Given to me by Mrs. K. -- a friend's Mom.

This is next on the list after A Warrior's Vow, by Marilyn Tracy, c. 2003 -- link goes to blog as it's from booksfree.com, see entry of January 7, 2005

I collect quotes as I read. These ones are fun, poetical, or even philosophical. Take what you like, and leave the rest. Note that these aren't necessarily the "best" in the book. These happen to be close to the spot where I stopped reading each night.

"Ach, for God's grace, give oop." John folded his bottom lip over his top one, like an envelope, then the lip flapped once again, a pah, from the force of his letting out a long breath. p32
[comment: I like the envelope analogy]

... shot of glee. p132
[comment: okay, i'm being silly this morning. i'm curious what kind of shot -- from a needle, a shot glass, from a bullet? wouldn't it fun if you could drink a shot of pure "glee". i woke this morning with a solution to a work problem and i have that adrenaline rush that could be called glee.]

... "Because once in the midst of it, we'd have to depend on each other the way the blood in our bodies depends on our veins. Once begun, there is no turning back." p197

Emma did a full turn of the library's circumference. It had become her favorite room of the house. Her eyes lingered over the shelves and shelves of books. Oh, so many. It would like a lifetime to read them all. The books were in several languages beside English, several alphabets for that matter, Cyrillic, Arabic, Latin letters, everything but Sanskrit, it seemed. Little volumes, thin ones, tomes, colorful, drab, they encircled the room. As she emerged from the far end, the dark end, photographs on both sides of the room took over in the niches of the shelves. Once portraits had hung in the spots, discolored places on the walls indicating they had been a long time before being recently removed. By the fireplace, she gravitated toward a well-lit collection of photos, their sepia tones reflecting the layers of silver in the firelight and the light from the desk.
The subject of these were otherwordly - pictures with surprising clarity, of a surprising reality: the desert, a low palm, camels, foreign people in loose clothes, their heads covered, their robes flowing. A caravan. In one photogrpah, a group of Arab men stood before a long line of caprisoned camels with saddles, tasseled and ornamented. Of the three men, one looked familiar, a dark, thin face with dark, intense eyes and a gleaming black beard. She thought she knew him from a book, or the newspaper, a famous Arab - a prince from the House of Sand, a caliph from Persia.
She'd studied these pictures and others over the last several evenings. Stuart was slowly replacing his family's portraits with modern photographs of foreign places. The photos never failed to draw her, like riddles, though they never yielded an answer. Tonight, she dismissed them as always, padding of to collect her playing cards from the floor, then from the bust by the window. p224
[comment: reading of private libraries fascinates me]

He was thirty-five when I met him, and more fun than a twelve-year-old with a pocketful of fire-crackers. p322