Samantha Shannon Quotes

I am the first one to go to university in my family. I am the first writer as well. My dad is a retired policeman, and my mom works for a glass-processing company. She is health-and-safety manager, and my stepfather is a plumber. I have four half siblings, one from my mom's marriage and three from my dad's marriage, so we are kind of scattered.

Nothing's worse than a story without an end.

Loose tongues oft lead to loose necks.

I was a shy child, and when I was 13, I started wearing braces on my teeth. I used to be acutely self-conscious, and I think writing was a way of withdrawing into my own imagination.

You saved me, Nick. Sooner or later I would have lost my mind. I had to know, or I would have always felt like an outsider. You made me feel like I was part of something, part of a lot of things actually. I'll never be able to repay you for that.

Black doves and white crows flew to her, for she was mother to the outcasts.

You seem to attract injuries in the manner that a flower attracts bees.

A former exile who dabbles in alchemy and spent weeks in the employ of pirates. Yes, that sounds like someone they would want to mold the minds of the next generation.

Elder Vara had managed, of course. The world could end and he would find a way to keep on reading.

You told me once that freedom was my right." I held his gaze. "Maybe you should do something with it.

The wonderful thing about living in a morally bankrupt world is that every human being can be bought in one way or another. Everyone accepts a currency. Money, mercy, the illusion of power – there are always ways to purchase loyalty.

Knowledge is dangerous. Once you know something, you can't get rid of it. You have to carry it. Always.

I do not sleep because I am not only afraid of the monsters at my door, but also of the monsters my own mind can conjure. The ones that live within.

Madness is a matter of perspective, little dreamer.

I've never had a supernatural experience. I've been tempted to maybe have a tarot-card reading, but I don't know if I'd necessarily want to know.

We call these decadal harvests Bone Seasons. This is Bone Season XX.

J. K. Rowling is one of my favourite authors, and I really admire how she created this big wizarding world. But I think our books are very, very different, and I don't think there can be a next J. K. Rowling. She is one of a kind.

Some truths are safest buried. Some castles best kept in the sky. There's promise in tales that are yet to be spoken.

But one day, you will be faced with a choice, as we all are. One day you will have to choose between your own desires, your own darkest impulses, and what you know to be right . . . and it will harden you. You will understand that all of us are devils in the skins of men.

Perhaps this is for the best,' Warden said. 'You already dwell too deep in shadows.'
'I would have gone into the shadows for you.

For the dreamers.

I am sure you know what an angel is: a soul that returns to this plane to protect the person they died to save,

But I missed talking to him. I missed just being near him. I wanted him - but what I wanted might be an illusion.

You can never want too much. That's how they silence us," I said. "They told us we were lucky to be in the penal colony instead of the aether. Lucky to be murdered with NiteKind, not the noose. Lucky to be alive, even if we weren't free. They told us to stop wanting more than what they gave us, because what they gave us was more than we deserved." I picked up my jacket. "You're not a prisoner any more, Arcturus." Warden looked at me in silence. I left him in that ruined hall with the music echoing above him.

That's delusional, isn't it?'
'Definitely. But if you're both delusional together, you'll be fine.

I brought you back," he said, "because I could not find the strength to fight her without you.

Reading,' Ead said lightly. 'A dangerous pastime.

All the world is a cage in a young girl's eyes.

In 2011, I did an internship in Seven Dials, a junction in London where seven roads come together. I'd given up on writing after multiple rejections for my first novel, and I was starting to consider a career in publishing instead, but Seven Dials gave me such a strong idea for a setting that I couldn't resist picking up my pen again.

My English teachers gave me a copy of Atwood's 'The Handmaid's Tale' when I left high school, which has always been very special to me - it was the novel that introduced me to dystopian fiction. I'm also influenced by Edgar Allan Poe, Dickens, John Wyndham and Middle English dream-visions.

What made you offer up your services as a pirate, Lord Kitson? This life's not like it is in songs, you know. There's a little more shit and scurvy.

In darkness, we are naked. Our truest selves. Night is when fear comes to us at its fullest, when we have no way to fight it," Ead continued. "It will do everything it can to seep inside you. Sometimes it may succeed - but never think that you are the night.

It is not that I do not want you. Only that I might want you too much. And for too long

I often look at places and kind of mentally convert them to fantasy versions of themselves.

'The Bone Season' is violent. There's sex. My little brother keeps asking to read it, and he's 9, so I'm like, 'No, it's not happening.'

I felt the thick beat of him. His rhythm. My rhythm.

You have been away from the tree for too long. You are a root, beloved. You must drink, or you will wither.

I do take this insane pleasure in world-building. I get the world in my head, but I have to make sure everyone else gets it.

His touch had felt strange. Warmer. It was only when I saw his hands that I realized.
He wasn't wearing gloves.

Some revolutions change the world in a day. Others take decades or centuries or more, and others still never come to fruition. Mine began with a moment and a choice.

You cannot kill death. What fire can scald the sun? Who can drown the ocean?

Are you afraid?'
'Of course.'
'Good. Fear will make you fight. Don't let a silly little shit like Turosa get the better of you, whoever his mother is.

Sleep well, little dreamer.

Sea sisters, Susa had called them once. Two pearls formed in the same oyster.

Her feelings had come like a flower on a tree. A bud, gently forming - and just like that, an undying blossom.

I know what I want to achieve in each book and the major points, but I don't plan right down to the chapters. I think that the characters write themselves in some degree.

His dreamscape sent a tongue of fire across my flowers

Never allow yourself to believe you should be silent.

Let us not think of the future this night. It is not yet dawn. We still have time for airy hopes.

If I never returned-if you never see me again-it will mean that everything is alright. That I have ended her. But if I return, it will mean I have failed. That there is still danger. And then I will find you

I wanted to write a sci-fi story that would appeal to young women. Loads of girls like sci-fi, but it's more culturally associated with guys.

