Laini Taylor Quotes

It's an open horizon before us, as far as the eye can see: no angst and no games, just mutual delight. So simple, but so rich. Like chocolate. Not a gold-dusted truffle or a foofy pastry tower teetering on a crystal platter, but a plain, honest bar of the best chocolate in the world. ~ Laini Taylor

The goblins want girls who dream so hard about being pretty their yearning leaves a palpable trail, a scent goblins can follow like sharks on a soft bloom of blood. The girls with hungry eyes who pray each night to wake up as someone else. Urgent, unkissed, wishful girls. Like Kizzy. ~ Laini Taylor

Your heart is not wrong. Your heart is your strength. You don't have to be ashamed. ~ Laini Taylor

History conditioned you for epic-scale calamity. Once, when she was studying the death tolls of battles in World War I, she'd caught herself thinking, Only eight thousand men died here. Well, that's not many. Because next to, say, the million who died at the Somme, it wasn't. The stupendous numbers deadened you to the merely tragic, and history didn't average in the tame days for balance. On this day, no one in the world was murdered. A lion gave birth. Ladybugs launched on aphids. A girl in love daydreamed all morning, neglecting her chores, and wasn't even scolded. ~ Laini Taylor

So Sarai gave in to the scream that night, and the dark things within her took wing. They came boiling out between her lips, and they weren't demons after all, but moths. ~ Laini Taylor

She only ever saw him at a great distance, and doesn't even know what his true face looked like. She wishes she did. And ~ Laini Taylor

Tomorrow they will start the apocalypse.
Tonight, they let themselves look at each other, just for a little while. ~ Laini Taylor

The silence, she thought, was remarkable: a perfect, shimmering thing, and fragile. Like glass, if it shattered, it would never come back together again. ~ Laini Taylor

She keeps her eyes closed but smiles, giving herself away. "Shush, I'm having a dream." "It's not a dream. It's all real." "How would you know? You're not even in it." She feels playful, heavy with happiness. With rightness. "I'm in all of them," he says. "It's where I live now. ~ Laini Taylor

The moon on a bracelet and the sun in a jar," said Sarai. "We really wreak havoc on the heavens, don't we?"
Lazlo's voice sank deeper in his throat. Smokier. Hungrier. "I expect the heavens will survive," he said, and then he kissed her. ~ Laini Taylor

There was some new quiet in her, but it didn't shrink or wilt her. Rather, it seemed to enlarge her. She was no mere weapon as she was trained to be, but a woman in full command of her power, unbowed and unbroken, and that was a dangerous thing. ~ Laini Taylor

Above and behind it, slopes scraped north, where the teeth of the Atlas Mountains bit off the sky. Before and below, the earth rolled down a slope of scree and scrub toward the distant Sahara. It was a bleak vista, so still that is seemed the twitch of a scorpion's tail for miles around should draw the eye. ~ Laini Taylor

And there would be a door to shut out the world, and places to put things that would be theirs. ~ Laini Taylor

Akiva had envisioned this meeting many different ways, and in none of them has his father been naked. ~ Laini Taylor

That happiness wasn't a mystical place to be reaced or won-some bright terrain beyond the boundary of misery, a paradise waiting for them to find it-but something to carry with you doggedly through everything. ~ Laini Taylor

She was like springtime distilled into a person. ~ Laini Taylor

It's never too soon to worry. Worry spurs preparation. ~ Laini Taylor

Nice job denuding your face, by the way," she said, waggling her fingers under her chin to indicate his shave. "I'd forgotten what it looked like under there."

He grimaced. "Oh. Well, I'm sorry to have to remind you, but it itched."

"What are you talking about, sorry? You have an excellent face," she said, examining him. "It isn't pretty, but there are other ways for a face to be excellent."

He touched the sharp angle of his nose. "I do have a face," was about as far as he was willing to go.

"Lazlo," called Eril-Fane from across the room. "Gather everyone, will you?"

