CATHERINE FISHER

With the novels, I try to write a few pages a day - it doesn't sound much, but it can be difficult if I'm not sure where the story is going.

I often write in pencil on paper and then type up later. It's much quicker than using a keyboard.

I always was going to be a writer. The other jobs were just to keep me in food. Though I enjoyed the archaeology.

When you draw, you copy the world don't you? You remake it on paper, but it isn't the same. It's yours. No one else could have created it just like that. When I make poems, I use the words we all use, but the order and the sound create a new power. This wood is someone's creation. We stumble through it's tendrils, as if we're crawling through the synapses of his mind.

Walls have ears. Doors have eyes. Trees have voices. Beasts tell lies. Beware the rain. Beware the snow. Beware the man You think you know. -Songs of Sapphique

Freedom is a small price to pay for survival.

I trust you, Jared," she whispered. "I always did. I love you, Master.

Despair is deep. An abyss that swallows dreams. A wall at the world's end. Behind it I await death. Because all our work has come to this.

Underground, the stars are legend.

Chloe turned to Vetch. The poet said gently, "You see, you do have power. Words give you power, to create or destroy." His eyes flickered to Clare. "Even to forgive.

Because I have dreams and in those dreams I see the stars

We are chained hand and foot by protocol, enslaved to a static, empty world where men and women can’t read, where the scientific advances of the ages are the preserve of the rich, where artists and poets are doomed to endless repetitions and sterile reworking of past masterpieces. Nothing is new. New does not exist. Nothing changes, nothing grows, evolves, develops. Time has stopped. Progress is forbidden

All my life I have dreamed of you.

All my years to this moment All my roads to this wall. All my words to this silence All my pride to this fall. -Songs of Sapphique

I have walked a stair of swords, I have worn a coat of scars. I have vowed with hollow words, I have lied my way to the stars -Songs of Sapphique

Even across the dark, even across the loss, even across the emptiness, soul will speak to soul

He worked night and day. He made a coat that would transform him; he would be more than a man; a winged creature, beautiful as light. All the birds brought him feathers. Even the eagle. Even the swan.

Master, I'm afraid. I am, truly. This place scares me. At home, I know who I am, what to do. I'm the Warden's daughter, I know where I stand. But this is a dangerous place, full of pitfalls. All my life, I've known it was waiting for me, but now I'm not sure I can face it. They'll want to absorb me, make me one of them, and I won't change. I won't! I want to stay me." Jared sighed and she saw his dark gaze was fixed on the veiled window. "Claudia, you're the bravest person I know. And no one will change you. You will rule here, though it won't be easy.

Where are the leaders?' Sapphique asked. 'In the fortresses,' the swan replied. 'And the poets?' 'Lost in dreams of other worlds.' 'And the craftsmen?' 'Forging machines to challenge the darkness.' 'And the Wise, who made the world?' The swan lowered its black neck sadly. 'Dwindled to crones and sorcerers in towers.

He was her enemy, and she hated him because she could not hate him enough.

Nothing has changed, or will change. So we must change it.

The world is a chessboard, Madam, on which we play out our ploys and follies. You are the Queen, of course. Your moves are the strongest. For myself, I claim only to be a knight, advancing in a crooked progress. Do we move ourselves, do you think, or does a great gloved hand place on our squares

The Art Magicke has rules. It means I have to teach you all my tricks. All the substitutions, the replications, the illusions. How to read minds and palms and leaves. How to disappear and reappear. "How to saw people in half?" "That too." "Nice.

And what would they be scared of? There's nothing to fear in a perfect world, is there?

It's safe to tell a secret to one, Risky to tell it to two. To tell it to three is thoughtless folly, Everyone else will know.