Whenever anyone calls me 'The new J..K. Rowling,' I think, 'What's wrong with the old one?'

I was born in 1991, and 'Harry Potter' came out in '97, so, you know, I was really obsessed. I used to read them in one night.

Perhaps I feel safest when I think of nothing.

The room was an hourglass that hadn't yet turned.

War has often been called a game, with good reason. Both have combatants. Both have sides. Both carry the risk of losing.

Jokes are the declarations of fools.

Life, for all its wonders, is rather flimsy in the end.

That is the problem with stories, child. The truth in them cannot be weighed.

Every revolution begins with breakfast,' I quoted as they left. 'Is this your revolution, Jaxon?

You have ambition, Tané. Never apologise for that.

London had so much death in its history, it was hard to find a spot without spirits. They formed a safety net. Still, you had to hope the ones you got were good.

To be kin to a dragon, you must not only have a soul of water. You must have the blood of the sea, and the sea is not always pure. It is not any one thing. There is darkness in it, and danger, and cruelty. It can raze great cities with its rage. Its depths are unknowable; they do not see the touch of the sun. To be a Miduchi is not to be pure, Tané. It is to be the living sea. That is why I chose you. You have a dragon's heart.

Permission to disregard your orders, Underqueen."
"Permission not granted. Permission categorically denied.

No life lived is lost.

it still amused me that criminals had laws.

Cloud steamed from its scales - scales of moonstone, so bright they seemed to glow from within. A crust of gem-like droplets glistened on each one. Each eye was a burning star, and each horn was quicksilver, agleam under the pallid moon.

Some people believe that if they keep their heads down and stick to their safe routine and trust that nothing bad will befall them, then it won't. They see things happening to others, but they think they're different; they're special; it could never happen to them. They believe that nothing can get better, but also that nothing can get worse. They're cowards, in one way, because they won't fight, but they're also brave, because they're willing to accept their lot in life. Glupava smelost, we called it. Foolish courage.

We canna grieve for those who've gone. Not before we've fought to change the world that took them.

Words are everything. Words give wings even to those who have been stamped upon, broken beyond all hope of repair.

The truth was our best weapon.

In the story, she had no name, like too many women in stories of old.

But when the heart grows too full, it overflows. And mine, inevitably, overflows on to a page.

I do not pity you. But I do know what it feels like. To be wanted only for what you are.

Run, little dreamer.

You are a servant of the Nameless One.

Oh, nothing as exciting as that, Lady Tané. Just a lonely old man, trying to get off this island so I can die in my own country.

My silver cord - the link between my body and my spirit - was extremely sensitive. It was what allowed me to sense dreamscapes at a distance. It could also snap me back into my skin.

I was always more interested in my books and my writing than going out. It's OK to say I'm a nerd. That's me.

But if there was a heaven this is what it would have felt like. Touching the aether with my bare hands I could never have anticipated this, not from him

I brought you back because I could not find the strength to fight her without you but for that same reason I will do everything in my power to see you safely to the Citadel

I thought of all the years I had spent thinking about him, wondering if he would ever come back to me. And I thought of him now, pictured his smile, how he looked after me, and it was useless: I just wanted him. I put my head in my arms and cried.

I had lived in that part of London that used to be called Islington since I was eight. I attended a private school for girls, leaving at sixteen to work. That was in the year 2056. AS 127, if you use the Scion calendar.

Remember, Tané, that a sword does not need to be whetted at all hour to keep it sharp.

You'll never be a seafarer if you think that way, my lord.

I don't want to be a seafarer.

Of course you don't.

They'd branded me like some kind of animal.
Lower than an animal.
A number.

We like to think we're brave, but in the end, we're only human.

We sat with our arms around each other, holding too tightly and not tightly enough.

You may not believe it, but it is what I desire the most in the world. This place has afflicted me with a terrible wanderlust. I long for the fire, for the sights you have seen. Yet here I am, two hundred years after I arrived. Still a prisoner, though I masquerade as a king.

I don't know. I just want you with me.' I had never said those words aloud. Now that I could taste my freedom I wanted him to share it with me. But he couldn't change his life for me. And I couldn't sacrifice my life to be with him.

It was customary for the vows to be taken at midnight, during the new moon, for it was in the darkest hours that companionship was needed most.

Ead knew the scent of a secret. She wore it like a perfume.

Then there was that awful slogan: no safer place. More like no safe place. Not for us.

She was adamant that any organisation that labelled one group of people as evil would eventually do the same to others. That to treat any one person as less than human was to cheapen the very substance of humanity.' Sorrow

He wouldn't have understood if I'd told him why I spend my time with criminals.
He didn't know that I belonged with them. More than I belonged with him.

His thumbs ran over my cheeks. Our foreheads touched. My dreamscape scorched. He set fire to the poppies

Truth looks different in every lens.

One day,' was the dark reply, 'I will find the Ripper, and you will prove it with your life.'
'I hope that is not a threat against my person, sir, verily I do.' The auctioneer was all of a quiver. 'I shall not endure that sort of talk in my wife's very own auction house, sir. Judith would never have allowed such wanton verbal abuse, sir.'
'Where's you wife's spirit?' a medium shouted. 'Shall we auction her off, too?'
Didion purpled like a bruise. You knew things were getting serious when Didion Waite ran out of sirs.

You know I take the Knight of Courage as my patron. There is courage, I think, in open-mindedness, and thinking for oneself. If you are a witch, then perhaps witches are not so wicked after all.

Sabran laughed. A rare sound. Like a vein of gold hidden in rock, loathe to show itself.

She'd known I was coming, known what I was after, and she'd only started to speak English after seeing me. She was one of them. The scarred ones.