Laini Quotes & Sayings

He dreamed of deserts and great empty cities and imagined he could feel the minutes and hours of his life running through him, as though he were nothing but an hourglass of flesh and bone. — Laini Taylor

Once upon a time,an angel and a devil pressed their hands to their hearts
and started the apocalypse. — Laini Taylor

His lips made a grim twist that was like the joyless cousin of a smile. — Laini Taylor

She looked at him, beautiful Kazimir whose smile used to work on her like a summons, compelling her to his side. — Laini Taylor

How could you tell if your instincts were just hope in disguise, and if your hope was really desperation parading as possibility? — Laini Taylor

The tattered lace of darkness still hung over the city, as if night were a grim bride trudging to the horizon, trailing her shadowy train. — Laini Taylor

To a new generation of butterflies, hopefully less stupid than last.
Maybe they were burgeoning even now in fat little cocoons. Or maybe not. — Laini Taylor

And this totally normal conversation unspools from there, covering the basics: family, siblings, school, favorite composers, favorite movies, favorite wood (for carving puppets), the prehistory of the sandwich, and whether the ancient Romans got their togas caught in the spokes of their unicycles — Laini Taylor

She would choose her family. Anything else was unthinkable, — Laini Taylor

Brimstone once told me that to stay true in the face of evil is a feat of strength. — Laini Taylor

It was a very small wish. These beads were just scuppies, — Laini Taylor

How do you act like you've lost your soul? Akiva asked. He meant it as a lighthearted question about a children's game, but when he heard himself say the words, he thought, Who knows better than I?
You betray everything you believe in. You drown your grief in vengeance. You kill and keep killing until there's no one left. — Laini Taylor

My phone buzzes. It's from Karou: a list of conversation openers that I won't be needing. - a) Hi. I'm Zuzana. I'm actually a marionette brought to life by the Blue Fairy, and the only way I can gain a soul is if a human falls in love with me. Help a puppet out? - b) Hi. I'm Zuzana. The touch of my lips imparts immortality. Just sayin'. - c) Hi. I'm Zuzana. I think I might like you. — Laini Taylor

You are not just going to vanish like this, Karou. This isn't some goddamn Narnia book. — Laini Taylor

The door opened. She looked in the mirror and suppressed a curse. Slipping in behind some tourists, that winged shadow was back again. Karou rose and made for the bathroom, where she took the note that Kishmish had come to deliver.
Again it bore a single word. But this time the word was Please. — Laini Taylor

The world was carnage. You either suffered it or inflicted it. — Laini Taylor

It was interesting the way a small hate could grow inside a big hate and take it over. — Laini Taylor

And they gazed at themselves in it, side by side and hand in hand, and they beheld neither gods nor monsters. They were so nearly unchanged, and yet that one thing - the color of their skin - would, in the real world, change everything. — Laini Taylor

A thousand things might have stopped me from being here right now, but instead, a thousand things brought me here. — Laini Taylor

It thrilled through her like her nerves were channeling starlight. He was safe. — Laini Taylor

Infinities are not for casual exploration. You could fall and keep falling. You could get lost. — Laini Taylor

This must be what feelings are. This is why people write poems! I get it now.
I get it, and I want more. — Laini Taylor

Seeing her shiver, I want to take her into my coat and button it around her. I want to warm my face against her neck and steam her up like a mirror and write my name on her with my fingertip. — Laini Taylor

He remembered a story Madrigal had told him once: the human tale of the golem. It was a thing shaped of clay in the form of a man, brought to life by carving the symbol aleph into its brow. Aleph was the first symbol of an ancestral human alphabet, and the first letter of the Hebrew word truth; it was the beginning. Watching Karou rise to her feet, radiant in a fall of lapis hai, in a woven dress the colour of tangerines, with a loop of silver beads at her throat and a look of joy and relief and ... love ... on her beautiful face, Akiva knew that she was his aleph, his truth and beginning. His soul. — Laini Taylor

The pair of them were again in the eye of a storm of misery - their world was a storm of misery and they were caught in its center, in the deceptive stillness that had allowed them to forget, once upon a time, that all around them was a stinging whirl of hatred that would catch them - it was everywhere and everything and they'd been fools to think they could leave their small safe place and not be caught in that vortex like every other living creature in Eretz. — Laini Taylor

