Quotes by Megan Whalen Turner

Are you telling me in your own gentle way to stop whining?Yes.I dont feel like a hero. I feel like an idiot.I think heroes generally do, but those men believe in you.I did wait until I was outside before I threw up.

He lies to himself. If Eugenides talked in his sleep, hed lie then, too.

He whines, he complains, he ducks out of the most obvious responsibility. He is vain, petty and maddening, but he doesnt ever quit.

All my life they had made choices for me, and I had resented it. Now the choice was mine, and once it was made, I would have no right to blame anyone else for the consequences. Loss of that privilege, to blame others, unexpectedly stung.

Ambiades, I realized, was the kind of person who liked to put people in a hierarchy, and he wanted me to understand that I was at the bottom of his. He was supposed to treat me politely in spite of my subservient position, and I was supposed to be grateful.For my part, I wanted Ambiades to understand that I considered myself a hierarchy of one. I might bow to the superior force of the magus and Pol, but I wasnt going to bow to him. Neither of us moved.

No man can choose to serve only himself when he has something to offer his state. No one can put his own wishes above the needs of so many.

I know that if you dont look for an alternative, Sophos, you certainly wont find one.

That was the message. For me, alone among mortals, the gods send their messenger to tell me to stop whining. That’ll teach me to go hide in a temple.

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.

I am a master of foolhardy plans.

“I wonder if people always choose what will make them unhappy.”

“He didnt marry you to become king. He became king because he wanted to marry you.”