“You breathed envy across her face, imagining you could see it roll from you like a mist.”
Source: The Best of Elizabeth Bear
“You were not beautiful. You wished you were beautiful.”
Source: The Best of Elizabeth Bear
“I suppose, strong as you, you don’t need to be cruel to make people fear you. You can afford to be gentle, and no one will ever forget you are dangerous.”
Source: The Best of Elizabeth Bear
“You were a monster. But to be a monster did not mean to be uncultured. You have known many monsters. Many of them have been civilized. Most have been human.”
Source: The Best of Elizabeth Bear
“You have walked in chains through the streets of this ancient city, amidst its smog and smoke and the soot caked upon its walls.”
Source: The Best of Elizabeth Bear
“They knew all about being a frightening thing in a museum.”
Source: The Best of Elizabeth Bear
“What is the difference between a collar and a crown?”
Source: The Best of Elizabeth Bear
“Men would be as gods, if they had foreknowledge.”
Source: The King Must Die
“Menestheus, the son of Peteus, grandson of Orneus, and the great-grandson to Erechtheus, the first man that is recorded to have affected popularity and ingratiated himself with the multitude, stirred up and exasperated the most eminent men of the city, who had long borne a secret grudge to Theseus, conceiving that he had robbed them of their several little kingdoms and lordships, and, having pent them all up in one city, was using them as his subjects and slaves. He put also the meaner people into commotion, telling them, that, deluded with a mere dream of liberty, though indeed they were deprived both of that and of their proper homes and religious usages, instead of many good and gracious kings of their own, they had given themselves up to be lorded over by a new-comer and a stranger.”
Source: Plutarch's Lives: Volume I
“I know that human life shines more brightly because it is but a shimmering candle against an eternity of darkness and it can be extinguished with the faintest breeze.”
Source: Ariadne