Quotes from Passenger

Alexandra Bracken ·  496 pages

Rating: (28.9K votes)


“It's our choices that matter in the end. Not wishes, not words, not promises.”
― Alexandra Bracken, quote from Passenger


“You cannot fathom the distance I would travel for you.”
― Alexandra Bracken, quote from Passenger


“In the whole course of history, war had always fallen on the shoulders of the young.”
― Alexandra Bracken, quote from Passenger


“Good ideas had in the dark were generally best left there.”
― Alexandra Bracken, quote from Passenger


“The only way out is through.”
― Alexandra Bracken, quote from Passenger



“It matters not who you love, but only the quality of such a love. A flower is no less beautiful because it does not bloom in the expected form. Because it lasts an hour, and not days.”
― Alexandra Bracken, quote from Passenger


“There are rules, but rules may be rewritten if only one hand holds the ink.”
― Alexandra Bracken, quote from Passenger


“She didn't need a protector or a rescuer. But she did need him.”
― Alexandra Bracken, quote from Passenger


“I've never slapped anyone before,” she admitted.
“How did you find the experience?”
“It would have been more satisfying if he'd gone flying out of his seat like I imagined.”
― Alexandra Bracken, quote from Passenger


“Love was selfish, wasn't it? It made honest men want things they had no right to. It cocooned one from the rest of the world, erased time itself, knocked away reason. It made you live in defiance of the inevitable. It made you want another's mind, body; it made you feel as if you deserved to own their heart, and carve out a place in it.”
― Alexandra Bracken, quote from Passenger



“What a privilege it was to never feel like you had to take stock of your surroundings, or gauge everyone’s reactions to the color of your skin.”
― Alexandra Bracken, quote from Passenger


“I love you.” For whatever small comfort it was worth, he would have the truth between them now. “Most desperately. Bloody inconvenient, that.”
― Alexandra Bracken, quote from Passenger


“How do you fight against a mountain? How do you move it when you don't even have a shovel?”
“Maybe you don't have to move it,” Etta said, folding the gown over the lid of the trunk. “Maybe you have to climb it.”
― Alexandra Bracken, quote from Passenger


“He would not surrender to the disaster of loving her.”
― Alexandra Bracken, quote from Passenger


“This was the danger, the seduction of time travel, she realized—it was the opportunity, the freedom of a thousand possibilities of where to live and how to start over. It was the beauty open to you in your life if you only stopped for a moment to look.”
― Alexandra Bracken, quote from Passenger



“So you'd keep me here against my will—”
“Know this pirate,” he said, his hands gripping the railing, “You are my passenger, and I will be damned before I let any harm come to you.”
― Alexandra Bracken, quote from Passenger


“You do have a choice, you know,” Etta told her after a moment. “There is always a choice.”
― Alexandra Bracken, quote from Passenger


“Society is always the same, regardless of the era. There are rules and standards, with seemingly no purpose. It's a hateful, elaborate charade, equal parts flirtation and perceived naïveté. To men we have the minds of children.”
― Alexandra Bracken, quote from Passenger


“But she wondered if, in moving outside of the natural flow of time, they had forgotten the most crucial point of life—that it wasn’t meant to be lived for the past, or even the future, but for each present moment.”
― Alexandra Bracken, quote from Passenger


“Oh my God you are despicable!” Etta snarled.
“Careful, madam, blasphemy is still a sin—”
Even if Nicholas had been the gambling sort, he never would have wagered a single coin on her next words being “Then I guess I'll see you in hell!”
― Alexandra Bracken, quote from Passenger



“Nicholas felt a rueful smile spread across his face. And a curse be on him for it, because now he knew her. She'd shown him her mind, and she'd opened up her heart, and now he knew the taste of her tears. And he was wrecked.”
― Alexandra Bracken, quote from Passenger


“Rest assured,” he said, when he managed to find his voice, “there will always be a position for you on my ship.”
Her face brightened with her clever, beautiful smile. “Will you let me climb up into the rigging? Reef the sails?”
A burst of thunder rolled through him. “Absolutely not.”
She laughed again. “As if you could stop me.”
― Alexandra Bracken, quote from Passenger


