Today, I’m sharing favorite quotes from one of my top romantasy reads of the year – The Knight and the Moth. Rachel Gillig is such a fantastic writer and storyteller. I quickly fell in love with her books when reading One Dark Window in 2022, and each book since has been brilliant. Let’s check this one out!
Title: The Knight and the Moth
Author: Rachel Gillig
Series: The Stonewater Kingdom #1
Page Length: 400
Pub. Date: May 20, 2025
Publisher: Orbit Books
Synopsis: Sybil Delling has spent nine years dreaming of having no dreams at all. Like the other foundling girls who traded a decade of service for a home in the great cathedral, Sybil is a Diviner. In her dreams she receives visions from six unearthly figures known as Omens. From them, she can predict terrible things before they occur, and lords and common folk alike travel across the kingdom of Traum’s windswept moors to learn their futures by her dreams.
Just as she and her sister Diviners near the end of their service, a mysterious knight arrives at the cathedral. Rude, heretical, and devilishly handsome, the knight Rodrick has no respect for Sybil’s visions. But when Sybil’s fellow Diviners begin to vanish one by one, she has no choice but to seek his help in finding them. For the world outside the cathedral’s cloister is wrought with peril. Only the gods have the answers she is seeking, and as much as she’d rather avoid Rodrick’s dark eyes and sharp tongue, only a heretic can defeat a god.
Check out the most memorable quotes from The Knight and the Moth:
“To tell a story is in some part to tell a lie, isn’t it?
“Swords and armor are nothing to stone.”
“I confess horses are not the intelligent beasts I imagined them to be. Though I don’t think that merits the abuse they suffer postmortem.”
That one took me a moment. “No one actually beats dead horses, gargoyle. It’s an expression.”
“Really? How morbid.”
“Knights are shooting stars, Six. They come and go. But you and me, our sisterhood of Diviners – we’re the moon.” She smiled. “We’re eternal.”
“Fear is not an outward-pointing compass, my girl. You should not let it guide your way.”
“She’s a guest of the king’s. Affront her in any way, the knighthood will answer. Attempt to look beneath her shroud, and she and the gargoyle will respond as they see fit. With full immunity to any carnage tended.”
The gargoyle batted his eyes. “Oh, Bartholomew. He’s dreamy.”
“Faith in omens is like a dream. Shrewd, yet shrouded.”
“She will die without ever having lived.”
“When you do the right thing for the wrong reason, no one praises you. When you do the wrong thing for the right reason, everyone does, even though what is right and wrong depends entirely on the story you’re living in. And no one says they need recognition or praise or love, but we all hunger for it. We all want to be special.”
“That is a very keen thing to say, gargoyle.” Maude put her uninjured hand on his shoulder. “How is it you came to know so much more about life than the rest of us?”
His chest puffed with pride. “I am years beyond my wisdom.”
My armor may dent, my sword may break, but I will never diminish.
It is easier swearing ourselves to someone else’s cause than to sit with who we are without one.
“It’s all the same, then. Contentedness. Truth and honesty and virtue. Omens. They are all stories, and we” – he gestured to the Seacht’s climbing walls – “tread the pages within them.”
“People who love you for your usefulness don’t love you at all.”
“Violence is a craft. So is compassion.”
“You are more special than you realize. I don’t even know your name”—he drew in a breath—“and I would do anything for you.”
I always mean to do this prompt because I’m a sucker for a good quote, and love sharing the ones I find. You’ve picked some brilliant ones from this book, Julie!
Thanks, Becky! There were so many good lines to choose from.
Ooh, these are such good lines!! Now I simply must read this book!!