Mollygf > Mollygf's Quotes

“I want to live,’ she repeated, ‘and live, and thrive, and survive them. I want a future. I don’t think death is a reprieve. I think it’s – it’s just the end. It forecloses everything – a future where I might be happy, and free. And it’s not about being brave. It’s about wanting another chance. Even if all I did was run away, even if I never lifted a finger to help anyone else as long as I lived – at least I would get to be happy. At least the world might be all right, just for a day, just for me. Is that selfish?”
― R.F. Kuang, Babel

“You humans always think you’re destined for things, for tragedy or for greatness. Destiny is a myth. Destiny is the only myth. The gods choose nothing. You chose.”
― R.F. Kuang, The Poppy War

“Children ceased to be children when you put a sword in their hands. When you taught them to fight a war, then you armed them and put them on the front lines, they were not children anymore. They were soldiers.”
― R.F. Kuang, The Poppy War

“She was a goddess. She was a monster. She‘d nearly destroyed this country. And then she‘d given it one last, gasping chance to live.”
― R.F. Kuang, The Burning God

“Dying was easy. Living was so much harder—that was the most important lesson Altan had ever taught her.”
― R.F. Kuang, The Burning God

“She saw it in a flash of utter clarity. She knew what she had to do. The only path, the only way forward. And what a familiar path it was. It was so obvious now. The world was a dream of the gods, and the gods dreamed in sequences, in symmetry, in patterns. History repeated itself, and she was only the latest iteration of the same scene in a tapestry that had been spun long before her birth.”
― R.F. Kuang, The Burning God

“It doesn’t go away. It never will. But when it hurts, lean into it. It’s so much harder to stay alive. That doesn’t mean you don’t deserve to live. It means you’re brave.”
― R.F. Kuang, The Burning God

“She remembered the first time she'd ever laid eyes on Nezha, and then all the times thereafter. It hurt to see him. It hurt so much.”
― R.F. Kuang, The Burning God

“She recognized the way he was looking at her. It was how she’d once looked at Altan. It was the way she’d seen Daji look at Riga—that look of wretched, desperate, and reproachful loyalty. It said, Do it. Take what you want, it said. I’ll hate you for it. But I’ll love you forever. I can’t help but love you. Ruin me, ruin us, and I’ll let you.”
― R.F. Kuang, The Burning God

“You don’t know who you’re dealing with.” She leaned down close until her lips brushed his skin, until her breath scorched the side of his face. “I’m not Sinegardian elite. I’m that savage mud-skinned Speerly bitch that wiped a country off the map. And sometimes when I get a little too angry, I snap.”
― R.F. Kuang, The Burning God

“Theirs was a bond forged from necessity, hurt, and a shared, intimate understanding of hell.”
― R.F. Kuang, The Burning God

“He knew exactly what choice she'd made and what she intended. And that made everything- hating her, loving her, surviving her, so much harder.”
― R.F. Kuang, The Burning God

“Her voice, thin and reedy, faded without echo into the frigid air. But she screamed it again, and then again, and then again. It felt so good to say that she'd survived, that she'd fucking finally come out on top, that she didn't even care that she was screaming to corpses.”
― R.F. Kuang, The Burning God

“Tonight was a borrowed grace, innocent of the future. They sat in miserable and desperate silence, wishing and regretting while the bloody moon traced its ponderous path across the sky.”
― R.F. Kuang, The Burning God

“She's the only divine thing he's ever believed in. The only creature in this vast, cruel land who could kill him. And sometimes, in his loveliest dreams, he imagines she does.”
― R.F. Kuang, The Burning God

“He can't take his eyes off her. She's the most magnificent thing he's ever seen.”
― R.F. Kuang, The Burning God

“But what if someone could erase all memories of what she'd done?
No more guilt. No more nightmares. She wouldn't have flaring pockets in her memory like gaping wounds that hurt to touch. She wouldn't hear screams when she tried to sleep. She wouldn't see bodies burning every
time she closed her eyes.
Maybe that was the coward's haven. But she'd want it, too.”
― R.F. Kuang, The Burning God

“She no longer fought from pure rage. She fought to protect him - and that, she had discovered, changed everything.”
― R.F. Kuang, The Burning God