Lazlo nodded and rose. "Consider yourself gathered," he informed Calizte, before going off in search of the rest of the team. ~ Laini Taylor

Oh, gross. Your stomach is full of butterfly barf! ~ Laini Taylor

I am one of billions. I am stardust gathered fleetingly into form. I will be ungathered. The stardust will go on to be other things someday and I will be free. ~ Laini Taylor

And this totally normal conversation unspools from there, covering the basics: family, siblings, school, favorite composers, favorite movies, favorite wood (for carving puppets), the prehistory of the sandwich, and whether the ancient Romans got their togas caught in the spokes of their unicycles ~ Laini Taylor

I've been looking forward to this for weeks. You don't even know. It's like, gross hunter, gross hunter, gross hunter, puppet show! ~ Laini Taylor

Sorry," said Mik. "I think you neutralized our capacity for surprise. You should have started with that, and *then* told us you raise the dead. ~ Laini Taylor

Once upon a time, a sister made a vow she didn't know how to break, and it broke her instead.

Once upon a time, a girl did the impossible, but she did it just a little too late. ~ Laini Taylor

It's all very nice for Christians, yes? 'Angels' in Rome, 'demons' here. How neat, how tidy for the Western world view, and how wrong. ~ Laini Taylor

On Monday, there was a new boy at Kizzy's school.
"Yum," said Evie weakly.
"Be praised, O Lords of boy flesh. We thank thee for they bounty," whispered Cactus.
"Amen," said Kizzy, staring. ~ Laini Taylor

Eril-Fane let out a slow breath. "Were you afraid of the dark as a child?"
A chill snaked up Lazlo's spine. He thought again of the crypt at the abbey, and the nights locked in with dead monks. "Yes," he said simply.
"Even when you knew, rationally, that there was nothing in it that could harm you."
"Yes."
"Well. We are all children in the dark, here in Weep. ~ Laini Taylor

He didn't believe in magic and demons. He believed in day and night, endurance and fury, cold mud and loneliness and the speed with which blood leaves the body ~ Laini Taylor

Once upon a time ...
A journey began,
that would stitch all the worlds together with light. ~ Laini Taylor

The lovers ... dreamed of a world that was like a jewel box without a jewel - a paradise waiting for them ... to fill it with their happiness ~ Laini Taylor

I shudder to think.
I might wear lace collars and laugh flower petals and pearls. People might try to pat me. I see them think it. My height triggers the puppy-kitten reflex- Must touch-and I've found that since you can't electrify yourself like a fence, the next best thing is to have murderer's eyes. ~ Laini Taylor

You're young. Your spirit shouldn't be 'fine.' It should be effervescent. ~ Laini Taylor

Death is permanent," said Less Ellen, "while flesh very much is not. ~ Laini Taylor

Kindly confirm: If someone's evil, then killing them isn't murder. It's SLAYING, and not only legal but encouraged. Correct? ~ Laini Taylor

What's a horizon?' Lazlo asked, straight-faced. 'Is it like the end of an aisle of books? ~ Laini Taylor

Here, captured between covers, was the history of the human imagination, and nothing had ever been more beautiful, or fearsome, or bizarre. Here were spells and curses and myths and legends, and Strange the dreamer had for so long fed his mind on them that if one could wander into it, they would discover a fantasia. ~ Laini Taylor

Love that sets forth the soul like springtime and ripens it like summer. Love as rarely exists in reality, as if a master alchemist has taken it and distilled out all the impurities, every petty disenchantment, every unworthy thought, into a perfect elixir, sweet and deep and all-consuming. ~ Laini Taylor

Life and peace. Victory and vengeance.
And never the twain shall meet. ~ Laini Taylor

The iguana was not invited. ~ Laini Taylor

Boredom is a terrible affliction of the soulless. ~ Laini Taylor

But the roots of their hate and fear were too deep, and Lazlo saw hints of revulsion as their confusion smeared one feeling into the next. ~ Laini Taylor

