally the priest won’t be looking for you at all, but he certainly won’t be looking for a version of you that’s voluntarily socializing with a group of humans. Also, I want to try a pastry.” I felt obscurely betrayed. "

― Margaret Rogerson , Vespertine

15 " They couldn’t do much against unbound revenants, granted, aside from tickle us a little—but I can’t emphasize enough how distracting it is to have someone tickling you in the middle of a battle. It completely spoils the mood. "

― Margaret Rogerson , Vespertine

16 " The mere idea of having that conversation made me want to crawl into a hole and die. "

― Margaret Rogerson , Vespertine

17 " I turned the final page.
RATHANAEL THE SCORNED, read the lettering.
Above it hung a skeleton twined in a ragged shroud, with two pairs of tattered, crowlike wings. Its fleshless skull grinned out at me, the eye sockets bound behind dark wrappings. It held an iron torch clasped in front of its rib cage, the top spiked like a crown, the flames roaring up, enveloping its body and wings in fire. The silver of its form had a dark, tarnished look like an old mirror, but I couldn’t tell if that was intentional or a result of the gilt flaking with age.
Some powerful spirits held objects, like riveners did swords. It represented something important about their nature, but I had no idea what a torch might signify and doubted the revenant did either—only how ironic it was that I’d ended up with the revenant associated with fire.
I absorbed its deadly visage, trying and failing to match it with the voice in my head. The revenant had devoured the populations of entire cities; it was also the entity who ordered me to eat my pottage.
“I’ll have you know that I’m very good-looking by undead standards,” the revenant remarked. "

― Margaret Rogerson , Vespertine

18 " I understood now, away from my convent for the first time since I had arrived there, that the longing I had felt that day and many days since was homesickness. Homesickness for a place I had never been, for answers to questions I carried in my heart but for which I had no words. I hadn’t recognized it then, because I hadn’t understood what it felt like to have a home. "

― Margaret Rogerson , Vespertine

19 " He looked up. “Is something the matter?” he inquired, in a cold and imperious tone.
“Forgive me, Father. You’re the first man I’ve seen in seven years.” When he only stared at me, I clarified, “The first living man. I’ve seen plenty of dead ones. "

― Margaret Rogerson , Vespertine

20 " Is it true that spirits can’t remember anything about their human lives?”
“Yes,” it answered tartly.
I had never considered before now that someone would have needed to speak to a spirit to learn that information. I had always merely accepted it as one of the Clerisy’s teachings. “So you don’t know whether you were a man or a woman in life.”
“No, and I don’t see why it matters. Humans are so tedious. Oh, you have dangly bits. Congratulations, you’re going to put on armor and swing a sword about. Oh, you’ve ended up with the other kind. Too bad—time to have babies or become a nun.”
It wasn’t exactly that simple, but I decided that I didn’t want to argue about the Clerisy’s hierarchy with a Fifth Order spirit. Also, it had a point. “It would be useful if you did remember something. We still don’t know why your soul turned into a revenant.”
“No doubt because I was horrifically nasty and evil,” it spat. "

― Margaret Rogerson , Vespertine