Quotes & Sayings About Changelings

Changelings are fish you're supposed to throw back. A cuckoo raised by sparrows. They don't quite fit anywhere. (pg. 134) — Holly Black

I have always swung back and forth between alienation and relatedness. As a child, I would run away from the beatings, from the obscene words, and always knew that if I could run far enough, then any leaf, any insect, any bird, any breeze could bring me to my true home. I knew I did not belong among people. Whatever they hated about me was a human thing; the nonhuman world has always loved me. I can't remember when it was otherwise. But I have been emotionally crippled by this. There is nothing romantic about being young and angry, or even about turning that anger into art. I go through the motions of living in society, but never feel a part of it. When my family threw me away, every human on earth did likewise. — Wendy Rose

No one belongs when they are new to this world. All children are Changelings. — Catherynne M Valente

The walk to the exit brought him into contact with several changelings. That wasn't unusual. What was unusual was the response his presence elicited. Smiles, waves, shouted hellos and even slaps on the back when he didn't move away fast enough. — Nalini Singh

Brea watched the other Jaren, the Jaren she wasn't sure she wanted to know, slip through the cracks of his face. He was like the changelings in that Dream Box game he was so invested in, Bladescape. Her own interested mask, the one she was supposed to wear, must have slanted a bit around the eyes because then the other Jaren, her Jaren, was back. She watched his dimples puddle in the black of his beard as his mind fumbled for something to say. And this impromptu self-modification, here at the monitoring station at the job where she'd made such a fool of herself, was the closest thing to love that Brea Morgen had ever known. — Daniel Pike

It looked good on paper- a little blood, a little death, a small resurrection- but it usually ended in a lot of carnage and an extremely painful, permanent death. — Bethany K. Lovell

But you're so easy to sneak up on." He crossed his arms, leaning back against the wall. "You should be honored that I bother, since there's no challenge to it."
"Right," I said dryly.
Tybalt has never made a secret of his contempt for changelings in general and me in particular. Not even the years I spent missing could change that. If anything, it made things worse, because when I came back, I promptly removed myself from all the places he was accustomed to finding me. Hating me suddenly took effort - an effort he's proved annoying glad to make. On the other hand, it's actually been something of a relief, because it is something I can count on. Dawn comes, the moon rises and Tybalt hates me. — Seanan McGuire

Once, he hadn't been able to touch her without causing himself pain. Now, it only hurt when he didn't touch her. — Nalini Singh

Like all power, psychic power had a flip side. Changelings could turn feral. Psy could turn murderously insane. — Nalini Singh

A friend. What is a friend, in a world where any friend may be a lover at a new phase of the moon? Not I, locked in my virility: no friend to Therem Harth, or any other of his race. Neither man nor woman, neither and both, cyclic, lunar, metamorphosing under the hand's touch, changelings in the human cradle, they were no flesh of mine, no friends; no love between us. — Ursula K. Le Guin

I lowered my phone, hope and anger warring for control of my emotions. As always, it was easier to let anger win. I turned back to Sylvester. "You threw him out?" I asked, in a low dangerous tone. "I was asleep for almost eleven hours, and you threw him out?"
"October, I told you we had asked him -"
"No. 'We asked him to leave so you can rest' only works if I was asleep for four hours, or six, or maybe eight, although me sleeping for eight hours when I'm not injured or drugged is such a perishingly rare event that he should have been sitting next to the bed with a bowl of popcorn. Do you understand me? I was poisoned. This stuff is poison to changelings, and the man I love wanted to be with me, and you sent him away. You kept him away from me for eleven hours, and you didn't tell him what was going on. I know you meant well. But can either of you tell me how in the hell you could believe that was right? — Seanan McGuire

Humans and changelings had hobbies, he thought in one corner of his mind. This would be his. — Nalini Singh

I didn't think that Herefordshire Social Services would be best pleased about me dumping a poorly socialised pre-teen with mind control powers on them. — Ben Aaronovitch

If you were willing to trade him away, even for an hour, then you don't deserve him. I'll keep them both to raise as my own and let that be our judgment on you for breaking and oath with us. (pg. 9) — Holly Black

The Irish mingled their Christianity with folk beliefs in fairies and changelings. — Ryan Hackney

I love the stories of changelings and the thought that the Fey were these ancient, capricious creatures who were tricky and dangerous. I've always preferred the Brothers Grimm faery tales to the Disney fairy tales. — Julie Kagawa

The temperaments of children are often as oddly unsuited to parents as if capricious fairies had been filling cradles with changelings. — Harriet Beecher Stowe

When the words pour out of you just right, you understand that these sentences are all part of a river flowing out of your own distant, hidden ranges, and all words become the dissolving snow that feeds your mountain streams forever. The language locks itself in the icy slopes of our own high passes, and it is up to us, the writers, to melt the glaciers within us. When these glaciers break off, we get to call them novels, the changelings of our burning spirits, our life's work. — Pat Conroy

All changelings knew that, sometimes, touch could heal what words never could. — Nalini Singh

Come sit, dear," the old woman said. "We were just discussing kelpies and changelings."

I turned a delightfully amused face at Ronan, hoping to see him embarrassed to be caught in a world of fantasy, but his face was impassive, completely unperturbed. Those were the hardest boys to ignore: the ones that weren't concerned with your opinion of them, not afraid to be caught listening to fairytales. — Annie Cosby

I am much perturbed by this business of sickness. Our bodies seem so easily to leap into the saddle where our minds should be. People who are ill become changelings. — Winifred Holtby

There's one thing I've learned about mortals. They're a lot more resilient and a whole bunch more resourceful than they usually give themselves credit for. Why else do you think the Fae have always had such a fascination with them? Why d'you think Auberon uses changelings to guard the Gate? Trolls are stronger, cheaper, more plentiful, and nobody cares if they get exploded or ripped to pieces. But he uses mortals. Because they're full of hidden strengths. — Lesley Livingston

Oh, Clay darling, if you had told me you were feeling irritated because of your ... problems, I wouldn't have made a fuss." She knew very well the changelings around her could hear every whispered word.
"Tally." It was a warning growl.
"I mean it must be embarrassing for you ... being that you're such a big man." her tone implied all sorts of things. "Last night was an aberration, I'm sure. And if not, there are always the pills. — Nalini Singh

People always say it's changelings who most crave touch, but that's not the truth. A long time ago, long before Silence, Psy craved it more than any other.
He let her words was over him like affectionate rain. His mate, his mate, was trying to temper his grief, trying to tell him they weren't so very different after all. — Nalini Singh

The Psy race's greatest advantage was the mind; the changelings', the body. — Nalini Singh

We are rag dolls made out of many ages and skins, changelings who have slept in wood nests or hissed in the uncouth guise of waddling amphibians. We have played such roles for infinitely longer ages than we have been men. Our identity is a dream. We are process, not reality, for reality is an illusion of the daylight - the light of our particular day. — Loren Eiseley

Jellyfish," Riaz said, after considering the other inhabitants of the sea. "Seriously, there cannnot be jellyfish changelings."
Hawke turned to look over his shoulder. "What the hell have you been smoking?"
Riaz shruged, his mood undampened. "It was green and leafy. — Nalini Singh

The bodies of the newly dead are not debris nor remnant, nor are they entirely icon or essence. They are, rather, changelings, incubates, hatchlings of a new reality that bear our names and dates, our image and likenesses, as surely in the eyes and ears of our children and grandchildren as did word of our birth in the ears of our parents and their parents. It is wise to treat such new things tenderly, carefully, with honor. — Thomas Lynch