There was always, among them, such a stew of envy and longing. They hated the humans, but they also wanted to be them. They wanted to punish them, and they wanted to be embraced by them. To be accepted, honored, loved, like someone's child. And since they couldn't have any of it, it all took the form of spite. Anyone who has ever been excluded can understand what they felt, and no one has ever been quite so excluded as they. ~ Laini Taylor

She was a girl and she was a queen and back in the mists she was a woman who had seized the moon from the sky and drunk its light so that she would never die. And she never had. ~ Laini Taylor

Some would assert that Providence was at work shaking out its pockets in Humanity's lap. Other would argue for that mindless choreographer, Chance. Either way it was a simple thing: a lost diary fell into the hands of a soul-sick war hero on a train from Bombay to Jaipur just when he'd grown tired of the scenery and needed something to keep his thoughts from the minefield of his wretched thoughts.
In such mild ways is the groundwork laid for first kisses and ruined lives. ~ Laini Taylor

Alas. I am not an option. ~ Laini Taylor

Now more than ever she struck him like a fairy in a tale - a haunted one with shadowed eyes and a sting like a scorpion. ~ Laini Taylor

I don't know many rules to live by,' he'd said. 'But here's one. It's simple. Don't put anything unnecessary into yourself. No poisons or chemicals, no fumes or smoke or alcohol, no sharp objects, no inessential needles
drug or tattoo
and ... no inessential penises either.'
'Inessential penises?' Karou had repeated, delighted with the phrase in spite of her grief. 'Is there any such thing as an essential one?'
'When an essential one comes along, you'll know,' he'd replied. ~ Laini Taylor

The gods had been dead for fifteen years, after all, but their hate had lingered, and ruled in their stead. ~ Laini Taylor

Happiness wasn't a mystical place to be reached or won
some bright terrain beyond the boundary of misery, a paradise waiting for them to find it
but something to carry doggedly with you through everything, as humble and ordinary as your gear and supplies. ~ Laini Taylor

It was funny, she thought, but her smile turned wistful because she had nobody to tell. ~ Laini Taylor

This, she thought, isn't just for today. It's for everything. For the heartache that still felt like a punch in the gut each time it struck, fresh as new, at unpredictable moments; for the smiling lies and the mental images she couldn't shake; for the shame of having been so naive.
For the way loneliness is worse when you return to it after a reprieve - like the soul's version of putting on a wet bathing suit, clammy and miserable.
And this, Karou thought, no longer smiling, is for the irretrievable. ~ Laini Taylor

I am a link in a chain ~ Laini Taylor

Beautiful men and women with distorted shadows came and scorched their handprints onto doors before vanishing skyward, drafts of heat billowing behind them with the whumph of unseen wings. Here and there, feathers fell, and they were like tufts of white fire, disintegrating to ash as soon as they touched the ground. ~ Laini Taylor

Never sit staring at a blank page or screen. If you find yourself stuck, write. Write about the scene you're trying to write. Writing about is easier than writing, and chances are, it will give you your way in. ~ Laini Taylor

The goddess of assassins has tasted my blood, he thought, and he wondered if she liked it, and wanted more. ~ Laini Taylor

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. ~ Laini Taylor

Don't put anything unnecessary into yourself. No poisons or chemicals, no fumes or smoke or alcohol, no sharp objects, no inessential needles - drug or tattoo - and ... no inessential penises, either." "Inessential penises?" Karou had repeated, delighted with the phrase in spite of her grief. "Is there any such thing as an essential one? ~ Laini Taylor

It was the first time either of them had ever held another's hand, and for them alone, the immensity of what unfolded that night was overshadowed by the perfect wonderment of fingers intertwined - as though this was what hands had always been for, and not for holding weapons at all. ~ Laini Taylor

It's the fuel for everything our people have done to each other since the beginning. That's what makes peace seem impossible. How can you blame someone for wanting to kill the killer of their loved ones? How can you fault people for what they do in grief? ~ Laini Taylor

