Quotes from In Other Lands

Sarah Rees Brennan ·  437 pages

Rating: (2.2K votes)


“You will never find me in trouble. You will find me in the library. If you can remember where that is.”
― Sarah Rees Brennan, quote from In Other Lands


“Oh no,” Elliot moaned, and sat down heavily on his bunk bed. “This is magic Sparta.”
― Sarah Rees Brennan, quote from In Other Lands


“One of the boringly human pair of boys, the obvious leader, was tall and broad-shouldered, with golden hair, as if Nature has said, 'No worries, buddy, I gotcha, no nasty tiring thinking will ever be necessary, also have a crown.”
― Sarah Rees Brennan, quote from In Other Lands


“I am not winning any arguments because I know how to hurt someone. How does that prove that you're right? How does being stronger or more vicious prove anything, except that all this talk about honor is stupid? Where's the honor in being better at hurting somebody? Telling me I have to do this is insulting, as if I can't win any other way. As if I can't win in a better way.”
― Sarah Rees Brennan, quote from In Other Lands


“Elliot was trying to teach himself trollish via a two-hundred-year-old book by a man who’d had a traumatic break-up with a troll. This meant a lot of commentary along the lines of “This is how trolls say I love you. FOOTNOTE: BUT THEY DON’T MEAN IT!”
― Sarah Rees Brennan, quote from In Other Lands



“If you must know, she is the one soul destined for my own, and we are going to be together forever,” he declared loftily. “That’s weird,” Luke told him. “We’re thirteen.”
― Sarah Rees Brennan, quote from In Other Lands


“You should wear whatever clothing you feel most comfortable in. Being comfortable in yourself is the best way to be attractive to others.”
― Sarah Rees Brennan, quote from In Other Lands


“Violence was like that, Elliot had noticed. One move toward it and all at once everything was allowed: anyone could be hurt, out of a mix of pride and anger and stupid disregard for the fact that you could be hurt as easily as someone else.”
― Sarah Rees Brennan, quote from In Other Lands


“Two harpies, one stone,” he added, and then saw the way Serene was looking at him. “A diplomatic stone! A diplomatic stone.”
― Sarah Rees Brennan, quote from In Other Lands


“Fourteen wasn't horrible, but it was more complicated, and sometimes that felt like the same thing.”
― Sarah Rees Brennan, quote from In Other Lands



“The most annoying thing, perhaps, was that the elven troop were obviously good people and were being kind to them, and yet Elliot felt subtly wrong-footed at every turn. He wondered if this was how Serene felt all the time, and he promised himself to bear it as well as she did.”
― Sarah Rees Brennan, quote from In Other Lands


“I do not know if you are not interested, or protecting yourself, but you cannot guard yourself against the whole world. You only succeed in placing a barrier between yourself from the world." He hesitated. "I know that from personal experience.”
― Sarah Rees Brennan, quote from In Other Lands


“What's your name?'
'Serene.'
'Serene?' Elliot asked.
'Serene-Heart-in-the-Chaos-of-Battle.'
Elliot's mouth fell open. 'That is badass.”
― Sarah Rees Brennan, quote from In Other Lands


“I'm not saying this to upset you. I'm trying to tell you what you absolutely have to do. What if we were both dead?' asked Luke.
Elliot looked at his pudding and was very sad about his life and his choices. How had he wound up here, in a place where all he had was pudding - Elliot would have sold his soul for a chocolate bar - and awful people who at the age of thirteen asked questions like 'What if we were both dead.”
― Sarah Rees Brennan, quote from In Other Lands


“Elliot was left to trail behind. As he did, he thought about Luke talking about literary tropes—the fearless hero, the valiant heroine, and where did it all leave him? Sidekick: a horrible indignity, Elliot refused to accept it. And the other idea was some sort of lurking, jealous figure: an Iago, a pathetic pseudo-villain waiting in the wings to plot and bring the hero down. He wasn’t going to plot against Luke, who had dumb daffodil hair and said “tropez,” for God’s sake.”
― Sarah Rees Brennan, quote from In Other Lands



“There isn’t any kind of relationship that’s all problem-free delightful unicorns. You can’t have a relationship without issues and prejudices. The way to be equals is if both people agree to be equals, and treat themselves and each other as equals, despite all that.”
― Sarah Rees Brennan, quote from In Other Lands


“All over the gray facade of his father's house in scarlet letters he wrote: ELLIOT SCHAFER. He almost added: "was here" but did not, partly because it was a little too cliched vandal for him, and partly because it did not encompass all he wanted to say: was here, is no longer here, is somewhere almost unimaginably different, is all right.”
― Sarah Rees Brennan, quote from In Other Lands


“So far magic school was total rubbish.”
― Sarah Rees Brennan, quote from In Other Lands


“Keeping everything very cool and professional, I see, Cadet,” remarked Commander Woodsinger as he went by. Elliot did not know why the two most important women in his life had to be deadpan snarkers.”
― Sarah Rees Brennan, quote from In Other Lands


