Marie Rutkoski > Quotes

“Isn't that what stories do, make real things fake, and fake things real?”
― Marie Rutkoski, The Winner's Curse

“Happiness depends on being free, and freedom depends on being courageous.”
― Marie Rutkoski, The Winner's Curse

“He knew the law of such things: people in brightly lit places cannot see into the dark.”
― Marie Rutkoski, The Winner's Curse

“You don't, Kestrel, even though the god of lies loves you.”
― Marie Rutkoski, The Winner's Curse

“The truth can deceive as well as a lie.”
― Marie Rutkoski, The Winner's Curse

“If you won’t be my friend, you’ll regret being my enemy.”
― Marie Rutkoski, The Winner's Crime

“You don't need to be gifted with a blade. You are your own best weapon.”
― Marie Rutkoski, The Winner's Kiss

“My soul is yours," he said. "You know that it is.”
― Marie Rutkoski, The Winner's Curse

“Arin smiled. It was a true smile, which let her know that all the others he had given her were not.”
― Marie Rutkoski, The Winner's Curse

“She turned to look at him, and he was already looking at her. “I’m going to miss you when I wake up,” she whispered, because she realized that she must have fallen asleep under the sun. Arin was too real for her imagination. He was a dream.
“Don’t wake up,” he said.”
― Marie Rutkoski, The Winner's Crime

“Sometimes you think you want something,” Arin told him, “when in reality you need to let it go.”
― Marie Rutkoski, The Winner's Crime

“Nothing in dreams can hurt you.”
― Marie Rutkoski, The Winner's Curse

“Arin wondered if she would lift her eyes, but wasn’t worried he would be seen in the garden’s shadows.
He knew the law of such things: people in brightly lit places cannot see into the dark.”
― Marie Rutkoski, The Winner's Curse

“Marry him,” Arin said, “but be mine in secret.”
― Marie Rutkoski, The Winner's Crime

“The god of lies must love you, you see things so clearly.”
― Marie Rutkoski, The Winner's Curse

“I don’t mind being a moth. I would probably start eating silk if it meant that I could fly.”
― Marie Rutkoski, The Winner's Crime

“People in brightly lit places cannot see into the dark.”
― Marie Rutkoski, The Winner's Curse

“Will you come with me?"
"Ah, Kestrel, that's something you never need to ask.”
― Marie Rutkoski, The Winner's Kiss

“He changed us both." She seemed to struggle for words. "I think of you, all that you lost, who you were, what you were forced to be, and might have been, and I—I have become this, this person, unable to—"

She shut her mouth.

"Kestrel," he said softly, "I love this person.”
― Marie Rutkoski, The Winner's Kiss

“Arin pulled her onto his lap. He held her shaking form, tucked his face into the crook of her cold neck as she sobbed against him. He murmured that he loved her more than he could say. He promised that he would always choose her first.”
― Marie Rutkoski, The Winner's Kiss

“The Winner’s Curse is when you come out on top of the bid, but only by paying a steep price.”
― Marie Rutkoski, The Winner's Curse

“You might not think of me as your friend,' Kestrel told Arin, 'but I think of you as mine.”
― Marie Rutkoski, The Winner's Curse

“There was dishonor, she decided, in accepting someone else’s idea of honor without question.”
― Marie Rutkoski, The Winner's Crime

“An emotion clamped down on her heart. It squeezed her into a terrible silence. But he said nothing after that, only her name, as if her name were not a name but a question. Or perhaps that it wasn’t how he had said it, and she was wrong, and she’d heard a question simply because the sound of him speaking her name made her wish that she were his answer.”
― Marie Rutkoski, The Winner's Crime

“Arin. I've wanted to do this for a long time."

Her words silenced him, steadied him.

Anticipation lifted within her like the fragrance of a garden under the rain. She sat at the piano, touching the keys. "Ready?"

He smiled. "Play.”
― Marie Rutkoski, The Winner's Kiss

“She reminded herself bitterly that this was what curiosity had bought her: fifty keystones for a singer who refused to sing, a friend who wasn't her friend, some one who was hers and yet would never be hers.”
― Marie Rutkoski, The Winner's Curse

“He did not want her to know.
He did not want her to see.
But:
Look at me, he found himself thinking furiously at her. Look at me.
She lifted her eyes, and did.”
― Marie Rutkoski, The Winner's Crime

“If I die, you'll survive. If you die, it will destroy me.”
― Marie Rutkoski, The Winner's Kiss

“He lifted her up onto the table so that her face was level with his, and as they kissed it seemed that words were hiding in the air around them, that they were invisible creatures that feathered against her and Arin, then nudged, and buzzed, and tugged.
Speak, they said.
Speak, the kiss answered.”
― Marie Rutkoski, The Winner's Curse

“She saw him and didn’t understand how she had ever missed his beauty. How it didn’t always strike her as it did now, like a blow.”
― Marie Rutkoski, The Winner's Curse