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Gift Quotes

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Gift Quotes

“Death may be seen as a generous gift that is offered to us as a reward for our willingness to endure life and to play the game until the end. And if it’s true that after death there is only death, non-existence, that would be the holiest of all the blessings!”

“Fate isn't good with people and the other way around, it is the same. For us, it is expressing itself in a misleading way, speaking in a different language. From its point of view, however, what we would call a stroke of fate is not really that, but might just as well be a preparation for a gift it plans to hand to us, at some point in the future.”

“Summers with Rene began with a cigarette in one side of her mouth and a squinting of her eyes as she thought . . . . Shortly, she would make her pronouncement and it would seem magical no matter how often the words were said. "It's a beach day," blessed the day. The rest was understood. No more needed to be said. I knew that she knew. She had the gift to read what would come from the skies as surely as my mother could see births and betrayals in the cards.”

“I made you nervous? I was ready to get on my knees, Em." My heart flipped over in my chest, and I covered the moment by fumbling with the string holding the box closed. It slipped free with a jerk, and the box, designed to open like a flower, revealed its gift. A gasp escaped me. Nestled in a white cloud of spun sugar was a perfect little sphere-shaped gâteau covered in chocolate so dark and glossy it shone like midnight. But that wasn't what had my mouth falling open in awe. Resting on the very top of the orb was a pink-and-gold butterfly made of sugar glass. The delicate wings were so fine and thin the light shone through them. It looked so real I half expected it to fly away. "Lucian..." "This is how I see you sometimes," he said in a low voice, eyes on the gâteau. "Beautiful and rare, something not to be contained but treasured.”

“I gaze at the orchid sitting on his windowsill. It's wrapped in bamboo and tied with a purple tassel. Its yellow and green leaves are long and narrow, striped like a tiger's tail. The blooms are tiny, white, and fragrant. "Fūkiran," my father says. "Grown since the Edo Period and collected by feudal lords as gifts to the shogun or emperor." He slides the office doors closed. "I know." I smile because it's familiar. My mother has a woodblock of it above her nightstand. Neofinetia falcata.”

“I always thought the mirror was a strange gift. Would it not have been better to give me something useful, like silks…or valuable, like jewels? But I think my husband always suspected that he would meet a violent end and leave me to face the world alone. He told me that should there ever come a time when I needed answers, I would find them in this. I tried looking into it a few times, but whenever I saw my reflection, I was reminded of who was no longer standing beside me. It’s a lonely thing…to truly behold yourself.”

“The grounding principle of the Small Science was "like calls to like," but then it got complicated. Odinakovost was the "thisness" of a thing that made it the same as everything else. Etovost was the "thatness" of a thing that made it different from everything else. Odinakovost connected Grisha to the world, but it was etovost that gave them an affinity for something like air, or blood, or in my case, light. Around then, my head started swimming. One thing did stand out to me: the word the philosophers used to describe people born without Grisha gifts, otkazat'sya, "the abandoned." It was another word for orphan.”

“In a garden, food arises from partnership. If I don't pick rocks and pull weeds, I'm not fulfilling my end of the bargain. I can do these thing with my handy opposable thumb and capacity to use tools, to shovel manure. But I can no more create a tomato or embroider a trellis in beans than I can turn lead into gold. That is the plants' responsibility and their gift: animating the inanimate. Now there is a gift.”