“I wish you'd go a a little easier on him,” she said.
“He came in here thrashing a sword around. Was I supposed to stand idly by and do nothing?” he huffed.
“Well, you weren't supposed to try and rearrange his face with your fist.”
“I wasn't,” Nicholas protested. “He lunged up into it several times. I was only in the way.”
“You're ridiculous.”
― Alexandra Bracken, quote from Passenger


“Free the fire fluttering inside her rib cage. Work her muscles, the bow, the violin, until she played herself to ash and embers and left the rest of the world behind to smolder.”
― Alexandra Bracken, quote from Passenger


“Having actually read the Voltaire in question, I can confirm the quote is, as different from ours as the breed of spaniels is from that of greyhounds,” Nicholas said coldly. “Interesting, though, that in the end we're all just dogs.”
― Alexandra Bracken, quote from Passenger



“A snake could shed its skin, but never change its color.”
― Alexandra Bracken, quote from Passenger


“Half-truths only added up to a whole lie.”
― Alexandra Bracken, quote from Passenger


“What good is honour when greed eats away at its foundations?”
― Alexandra Bracken, quote from Passenger


“How about a kiss, hey?” Etta liked that she was still able to startle him, just a little. The blank look of concentration broke as he barked out a laugh. “I don't know if that's a wise idea. We'd never leave.”
― Alexandra Bracken, quote from Passenger


“All I hear are Satan's hammers and the war drums of hell, thank you.”
― Alexandra Bracken, quote from Passenger



About the author

Alexandra Bracken
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Popular quotes

“I’ve fought in three campaigns,” he began. “In seven pitched battles. In countless raids and skirmishes and desperate defences, and bloody actions of every kind. I’ve fought in the driving snow, the blasting wind, the middle of the night. I’ve been fighting all my life, one enemy or another, one friend or another. I’ve known little else. I’ve seen men killed for a word, for a look, for nothing at all. A woman tried to stab me once for killing her husband, and I threw her down a well. And that’s far from the worst of it. Life used to be cheap as dirt to me. Cheaper.

“I’ve fought ten single combats and I won them all, but I fought on the wrong side and for all the wrong reasons. I’ve been ruthless, and brutal, and a coward. I’ve stabbed men in the back, burned them, drowned them, crushed them with rocks, killed them asleep, unarmed, or running away. I’ve run away myself more than once. I’ve pissed myself with fear. I’ve begged for my life. I’ve been wounded, often, and badly, and screamed and cried like a baby whose mother took her tit away. I’ve no doubt the world would be a better place if I’d been killed years ago, but I haven’t been, and I don’t know why.”

He looked down at his hands, pink and clean on the stone. “There are few men with more blood on their hands than me. None, that I know of. The Bloody-Nine they call me, my enemies, and there’s a lot of ’em. Always more enemies, and fewer friends. Blood gets you nothing but more blood. It follows me now, always, like my shadow, and like my shadow I can never be free of it. I should never be free of it. I’ve earned it. I’ve deserved it. I’ve sought it out. Such is my punishment.”
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“You are not IN the universe, you ARE the universe, an intrinsic part of it. Ultimately you are not a person, but a focal point where the universe is becoming conscious of itself. What an amazing miracle.”
― Eckhart Tolle, quote from A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life's Purpose


“Why do I feel like I can't trust you anymore?'

I wanted him to lash out. I wanted him to fight, to protest, to argue- to do anything but look deeper into my eyes and say, 'because the Gallagher Academy doesn't admit fools”
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“Cursed luck! —said he, biting his lip as he shut the door, —for man to be master of one of the finest chains of reasoning in nature, —and have a wife at the same time with such a head-piece, that he cannot hang up a single inference within side of it, to save his soul from destruction.”
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“So many old and lovely things are stored in the world's attic because we don't want them around us and we don't dare throw them out.”
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