Thea > Thea's Quotes

“The books we love, they love us back. And just as we mark our places in the pages, those pages leave their marks on us. I can see it in you, sure as I see it in me. You're a daughter of the words. A girl with a story to tell.”
― Jay Kristoff, Nevernight

“Too many books. Too few centuries.”
― Jay Kristoff, Nevernight

“You've got the look of a girl who's no stranger to the page. I can tell. You've got words in your soul.”
― Jay Kristoff, Nevernight

“The brighter the light, the deeper the shadow.”
― Jay Kristoff, Nevernight

“Never flinch" A cold whisper in her ear. "Never fear. And never, ever forget.”
― Jay Kristoff, Nevernight

“She'd grown up inside books. No matter how dark life became, shutting out the hurt was as easy as opening a cover. A child of murdered parents and a failed rebellion, she'd still walked in the boots of scholars and warriors, queens and conquerors.

The heavens grant us only one life, but through books, we live a thousand.”
― Jay Kristoff, Godsgrave

“Most of the bad guys in the real world don't know that they are bad guys. You don't get a flashing warning sign that you're about to damn yourself. It sneaks up on you when you aren't looking.”
― Jim Butcher

“Son. Everyone dies alone. That's what it is. It's a door. It's one person wide. When you go through it, you do it alone. But it doesn't mean you've got to be alone before you go through the door. And believe me, you aren't alone on the other side.”
― Jim Butcher, Dead Beat

“There are bad things in the world. There's no getting away from that. But that doesn't mean nothing can be done about them. You can't abandon life just because it's scary, and just because sometimes you get hurt. ”
― Jim Butcher, Turn Coat

“But the only way never to do the wrong thing is never to do anything.”
― Jim Butcher, White Night

“The heart of democracy is violence, Miss Tagwynn,” Esterbrook said. “In order to decide what to do, we take a count of everyone for and against it, and then do whatever the larger side wishes to do. We’re having a symbolic battle, its outcome decided by simple numbers. It saves us time and no end of trouble counting actual bodies—but don’t mistake it for anything but ritualized violence. And every few years, if the person we elected doesn’t do the job we wanted, we vote him out of office—we symbolically behead him and replace him with someone else. Again, without the actual pain and bloodshed, but acting out the ritual of violence nonetheless. It’s actually a very practical way of getting things done.”
― Jim Butcher, The Aeronaut's Windlass

“the worst madmen don’t seem odd at all,” Grimm said. “They appear to be quite calm and rational, in fact. Until the screaming starts.”
― Jim Butcher, The Aeronaut's Windlass

“There are many things you have never done,” Rowl responded. “To be frightened of them is of no use to you.”
― Jim Butcher, The Aeronaut's Windlass

“Good men want only the power to make things right. Great men seek to make things right and gather the power to do so. Great leaders find those who are worthy of wielding power and set them to the task of making things right.”
― Kel Kade, Free the Darkness

“Do not mistake your ignorance or lack of skills for cowardice. It is a wise man that acknowledges his limitations.”
― Kel Kade, Free the Darkness

“If you live your life for the sole purpose of seeking the approval of others, you will live no life at all.”
― Kel Kade, Reign of Madness

“Love never dies a natural death. It dies because we don't know how to replenish its source. It dies of blindness and errors and betrayals. It dies of illness and wounds; it dies of weariness, of witherings, of tarnishings.”
― Anais Nin

“I have claimed that Escape is one of the main functions of fairy-stories, and since I do not disapprove of them, it is plain that I do not accept the tone of scorn or pity with which 'Escape' is now so often used. Why should a man be scorned if, finding himself in prison, he tries to get out and go home? Or if he cannot do so, he thinks and talks about other topics than jailers and prison-walls?”
― J.R.R. Tolkien

“The great wage secret wars for power and wealth, and they call it government. Wars of words, and tricks, and guile, but no less bloody for that. The casualties are many.”
― Joe Abercrombie, The Blade Itself

“The vulgar crowd always is taken by appearances, and the world consists chiefly of the vulgar.”
― Niccolò Machiavelli, The Prince

“Any man who tries to be good all the time is bound to come to ruin among the great number who are not good. Hence a prince who wants to keep his authority must learn how not to be good, and use that knowledge, or refrain from using it, as necessity requires.”
― Niccolò Machiavelli, The Prince

“The real battle for your own soul isn't about falling from a great height; it's about descending, or not, one choice at a time.”
― Jim Butcher, Battle Ground

“The gods' most savage curses come upon us as answers to our own prayers. Prayer is a dangerous business.”
― Lois McMaster Bujold, The Curse of Chalion

“Any man can be kind when he is comfortable. I'd always thought kindness a trivial virtue, therefore. But when we were hungry, thirsty, sick, frightened, with our deaths shouting at us, in the heart of horror, you were still as unfailingly courteous as a gentleman at ease before his own hearth.”
― Lois McMaster Bujold, The Curse of Chalion

“Well, what is a blessing but a curse from another point of view?”
― Lois McMaster Bujold, The Curse of Chalion

“Any man can be kind when he is comfortable. I'd always thought kindness a trivial virtue therefore. But when we were hungry, thirsty, sick, frightened, with our deaths shouting at us, in the heart of horror, you were still as unfailingly courteous as a gentleman at his ease before his own hearth.'

'Events may be horrible or inescapable. Men have always a choice - if not whether, then how they may endure.'

-Bergon and Cazaril talking over the past”
― Lois McMaster Bujold, The Curse of Chalion

“I want to survive this world that keeps trying to destroy me.”
― Leigh Bardugo, Ninth House

“That was what magic did. It revealed the heart of who you'd been before life took away your belief in the possible. It gave back the world all lonely children longed for.”
― Leigh Bardugo, Ninth House

“Peace was like any high. It couldn't last. It was an illusion, something that could be interrupted in a moment and lost forever.”
― Leigh Bardugo, Ninth House

“He didn't know how precious a normal life could be, how easy it was to drift away from average. You started sleeping until noon, skipped one class, one day of school, lost one job, then another, forgot the way that normal people did things. You lost the language of ordinary life. And then, without meaning to, you crossed into a country from which you couldn't return. You lived in a state where the ground always seemed to be slipping from beneath your feet, with no way back to someplace solid.”
― Leigh Bardugo, Ninth House