“Most of all, I hate you because I think of you. Often. It's disgusting, and I can't stop.”
“If I cannot be better than them, I will become so much worse.”
“What could I become if I stopped worrying about death, about pain, about anything? If I stopped trying to belong? Instead of being afraid, I could become something to fear.”
“So I am to sit here and feed you information,” Cardan says, leaning against a hickory tree. “And you’re to go charm royalty? That seems entirely backward.”
I fix him with a look. “I can be charming. I charmed you, didn’t I?”
He rolls his eyes. “Do not expect others to share my depraved tastes.”
“I am going to keep on defying you. I am going to shame you with my defiance. You remind me that I am a mere mortal and you are a prince of Faerie. Well, let me remind you that means you have much to lose and I have nothing. You may win in the end, you may ensorcell me and hurt me and humiliate me, but I will make sure you lose everything I can take from you on the way down. I promise you this is the least of what I can do.”
“If you hurt me, I wouldn't cry. I would hurt you back.”
“I have lied and I have betrayed and I have triumphed. If only there was someone to congratulate me.”
“Because you’re like a story that hasn’t happened yet. Because I want to see what you will do. I want to be part of the unfolding of the tale.”
“Father, I am what you made me. I’ve become your daughter after all.”
“Let's have a toast. To the incompetence of our enemies.”
“Nice things don’t happen in storybooks. Or when they do happen, something bad happens next. Because otherwise the story would be boring, and no one would read it.”
“That’s what comes of hungering for something; you forget to check if it’s rotten before you gobble it down”
“I stand in front of my window and imagine myself a fearless knight, imagine myself a witch who hid her heart in her finger and then chopped her finger off.”
“But kissing Locke never felt the way that kissing Cardan does, like taking a dare to run over knives, like an adrenaline strike of lightning, like the moment when you've swum too far out in the sea and there is no going back, only cold black water closing over your head.”
“But I will not stand in front of your happiness. I will not even stand in front of misery that you choose for yourself.”
“He looks like a faerie lover stepped out of a ballad, the kind where no good comes to the girl who runs away with him.”
“There’s always something left to lose.”
“I love my parents' murderer; I suppose I could love anyone.”
“We don't need to be good. But let's try to be fair.”
“No matter how careful I am, eventually I’ll make another misstep. I am weak. I am fragile. I am mortal.”
“Cardan looks at me as though he's never seen me before. He looks at me as though no one has ever spoken to him like this. Maybe no one has.”
“What they don’t realize is this: Yes, they frighten me, but I have always been scared, since the day I got here. I was raised by the man who murdered my parents, reared in a land of monsters. I live with that fear, let it settle into my bones, and ignore it. If I didn’t pretend not to be scared, I would hide under my owl-down coverlets in Madoc’s estate forever. I would lie there and scream until there was nothing left of me.”
“There you are," Cardan says as I take my place beside him. "How has the night been going for you? Mine has been full of dull conversation about how my head is going to find itself on a spike.”
“This is absurd. This is awful. This isn’t how people show loyalty. This is epic, epic bullshit.”
“He stares at me as though I am a stranger, but I have never felt less like one. For the first time, we are both unmasked.”
“Desire is an odd thing. As soon as it’s sated, it transmutes. If we receive golden thread, we desire the golden needle.”
“There is a pleasure in being with them. Taking what we wish, indulging in every terrible thought. There’s safety in being awful.”
“Before, I never knew how far I would go. Now I believe I have the answer. I will go as far as there is to go. I will go way too far.”
“I am tired of caring,” I say. “Why should I?”
“Because they could kill you!”
“They better,” I say to her. “Because anything less than that isn’t going to work.”
“All the world's a stage,
And all the men and women merely players;
They have their exits and their entrances,
And one man in his time plays many parts,
His acts being seven ages. At first, the infant,
Mewling and puking in the nurse's arms.
Then the whining schoolboy, with his satchel
And shining morning face, creeping like snail
Unwillingly to school. And then the lover,
Sighing like furnace, with a woeful ballad
Made to his mistress' eyebrow. Then a soldier,
Full of strange oaths and bearded like the pard,
Jealous in honor, sudden and quick in quarrel,
Seeking the bubble reputation
Even in the cannon's mouth. And then the justice,
In fair round belly with good capon lined,
With eyes severe and beard of formal cut,
Full of wise saws and modern instances;
And so he plays his part. The sixth age shifts
Into the lean and slippered pantaloon,
With spectacles on nose and pouch on side;
His youthful hose, well saved, a world too wide
For his shrunk shank, and his big manly voice,
Turning again toward childish treble, pipes
And whistles in his sound. Last scene of all,
That ends this strange eventful history,
Is second childishness and mere oblivion,
Sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything.”
“Никога не се опитвай да надпиеш един швед, освен ако не си финландец или поне руснак.”
“Viola?
Keep calling for me–
And I’ll keep searching for you–
And I’ll find you–
You bet yer life on it–
I’ll find you–
Keep calling for me, Viola–
Cuz here I come.”
“Take up a weapon and you become an instrument with as pure a purpose as the weapon itself: to find arteries and open them, limbs and sever them; to take what is alive and deliver it unto death.”
“Each day I was more vulnerable than the last. Each day he stripped away more of my sense of self. And now he'd taken the last of it, the last of me. But who did that make me? An extension of him? Someone new? I didn't know. Didn't want to know.”
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.