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She pulled the bedclothes up as far as they would go and suppressed a perverse wish to have her old nurse come to chase away the darkness, perverse because she didn't know if she wanted the shadows to be empty or not.

Megan Whalen Turner

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Megan Whalen Turner
Age: 59
Born: 1965
Born: January 1
Novelist
Writer
Didn
Pulled
Wanted
Shadows
Come
Nurse
Would
Shadow
Empty
Darkness
Suppressed
Wish
Perverse
Away
Chase

More quotes by Megan Whalen Turner

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Who am I, that you should love me? You are My Queen, said Eugenides. She sat perfectly still, looking at him without moving as his words dropped like water into dry earth. Do you believe me? he asked. Yes, she answered. Do you love me? Yes. I love you. And she believed him.
Megan Whalen Turner
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I can't leave her there all alone, surrounded by stone walls... She's too precious to give up.
Megan Whalen Turner
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When we opened the doors, we saw that the entire room was scorched black and you were on the floor possibly dead, surrounded by broken glass. Window glass is expensive, you realize that? Yes, Your Majesty, he said meekly.
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The queen was settling on the edge of the bed, ungainly with hesitation and at the same time exquisite in her grace, like a heron landing in a treetop.
Megan Whalen Turner
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...That he'd seen...two people, a young man and a woman, sitting on invisible furniture with their feet up, reading books and eating chocolates.
Megan Whalen Turner
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He looked gravely at the king. It isn't an easy thing to give your loyalty to someone you don't know, especially when that person chooses to reveal nothing of himself. But no matter, Your Majesty. You are revealed at last. The king looked down at his nakedness and back at the captain. Was that a joke? he asked.
Megan Whalen Turner
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A little danger adds spice to life.
Megan Whalen Turner
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The room was quiet, the others flicking glances at me. I ignored them. After years in Sounis's palaces being eyed with disgust by my uncle and my own father and courtier after courtier, I assure you I am unrivaled at pretending not to notice other people's glances.
Megan Whalen Turner
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But there are other words for privacy and independence. They are isolation and loneliness.
Megan Whalen Turner
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It made Costis wonder for the first time just how much the stoic man really wants to hide when he unsuccessfully pretends not to be in pain.
Megan Whalen Turner
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I sometimes believe his lies are the truth, but I have never mistaken his truth for a lie.
Megan Whalen Turner
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Were you lying? I never lie, he said piously. About what? The sand, the snake. For a young man who never lied, he seemed surprisingly unoffended by the question.
Megan Whalen Turner
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What a strange world it is, where prisoners are left their weapons and the written word is a mortal danger.
Megan Whalen Turner
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You are treasure beyond any price.
Megan Whalen Turner
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He looked at their shabby clothes in puzzlement. “We were traveling anonymously for safety—” explained the magus. “But surely—” “—and then we were robbed on the road.” “Ah,” said the king, “the danger in being anonymous.
Megan Whalen Turner
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That one,-he nodded toward the closed door- will rule more than just Attolia before he is done. He is an Annux, a king of kings.
Megan Whalen Turner
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Irene- Don't call me that. You were the princess Irene the first time we met. It means 'peace', Attolia said. What name could be more inappropriate? That I be named Helen? Eddis suggested. The hard lines in Attolia's face eased, and she smiled. Eddis was a far cry from the woman whose beauty had started a war.
Megan Whalen Turner
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Dying would have been so much easier.
Megan Whalen Turner
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All I wanted to do was lie in the dry grass with my feet in a ditch forever. I could be a convenient sort of milemarker, I thought. Get to the thief and you know you're halfway to Methana.
Megan Whalen Turner
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Why didn't you tell me to take Attolia's advice from the beginning? I thought you should figure it out. What you learn for yourself, you will know forever, said Eugenides. Pol used to say that, said Sounis, surprised. I learned it from him. I just wish to my god that I had his patience for the process.
Megan Whalen Turner