Quotes from Every Heart a Doorway

“You’re nobody’s doorway but your own, and the only one who gets to tell you how your story ends is you.”
― Seanan McGuire, quote from Every Heart a Doorway

“We notice the silence of men. We depend upon the silence of women.”
― Seanan McGuire, quote from Every Heart a Doorway

“She was a story, not an epilogue.”
― Seanan McGuire, quote from Every Heart a Doorway

“You're nobody's rainbow.
You're nobody's princess.
You're nobody's doorway but your own, and the only one who gets to tell you how your story ends is you.”
― Seanan McGuire, quote from Every Heart a Doorway

“Their love wanted to fix her, and refused to see that she wasn't broken.”
― Seanan McGuire, quote from Every Heart a Doorway

“Because ‘boys will be boys’ is a self-fulfilling prophecy,” said Lundy. “They’re too loud, on the whole, to be easily misplaced or overlooked; when they disappear from the home, parents send search parties to dredge them out of swamps and drag them away from frog ponds. It’s not innate. It’s learned. But it protects them from the doors, keeps them safe at home. Call it irony, if you like, but we spend so much time waiting for our boys to stray that they never have the opportunity. We notice the silence of men. We depend upon the silence of women.”
― Seanan McGuire, quote from Every Heart a Doorway

“For us, places we went were home. We didn't care if they were good or evil or neutral or what. We cared about the fact that for the first time, we didn't have to pretend to be something we weren't. We just got to be. That made all the difference in the world.”
― Seanan McGuire, quote from Every Heart a Doorway

“This world is unforgiving and cruel to those it judges as even the slightest bit outside the norm.”
― Seanan McGuire, quote from Every Heart a Doorway

“It gets better. It never gets easy, but it does start to hurt a little less.”
― Seanan McGuire, quote from Every Heart a Doorway

“Because hope is a knife that can cut through the foundations of the world, said Sumi. Her voice was suddenly crystalline and clear, with none of her prior whimsy. She looked at Nancy with calm, steady eyes. "Hope hurts. That's what you need to learn, and fast, if you don't want it to cut you open from the inside out. Hope is bad. Hope means you keep on holding to things that won't ever be so again, and so you bleed an inch at a time until there's nothing left. Ely-Eleanor is always saying 'don't use this word' and 'don't use that word,' but she never bans the ones that really bad. She never bans hope.”
― Seanan McGuire, quote from Every Heart a Doorway

“Where did you find the whipped cream?” he asked. “You had milk, I had science,” said Jack. “It’s amazing how much of culinary achievement can be summarized by that sentence. Cheese making, for example. The perfect intersection of milk, science, and foolish disregard for the laws of nature.”
― Seanan McGuire, quote from Every Heart a Doorway

“asexual” and “aromantic” were different things. She liked holding hands and trading kisses. She’d had several boyfriends in elementary school, just like most of the other girls, and she had always found those practice relationships completely satisfying. It wasn’t until puberty had come along and changed the rules that she’d started pulling away in confusion and disinterest.”
― Seanan McGuire, quote from Every Heart a Doorway

“You want to go back, and so you hold on to the habits you learned while you were traveling, because it's better than admitting the journey's over.”
― Seanan McGuire, quote from Every Heart a Doorway

“Because hope is a knife that can cut through the foundations of the world.”
― Seanan McGuire, quote from Every Heart a Doorway

“Now I know that if you open the right door at the right time, you might finally find a place where you belong.”
― Seanan McGuire, quote from Every Heart a Doorway

“Hope means you keep on holding to things that won't ever be so again, and so you bleed an inch at a time until there's nothing left.”
― Seanan McGuire, quote from Every Heart a Doorway

“There was still something unfinished around her eyes; she wasn’t done yet. She was a story, not an epilogue. And if she chose to narrate her own life one word at a time as she descended the stairs to meet her newest arrival, that wasn’t hurting anyone. Narration was a hard habit to break, after all.

Sometimes it was all a body had.”
― Seanan McGuire, quote from Every Heart a Doorway

“This world is unforgiving and cruel to those it judges as even the slightest bit outside the norm. If anyone should be kind, understanding, accepting, loving to their fellow outcasts, it’s you. All of you. You are the guardians of the secrets of the universe, beloved of worlds that most will never dream of, much less see … can’t you see where you owe it to yourselves to be kind? To care for one another? No one outside this room will ever understand what you’ve been through the way the people around you right now understand.”
― Seanan McGuire, quote from Every Heart a Doorway

“I don’t do that. With anyone.” “You’re celibate?” “No. Celibacy is a choice. I’m asexual. I don’t get those feelings.”
― Seanan McGuire, quote from Every Heart a Doorway