Finding Akiva's door still closed, Liraz gave a chuff of derision and didn't knock but only crashed it open and glared at the sight that greeted them. Akiva and Karou, eyes bleary with desire, facing each other on a stone slab and touching, hands to hearts ... "Well," Liraz said, her voice as dry as the rest of her was not. "At least you still have your clothes on. ~ Laini Taylor

And so this paradise was like a jewel box without a jewel. There it lay, day after day ... , and waited for lovers to find it and fill it with their happiness ~ Laini Taylor

It may be your soul that I love, but I'm pretty keen on its vessel, too. ~ Laini Taylor

If there's something you want, pursue it. Hope has power. Don't waste it on foolish things. ~ Laini Taylor

Her feet were bare, her mouth stained damson. Her pockets were all full of plums. She was young and lovely and surprised and dead.
She was also blue. ~ Laini Taylor

She asked in a hesitant whisper, "Do you still think i'm a... A singularly unhorrible demon?"
"No," he said smiling. "I think you're magical, and brave, and exquisite. And..." His voice grew bashful. Only in a dream could he be so bold and speak such words. "I hope you'll let me be in your story. ~ Laini Taylor

The thing is, you throw brains and souls into an animal and stir, you don't really know what you're going to get. ~ Laini Taylor

I have no strategy. I just want to skip all this and get to the part where he's my boyfriend. Not to mention, you know, the part where he's aware I exist. ~ Laini Taylor

There are boys you look at and want to touch with your mouth, and there are boys you look at and want to wear one of those surgical masks everyone in China had during bird flu. There are a lot more bird-flu boys at large. ~ Laini Taylor

The truth, she found, felt smooth, like a skipping stone in the palm of your hand. ~ Laini Taylor

Staring at herself in the mirror, she found that she'd lost the ability to see herself through her own eyes. She was only what humans would see. Not a girl or a woman or someone in between. They wouldn't see her loneliness or fear or courage, let alone her humanity. They would see only obscenity. Calamity. ~ Laini Taylor

A kiss must end for another to begin, and it did, and did again. ~ Laini Taylor

So what,' said Zuzana. 'They had to be pretty stupid butterflies to fall for him anyway. You'll grow new ones with more sense. New wise butterflies. ~ Laini Taylor

But wasn't that what religions did? Squint at one another and declare, My unprovable belief is better than your unprovable belief. Suck it. ~ Laini Taylor

Liraz may have captured Ziri's soul like a butterfly in a bottle, but that was only a formality. It was already hers.
And, clearly, judging by the state of her laugh-sobbing in Karou's arms, hers was his, too. ~ Laini Taylor

You were true to her, even if she was not to you. Never repent of your own goodness, child. To stay true in the face of evil is a feat of great strength."
"Strength," she said with a little laugh. "I gave her strength, and look what she did with it. ~ Laini Taylor

Karou's smile was pure; she was happy to give happiness. ~ Laini Taylor

No, I have to lure him out, like a will-o'-the-wisp, tease him deeper and deeper into the forest until he is lost and doomed. Without the forest or the doom - just the luring. Like a Venus flytrap that says I am a delicious flower come taste me and then snap! Devour. Without the devouring. Well, maybe a little devouring. ~ Laini Taylor

So much to rue, but to what end? All unlived lives cancel one another out. ~ Laini Taylor

The story goes like this," he said. "We were having dinner together, you and I. As we do from time to time. It was grimgrouse. Over-spiced. You killed the cook for that. Temper." He added, as an instructive side, "You know, in a story, it's the details like that that make it seem real. Anyway, you for a bone stuck in your mustache. Did I mention you has a mustache? ~ Laini Taylor

This was a game that kill could not win - or, if it did, it would be an unbearable win that destroyed the very meaning of winning. ~ Laini Taylor

It seems right that Mik should be awakened in the same way. That we should lose our magic virginity the same way. To creepy puppets, during snowstorms.
(Okay. That sounds so wrong. But you know what I mean.) ~ Laini Taylor