“I don’t need you to explain to me the concept of a magical land filled with fantastic creatures that only certain special children can enter. I am acquainted with the last several centuries of popular culture. There are books. And cartoons, for the illiterate.”
― Sarah Rees Brennan, quote from In Other Lands



“Magic lands in books had always seemed close to nature, but in a nice way, without all the unpleasant details.”
― Sarah Rees Brennan, quote from In Other Lands


“You should want to have gifted students who may excel in both courses, and you should be encouraging students when they show interest in their studies. Do you not want warriors who are brilliant, and diplomats who are brave?”
― Sarah Rees Brennan, quote from In Other Lands


“Elliot finished his book in bed and pondered going to get another one. He only had so much time left, and he had so many books to get through.”
― Sarah Rees Brennan, quote from In Other Lands


“There had been talk of cutting Luke from Trigon, but then everyone on Luke’s team had wept and had nervous breakdowns at the idea of cutting Luke from Trigon, so nobody talked about it anymore.”
― Sarah Rees Brennan, quote from In Other Lands


“It wasn't her fault if Elliot had expressed his feelings wrong. He always did that, as if life were a dance where everybody else knew the moves but Elliot was constantly and fatally out of step.”
― Sarah Rees Brennan, quote from In Other Lands



“It’s better this way,” said Elliot. “And if I came back—you’re probably both going to die. I’d be stranded and you’d be dead.” They were soldiers. This way, Elliot would never know if they died. He put the photo down. “I didn’t mean that,” he said. “You’re not going to die. I don’t know why I said that.”
― Sarah Rees Brennan, quote from In Other Lands


“Age but shows the marks of character being displayed and life being lived.”
― Sarah Rees Brennan, quote from In Other Lands


“Books rose to the ceiling, which rose to a point, with ladders that leaned against the walls.”
― Sarah Rees Brennan, quote from In Other Lands


“Why is language in the Borderlands so weird? Some of it’s modern, and some of it’s medieval, and I guess that makes sense with the influx of a certain amount of new blood to the training camp every year, but how do some words and phrases transfer, while others don’t? Why do you know the word ‘jerk’ and not the word ‘bisexual’?”
“I guess people say the first word more,” said Luke.”
― Sarah Rees Brennan, quote from In Other Lands


About the author

Sarah Rees Brennan
See more on GoodReads

Popular quotes

“Through the gamut of life we struggled for control, for a means to fashion the world around us, an eternal, hopeless hunt for the privilege of being able to predict the shape of our lives.”
― Steven Erikson, quote from Gardens of the Moon


“Surrender to your fear so you may triumph over it.”
― Simon Holt, quote from The Devouring


“my family's going to eat as long as anybody eats. What they're trying to do is starve you Conchs out of here so they can burn down the shacks and put up apartments and make this a tourist town. That's what I hear. I hear they're buying up lots, and then after the poor people are starved out and gone somewhere else to starve some more they're going to come in and make it into a beauty spot for tourists.”
― Ernest Hemingway, quote from To Have and Have Not


“Instruction in world history in the so-called high schools is even today in a very sorry condition. Few teachers understand that the study of history can never be to learn historical dates and events by heart and recite them by rote; that what matters is not whether the child knows exactly when this battle or that was fought, when a general was born, or even when a monarch (usually a very insignificant one) came into the crown of his forefathers. No, by the living God, this is very unimportant. To 'learn' history means to seek and find the forces which are the causes leading to those effects which we subsequently perceive as historical events.”
― Adolf Hitler, quote from Mein Kampf


“Listen, friends," said the disciple confidently, " [...] I didn't have a friend in the world. Do you know what it's like not to have a friend in the world?"
"It ain't no worsen havinum that would put a knife in your back when you wasn't looking," the older man said, barely parting his lips.”
― Flannery O'Connor, quote from Wise Blood


Interesting books

Forgive Me, Leonard Peacock
(34.1K)
Forgive Me, Leonard...
by Matthew Quick
Strangers
(38.3K)
Strangers
by Dean Koontz
Price of a Kiss
(28.2K)
Price of a Kiss
by Linda Kage
The Apprentice
(41.1K)
The Apprentice
by Tess Gerritsen
The Duke and I
(66.6K)
The Duke and I
by Julia Quinn
Dinner with a Vampire
(8.9K)
Dinner with a Vampir...
by Abigail Gibbs

About BookQuoters

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.

We thoughtfully gather quotes from our favorite books, both classic and current, and choose the ones that are most thought-provoking. Each quote represents a book that is interesting, well written and has potential to enhance the reader’s life. We also accept submissions from our visitors and will select the quotes we feel are most appealing to the BookQuoters community.

Founded in 2023, BookQuoters has quickly become a large and vibrant community of people who share an affinity for books. Books are seen by some as a throwback to a previous world; conversely, gleaning the main ideas of a book via a quote or a quick summary is typical of the Information Age but is a habit disdained by some diehard readers. We feel that we have the best of both worlds at BookQuoters; we read books cover-to-cover but offer you some of the highlights. We hope you’ll join us.