“THE HABIT OF NARRATION, of crafting something miraculous out of the commonplace, was hard to break. Narration came naturally after a time spent in the company of talking scarecrows or disappearing cats; it was, in its own way, a method of keeping oneself grounded, connected to the thin thread of continuity that ran through all lives, no matter how strange they might become. Narrate the impossible things, turn them into a story, and they could be controlled.”
― Seanan McGuire, quote from Every Heart a Doorway

“Real' is a four-letter word, and I'll thank you to use it as little as possible while you live under my roof.”
― Seanan McGuire, quote from Every Heart a Doorway

“The mountain was as powerful as the tide, just...in a different way.”
― Seanan McGuire, quote from Every Heart a Doorway

“Because they're the wrong colors, right? Somebody else's rainbow.”
― Seanan McGuire, quote from Every Heart a Doorway

“She was a woman with something to protect. That made her more dangerous than they could ever have suspected.”
― Seanan McGuire, quote from Every Heart a Doorway

“We don't teach you how to dwell. We also don't teach you how to forget. We teach you how to move on.”
― Seanan McGuire, quote from Every Heart a Doorway

“Death was precious. That didn't change the fact that life was limited.”
― Seanan McGuire, quote from Every Heart a Doorway

“Corpses are incapable of offering informed consent, and are hence no better than vibrators.”
― Seanan McGuire, quote from Every Heart a Doorway

“You're nobody's rainbow. You're nobody's princess. You're nobody's doorway but your own, and the only one who gets to tell you how your story ends is you.”
― Seanan McGuire, quote from Every Heart a Doorway

“I think the rules where different there. It was all about science, but the science was magical. It didn't care about whether something could be done. It was about whether it should be done, and the answer was always, always yes.”
― Seanan McGuire, quote from Every Heart a Doorway

“Older than I look, younger than I ought to be. My skin is a riddle not to be solved, and even letting go of everything I love won’t offer me the answer. My window is closing, if that’s what you’re asking. Every day I wake up a little more linear, a little less lost, and one day I’ll be one of the women who says ‘I had the most charming dream,’ and I’ll mean it. Old enough to know what I’m losing in the process of being found.”
― Seanan McGuire, quote from Every Heart a Doorway

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“The intruder shifted his weight and pulled the knife back, aiming at Gabriel’s chest. The moonlight glinted off the sharp blade and Gabriel found himself backed up against a wall.

There was no escape. Gabriel was going to have to bear the pain of a knife through his chest. He could do it. He would wait until the knife entered his flesh and then he’d snap the Ashman’s neck in half.

Yeah. That was a good plan.

Just as the knife came toward Gabriel, the Ashman grunted and pulled back, taking a few wobbly steps before falling to the floor.

Nate stood to the side, his hands on a large sword jutting from the Ashman’s back. He yanked out the sword, leaving the stranger’s body limp.

Nate stepped toward the Ashman’s body, looking him over timidly.

Without warning, the intruder rolled over and pulled himself up off the floor. Nate jumped back, lifted the sword in defense, and made a loud noise that sounded something like, “Arrrhh!”

Still clutching the bloody knife, the Ashman looked back and forth between Nate and Gabriel. Seeing he was outnumbered, he turned and ran back through the destruction of the living room.Jumping out of the gaping hole from the missing living room window, the Ashman disappeared into the storm

A moment passed as Gabriel and Nate stared after their attacker, both of them out of breath.

Still badly bleeding, Gabriel turned to Nate and looked at the weapon he held. The sword was oversized, extra shiny and had a very ornate handle. “I don’t remember ever seeing that sword in our arsenal before.”

Hunched over and trying to catch his breath, Nate said, “That’s because it’s from my arsenal.”

“So, you just had that,” Gabriel nodded at the weapon, “laying around?”

Nate righted himself and shrugged. “I’m a Zelda fan.”

“Ah.” Gabriel nodded. “And the noise you just made?”

“That was my battle cry.”

“Really?” Gabriel winced as he took a step forward. “It sounded more like the cry of a wounded animal. A cat, maybe. Or a small monkey.”

“Shut up.” Nate looked at Gabriel’s bleeding torso. “Are you okay?”
― Chelsea Fine, quote from Awry

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BookQuoters is a community of passionate readers who enjoy sharing the most meaningful, memorable and interesting quotes from great books. As the world communicates more and more via texts, memes and sound bytes, short but profound quotes from books have become more relevant and important. For some of us a quote becomes a mantra, a goal or a philosophy by which we live. For all of us, quotes are a great way to remember a book and to carry with us the author’s best ideas.

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