Don't leave. And don't let him leave, either. I have threats to deliver. Judgments to pass. — Laini Taylor

It (scent) was barely there at all, but in the hint of its existence it was as fragile as night blossoms - not too sweet but just enough, like the dew on a requiem bud in the palest hour of dawn. — Laini Taylor

It may be your soul that I love, but I'm pretty keen on its vessel, too. — Laini Taylor

Are you saying you don't love me?" Hazael asked Liraz. "Because I love you. I think." He paused in contemplation. "Oh. No. Never mind. That's fear. — Laini Taylor

There was only one possible answer, as plain as it was disturbing.
That she was not, in fact, human. — Laini Taylor

Everyone I know who put any energy into a backup plan is now living that backup plan instead of their dream. Put all your energy into your dream. That's the only way it will ever become real. — Laini Taylor

Once upon a time, there had been gods. Now there were only children going about in their dead parents' undergarments. — Laini Taylor

My people understood that time is an ocean, not a river," she said to them all. "It doesn't flow away and pour itself out, done and gone. It simply is - eternal and entire. Mortals might move through it in one direction, but that's no reflection of its true nature - only of our limitations. Past and future are our own constructs. — Laini Taylor

Akiva felt the tilt of the world trying to tip him forward: to be nearer to her
nearer and touching
as though that were the only state of rest, and every other action and movement were geared to achieving it. — Laini Taylor

Will you take some refreshment?" His lip pulled into a snarl. Unable to contain himself, he added, "One last cup of tea before you burn, you old bitch? — Laini Taylor

Life is your master, or death is. — Laini Taylor

I will give them nightmares to haunt their dreams long after I'm gone. — Laini Taylor

Love was love.
But she hoped that he was not a dragon. — Laini Taylor

Please tell me you have to pee."
"What? No. No, I do not. Don't even ask."
"Oh, come on. I'd do it myself if I could, but I can't. I'm a girl."
"I know. Life is unfair. I'm still not going to pee on Karou's ex-boyfriend for you."
"What? I wasn't even going to ask you to." In her most reasonable tone, Zuzana explained, "I just want you to pee in a balloon so I can drop it on him."
"Oh." Mik pretended to consider this for approximately one and a half second. "No. — Laini Taylor

When he started to renew his protest, she held up a hand. What are you more afraid of: them or me with low blood sugar? — Laini Taylor

Karou's smile was pure; she was happy to give happiness. — Laini Taylor

Karou's glance flickered to where the corpse had been, which did not go unnoticed by Liraz. "You think I didn't learn?" the angel asked, incredulous.
And with that, Karou almost dared to hope. "Did you?" she asked, and her voice was very small.
Did you learn?
Did you glean Ziri's soul?
Dear gods and stardust, did you?
Liraz started to tremble. "I don't know," she said, "I don't know." Her voice shattered, and just like that she was crying. — Laini Taylor

Plus, it would be fun. Don't you think? I've always wanted to tase someone. Zap! Zuzana mimicked convulsions. — Laini Taylor

There was a man who loved the moon, but whenever he tried to embrace her, she broke into a thousand pieces and left him drenched, with empty arms. — Laini Taylor

Finding Akiva's door still closed, Liraz gave a chuff of derision and didn't knock but only crashed it open and glared at the sight that greeted them. Akiva and Karou, eyes bleary with desire, facing each other on a stone slab and touching, hands to hearts ... "Well," Liraz said, her voice as dry as the rest of her was not. "At least you still have your clothes on. — Laini Taylor

War is all we've been taught, but there are other ways to live. We can find them, Akiva. We can invent them. This is the beginning, here." She touched his chest and felt a rush of love for the heart that moved his blood, for his smooth skin and his scars and his unsoldierly tenderness. She took his hand and pressed it to her breast and said, "We are the beginning. — Laini Taylor

There was no echo, no reverberation. If anything the room ate sound. It swallowed her voice, her words, and her eternal, inadequate apology. But not her memories. She would never be rid of those. — Laini Taylor

Above and behind it, slopes scraped north, where the teeth of the Atlas Mountains bit off the sky. Before and below, the earth rolled down a slope of scree and scrub toward the distant Sahara. It was a bleak vista, so still that is seemed the twitch of a scorpion's tail for miles around should draw the eye. — Laini Taylor