His lips made a grim twist that was like the joyless cousin of a smile. ~ Laini Taylor

Once upon a time there was a silence that dreamed of becoming a song, and then I found you, and now everything is music. ~ Laini Taylor

Her voice would die before she ran out of rage. She could scream a hole in her throat and come unraveled, fall to pieces like moth-chewed silk, and still, from the leftover shreds of her, the little pile of tatters, would pour forth this unending scream. ~ Laini Taylor

All of this cuteness, it was one of nature's great bait and switches, because... that wasn't all there was to Zuzana Nováková. Not even a little bit.

Deciding to take her on was akin to a fish deciding idly to gobble up that pretty light bobbing in the shadows and then--OH GOD THE TEETH THE HORROR!--meeting the anglerfish on the other side. ~ Laini Taylor

Walking through, Karou experienced it all in a rush of old and new experience that was like the convergence of two swift rivers: Madrigal's memory and Karou's marvel, merging at every step. ~ Laini Taylor

Have I crossed the line? I'm about to peer in through a window at Mik. For some reason, this feels worse than peering out a window, as I was just doing with a fairly clear conscience. After all, peeping toms peep in, not out. But this is still a public space, I argue to myself. I'm not peeping in his window. I would never do that. This is a cafe. Moreover, it's kind of my cafe. Mine and Karou's. In no legally recognized way, of course. We don't own it, except spiritually.
Which is a much higher court than actual real estate ownership. ~ Laini Taylor

Once upon a time, an angel and a devil fell in love.
It did not end well. ~ Laini Taylor

Nd when he let her go, it was as if she had been filled and didn't realize it until he pulled away and the absence rushed back in. ~ Laini Taylor

The terror-the terror, the terror-lingered, and there was something else. It came with the dream, every time, and didn't recede with it but stayed like something a tide had washed in. Something awful-a rank leviathan corpse left to rot on the shore of her mind. It was remorse. But god, that was too bloodless a word for it,. This feeling the dream left her with, it was knives of panic and horror resting bright atop a red and meaty wound-fester of guilt. ~ Laini Taylor

What filled her wasn't desire, but tenderness, and a profund gratitude that he lived, and she did, too. That he had found her, and that he had found her again. And ... dear gods and stardust ... yet again. Let that be the last time he ever needed to come looking for her. ~ Laini Taylor

Hope is the real magic, child. ~ Laini Taylor

You are a conniving, deceitful hussy. I stand in awe."
"You're sitting."
"I sit in awe. ~ Laini Taylor

The ones who know can't tell us, and the ones who tell us don't know. ~ Laini Taylor

It was so dark, it was almost black and it melted on her tongue into an ancient flavor of seed pod, earth, shade, and sunlight, its bitterness casting just a shadow of sweet. It tasted ... fine, so subtle and strange it made her feel like a novitiate into some arcanum of spice. ~ Laini Taylor

Once upon a time, a girl went to see a monster menagerie where all the exhibits were dead. ~ Laini Taylor

There were crinkles at the corners of his eyes, which were merry and asquint with unselfconscious happiness. The change was profound. If he was beautiful when grave-and he was-smiling, he was nothing short of glorious. ~ Laini Taylor

Zuzana wondered if she could have been wrong about him, but dismissed the thought. Anyone who would wear all white like that clearly had issues. Just looking at him made her wish she had a paintball gun, but hell, you couldn't pack for every eventuality. ~ Laini Taylor

It wasn't simply a question of parlors and tea trays - though there was that, too. If she were coming in reality he would be limited by reality. But dreams were a different matter. He was Strange the Dreamer. This was his realm, and there were no limits here. ~ Laini Taylor

She tastes like nectar and salt. Nectar and salt and apples. Pollen and stars and hinges. She tastes like fairy tales. Swan maiden at midnight. Cream on the tip of a fox's tongue. She tastes like hope. ~ Laini Taylor