“ These were the rains that drove people close to the walls, under the balconies, or sent them dashing madly through the squares, and drenched the fluttering ribbons and bright trappings of the horses s… Sofia Samatar
“ There is nothing, he tells me, more odious than a German. However, their women are seductive, and they make the world's most beautiful music. My employer sings me a German song. He sounds like a buffa… Sofia Samatar
“ [h]ope, like a desert aloe. Hope, stubborn and bitter to the taste. That hides water. That bears the drought. An ugly plant with the power to heal. Sofia Samatar
“ People talked about loneliness as if it were something alive and it could get you. But loneliness is something dead, it's deadness. Lonely people are slowly dying people. Sofia Samatar
“ To lose a sibling is to lose the one different from you. There’s no one now against whom to say: But I am like this. I am this. Sofia Samatar
“ All bleed who fight with the sword. All confront, with greater or lesser difficulty, the worship of their own flesh. The swordmaiden faces particular obstacles in this matter: she will have seen, in t… Sofia Samatar
“ The silence. End of all poetry, all romances. Earlier, frightened, you began to have some intimation of it: so many pages had been turned, the book was so heavy in one hand, so light in the other, thi… Sofia Samatar
“ But preserve your mistrust of the page, for a book is a fortress, a place of weeping, the key to a desert, a river that has no bridge, a garden of spears. Sofia Samatar