I almost never like people, even in tiny doses. But I never get tired of being with you. — Laini Taylor

When they had hurried to the train station with their violin cases, they had drawn almost as many stares as they would on any normal day when their hair was to their knees and sheeting behind them like red silk. A poetic fruit-seller had told them once that they looked like dryads, and they did still, only now they looked like dryads who had tired of snagging their hair on brambles and sliced it all off on the edge of a knife. — Laini Taylor

I came back to find you," Akiva said. "I don't know why. Karou. Karou. I don't know why." His voice was so faint she could barely hear him. "Just to find you and be in the world that you're in ... — Laini Taylor

Wasn't that what she had always wanted, to be chosen? — Laini Taylor

He'd sooner die trying to hold the world on his shoulders than running away. Better always to run toward. And so he did. — Laini Taylor

Perhaps Fate laid out your life for you like a dress on a bed, and you could either wear it or go naked. — Laini Taylor

War does that, nothing for it. Reality lays siege. Your framed portrait of life is smashed, and a new one thrust upon you. It's ugly, and you don't even want to look at it let alone hang it on the wall, but you have no choice, once you know. Once you really know. — Laini Taylor

That faeries have forgotten the Tapestry; that is the greatest tragedy of all. It's the fabric of all creation and it's woven of dreams, the dreams of the Djinn. Dreams are real, Magpie. They're seed and water and sun. They're everything. — Laini Taylor

I have scuppies in my pocket and lust in my heart. Tonight's the night. — Laini Taylor

The worst moment of one's life could be seared into the memory, brighter than any joy. — Laini Taylor

Once upon a time, a girl went to see a monster menagerie where all the exhibits were dead. — Laini Taylor

What filled her wasn't desire, but tenderness, and a profund gratitude that he lived, and she did, too. That he had found her, and that he had found her again. And ... dear gods and stardust ... yet again. Let that be the last time he ever needed to come looking for her. — Laini Taylor

The library knows its own mind," old Master Hyrrokkin told him, leading him back up the secret stairs. "When it steals a boy, we let it keep him." Lazlo — Laini Taylor

Heavily and hypnotically,with her soul flattening itself back like the ears of a hissing cat,Kizzy leaned in and drank of Jack Husk's full,moist mouth,and his red,red lips were hungry against hers,drinking her in return.Their eyes closed.Fingers clutched at collars and hair,at the picnic blanket,at the grass.And as they sank down,pinning their shadows beneath them,the horizon tipped on its side,and slowly,thickly,hour by hour,the day spilled out and ebbed away.
It was Kizzy's first kiss, and maybe it was her last, and it was delicious. — Laini Taylor

I have been known to say that the devil gave me my first violin. — Laini Taylor

It was a different life out here, but make no mistake: Lazlo was every bit the dreamer he had always been, if not more. He might have left his books, but he carried all his stories with him. — Laini Taylor

I've always imagined that one day the path of your life would unroll at your feet and carry you away from us. As it should, as it must. But I am glad that day is not today. — Laini Taylor

Until a few days ago, humans had been little more than legend to him, and now here he was in their world. It was like stepping into the pages of a book
a book alive with color and fragrance, filth and chaos
and the blue-haired girl moved through it all like a fairy through a story, the light treating her differently than it did others, the air seemed to gather around her like held breath. As if this whole place was a story about her. — Laini Taylor

Nerves," Mik told Karou.
"Bad?"
"Terrible." Stepping up behind Zuzana, he bent down to enfold her in a spoon-hug. "Ferociously, dreadfully awful. She's unbearable. You take her. I've had enough."
Zuzana batted at him, then squealed as he buried his face in the curve of her throat and made exaggerated kissing noises. — Laini Taylor

You really think joy is easier to come by than pain? What have you had more of? — Laini Taylor

Just then, lit only by the flicker of his wings,the sight of him was so..right somehow. He was right. It made no sense at all, but the feeling flooded through Karou — Laini Taylor

But Hazael only said, "I brought you a present."
Liraz took the flower, looked at it, and then a Hazael, expressionless. And then she ate it. She chewed the flower and swallowed it.
"Hmm," said Hazael. "Not the usual response."
"Oh, do you give flowers often?"
"Yes," he said. He probably did. Hazael had a way of enjoying life in spite of the many restrictions they lived under, being soldiers, and worse, being Misbegotten. "I hope it wasn't poisonous," he said lightly.
Liraz just shrugged. "There are worse ways to die. — Laini Taylor

