A hand fought best when it made a fist.

— Guy Gavriel Kay

Ambitions and dreams put you at a drinking table with unexpected companions. Cups were filled and refilled, making you drunk with the illusion of changing the world.

— Guy Gavriel Kay

Bright star of Anna, forgive me the manner of this, but you are the harbor of my soul’s journeying.

— Guy Gavriel Kay

By things so achingly small are lives measured and marred.

— Guy Gavriel Kay

He had a sense—honed by experience—that what he’d contrived might achieve something of the effect he wanted. That, Martinis had always said, was the best any man in this fallible world could expect. [p. 67]

— Guy Gavriel Kay

He sang one whole verse directly to her, then, in fidelity to the song, he sent his vision inward to where his purest music was always found, and he looked at no one at all as he sang to Anna herself, a hymn to names and the naming of things.

— Guy Gavriel Kay

I didn't ask to be made a princess." This time all three of them laugh, although it is gentle enough." Who chooses their fate?" It is the third one, the tallest. "Who asks to be born into the times that are theirs?"" Well, who accepts the world only as it comes to them?" she says, too quickly.

— Guy Gavriel Kay

If this is truly the time that will decide, we have no business refusing people who feel the way we do. No right to decide that they must huddle in their homes waiting to see if they are still slaves or not when the summer ends.

— Guy Gavriel Kay

I have been made to realize tonight that there are limits to what I wish to do or see done for any cause.

— Guy Gavriel Kay

It can be hard to write a skillfully entertaining fiction, but a great book wants to be more, and wants more from us.

— Guy Gavriel Kay