Seanan McGuire > Quotes

“We notice the silence of men. We depend upon the silence of women.”
― Seanan McGuire, Every Heart a Doorway

“You’re nobody’s doorway but your own, and the only one who gets to tell you how your story ends is you.”
― Seanan McGuire, Every Heart a Doorway

“She was a story, not an epilogue.”
― Seanan McGuire, Every Heart a Doorway

“You're nobody's rainbow.
You're nobody's princess.
You're nobody's doorway but your own, and the only one who gets to tell you how your story ends is you.”
― Seanan mcguire , Every Heart a Doorway

“I’m a cat. We aren’t required to make sense.”
― Seanan McGuire, A Local Habitation

“Some adventures require nothing more than a willing heart and the ability to trip over the cracks in the world.”
― Seanan McGuire, Down Among the Sticks and Bones

“Their love wanted to fix her, and refused to see that she wasn't broken.”
― Seanan McGuire, Every Heart a Doorway

“Because ‘boys will be boys’ is a self-fulfilling prophecy,” said Lundy. “They’re too loud, on the whole, to be easily misplaced or overlooked; when they disappear from the home, parents send search parties to dredge them out of swamps and drag them away from frog ponds. It’s not innate. It’s learned. But it protects them from the doors, keeps them safe at home. Call it irony, if you like, but we spend so much time waiting for our boys to stray that they never have the opportunity. We notice the silence of men. We depend upon the silence of women.”
― Seanan McGuire, Every Heart a Doorway

“For us, places we went were home. We didn't care if they were good or evil or neutral or what. We cared about the fact that for the first time, we didn't have to pretend to be something we weren't. We just got to be. That made all the difference in the world.”
― Seanan McGuire, Every Heart a Doorway

“When Rome burned, the emperor's cats still expected to be fed on time.”
― Seanan McGuire, Rosemary and Rue

“This world is unforgiving and cruel to those it judges as even the slightest bit outside the norm.”
― Seanan McGuire, Every Heart a Doorway

“It gets better. It never gets easy, but it does start to hurt a little less.”
― Seanan McGuire, Every Heart a Doorway

“If you want to help her, you need to help yourself first. No one serves their friends by grinding themselves into dust on the altar of compassion.”
― Seanan McGuire, In an Absent Dream

“If anything attacked us, we could just panic at it until it went away.”
― Seanan McGuire, Rosemary and Rue

“That's the nice thing about insanity: evil people kill you, but crazy ones try to make you understand.”
― Seanan McGuire, A Local Habitation

“Because hope is a knife that can cut through the foundations of the world," said Sumi. Her voice was suddenly crystalline and clear, with none of her prior whimsy. She looked at Nancy with calm, steady eyes. "Hope hurts. That's what you need to learn, and fast, if you don't want it to cut you open from the inside out. Hope is bad. Hope means you keep on holding to things that won't ever be so again, and so you bleed an inch at a time until there's nothing left. Ely-Eleanor is always saying 'don't use this word' and 'don't use that word,' but she never bans the ones that really bad. She never bans hope.”
― Seanan McGuire, Every Heart a Doorway

“Because hope is a knife that can cut through the foundations of the world.”
― Seanan McGuire, Every Heart a Doorway

“Just once, I want to meet the villain in a cheerful, brightly lit room. Possibly one with kittens.”
― Seanan McGuire, An Artificial Night

“There are worlds built on rainbows and worlds built on rain. There are worlds of pure mathematics, where every number chimes like crystal as it rolls into reality. There are worlds of light and worlds of darkness, worlds of rhyme and worlds of reason, and worlds where the only thing that matters is the goodness in a hero's heart.”
― Seanan McGuire, Down Among the Sticks and Bones

“Now I know that if you open the right door at the right time, you might finally find a place where you belong.”
― Seanan McGuire, Every Heart a Doorway

“There is kindness in the world, if we know how to look for it. If we never start denying it the door.”
― Seanan McGuire, Beneath the Sugar Sky

“Never tell anyone to be careful, never ask what that noise was, and for the love of God, never, ever say that you'll be right back." —Evelyn Baker”
― Seanan McGuire, Discount Armageddon

“Children have always tumbled down rabbit holes, fallen through mirrors, been swept away by unseasonal floods or carried off by tornadoes. Children have always traveled, and because they are young and bright and full of contradictions, they haven’t always restricted their travel to the possible. Adulthood brings limitations like gravity and linear space and the idea that bedtime is a real thing, and not an artificially imposed curfew. Adults can still tumble down rabbit holes and into enchanted wardrobes, but it happens less and less with every year they live. Maybe this is a natural consequence of living in a world where being careful is a necessary survival trait, where logic wears away the potential for something bigger and better than the obvious. Childhood melts, and flights of fancy are replaced by rules. Tornados kill people: they don’t carry them off to magical worlds. Talking foxes are a sign of fever, not guides sent to start some grand adventure.
But children, ah, children. Children follow the foxes, and open the wardrobes, and peek beneath the bridge. Children climb the walls and fall down the wells and run the razor’s edge of possibility until sometimes, just sometimes, the possible surrenders and shows them the way to go home.”
― Seanan McGuire, Beneath the Sugar Sky

“Every choice feeds every choice that comes after, whether we want those choices or no.”
― Seanan McGuire, Down Among the Sticks and Bones

“You can't skip to the end of the story just because you're tired of being in the middle. You'd never survive.”
― Seanan McGuire, Middlegame

“She had tried to make sure they knew that there were a hundred, a thousand, a million different ways to be a girl, and that all of them were valid, and that neither of them was doing anything wrong.”
― Seanan McGuire, Down Among the Sticks and Bones

“The problem with people who say monsters don't really exist is that they're almost never saying it to the monsters." —Alice Healy”
― Seanan McGuire, Discount Armageddon

“A single revelation does not change a life. It is a start.”
― Seanan McGuire, Down Among the Sticks and Bones

“It’s been a long time since I’ve loved someone, but I know what it feels like. When you turn from me, it hurts. When you think badly of me, I think badly of myself. When you do stupid, suicidal things, I want to slap you upside the head and demand to know how you can be so brilliant and so blind at the same time.” Tybalt’s expression was calm. “If that’s not love, what is it?”

“Why are you telling me this?” I whispered.

“Because we’re probably going to die today.” He waved his free hand toward the street. “I’ve always tried not to lie to you; I’ve seen how you react when others do. Dying without telling you how I felt would be lying. I’ve been patient. I’ve given you time to recognize my feelings, and I’ve seen you choose a man who loved the girl you were, not the woman you are. Now he’s gone, and I can’t be patient anymore. I love you, October. I’ll be sorry if we die here, but I won’t be sorry I helped you… and I won’t be sorry I finally told you.”

“Tybalt…”

“Cats never regret anything,” he said, and he turned and kissed me.”
― Seanan McGuire, Ashes of Honor

“Some adventures begin easily. It is not hard, after all, to be sucked up by a tornado or pushed through a particularly porous mirror; there is no skill involved in being swept away by a great wave or pulled down a rabbit hole. Some adventures require nothing more than a willing heart and the ability to trip over the cracks in the world.
Other adventures must be committed to before they have even properly begun. How else will they know the worthy from the unworthy, if they do not require a certain amount of effort on the part of the ones who would undertake them? Some adventures are cruel, because it is the only way they know to be kind.”
― Seanan McGuire, Down Among the Sticks and Bones