Love is an element. Like air to breath, earth to stand on. — Laini Taylor

Daughter of my heart,' was the message Brimstone sent just for Karou. She wanted to cry again right here in the court, thinking of it. 'Twice-daughter, my joy. Your dream is my dream, and your name is true. You are all of our hope. — Laini Taylor

You should quit. Cigarettes make people taste ... yellow.
Taste? Kizzy's mind did a cartwheel. Taste? Was this Jack Husk thinking about tasting her? Great God Almighty, she did not want to taste yellow if that happened, whatever yellow tasted like. — Laini Taylor

Liraz may have captured Ziri's soul like a butterfly in a bottle, but that was only a formality. It was already hers.
And, clearly, judging by the state of her laugh-sobbing in Karou's arms, hers was his, too. — Laini Taylor

As long as you want me with you."
"I want me with you," she said at once. She heard the mix-up of her words - me with you - but didn't correct herself. It was exactly what she meant. — Laini Taylor

You're like a kid when her parents come home from a party, checking their pockets for cake."
"Ooh, cake. I'll take cake. But not pocket cake, because yuck. — Laini Taylor

Might they just be two ways of saying the same thing? Suppose 'Heave' and 'Hell' are just other universes. — Laini Taylor

To eat or not to eat, that is the question: whether 'tis Nobler in the stomach to suffer the Slings and Arrows of outrageous Hunger (while keeping mouthparts in pristine kissing condition) or to take Spoon against Slice of cake, and
"Yes, please," my stomach pipes up. — Laini Taylor

The main thing I've learned is that we all have to learn to work with - and appreciate - the brain we've been given, and not waste time wishing things were easier. — Laini Taylor

From: Zuzana Subject: Miss Radio Silence To: Karou — Laini Taylor

I was going to say the beginning is the good part, when it's all sparks and sparkles, before they are inevitably unmasked as assholes. — Laini Taylor

So violent. You want to mug and tase everybody these days."
"I do," Zuzana agreed. "I swear I hate more poeple every day. Everyone annoys me. If I'm like this now, what am I going to be like when I'm old?"
"You'll be the mean old biddy who fires a BB gun at kids from her balcony."
"Nah. BBs just rile 'em up. More like a crossbow. Or a bazooka. — Laini Taylor

She hadn't expected to be sorry, and at first she wasn't. The act itself was neither disappointing nor magical; it was what it was: a new closeness. A shared secret. — Laini Taylor

You almost hold up your piece of paper and say, 'The girl I like just gave me a treasure map to herself.' But you don't. You just don't. — Laini Taylor

I will do just as you wish,' said no cat ever. — Laini Taylor

She'd hit the stony bottom of her own shallow depths. — Laini Taylor

Well," Loraz said, her voice as dry as the rest of her was not. "At least you still have clothes on. — Laini Taylor

Not that I'm not keen to talk to him. I am
in the fantasy version of tonight, anyway, in which I actually manage to string words into sentences, and not just random magnetic-poetry sentences, but sentences that don't lead to the logical conclusion that I have brain damage. — Laini Taylor

Elemental. Love is an element, Karou remembered from a long, long time ago, and she felt like she was floating. — Laini Taylor

Mercy, she had discovered, made mad alchemy: a drop of it could dilute a lake of hate. — Laini Taylor

Did you know that mako shark fetuses eat each other in the womb? ... Its true. Only cannibal fetuses survive to be born. Can you imagine if people were like that? — Laini Taylor

There is the past, and there is the future. The present is never more than the single second dividing one from the other. We live poised on that second as it's hurtling forward - toward what? — Laini Taylor

That widow's peak is preposterous. God. It really makes you feel the sad dearth of widow's peaks in daily life. We could, like, use him as breeding stock to seed widow's peaks into the populace.""My god. What's with all the mating and seed talk?""I'm just saying," Zuzana said reasonably. "I'm crazy about Mik, okay, but that doesn't mean I can't do my part for the proliferation of widow's peaks. As a favor to the gene pool. You would, too, right? Or maybe ... " She shot Karou a sidelong glance. "You already have? — Laini Taylor

I cup the bead in my hand and smile as I drift toward sleep, wondering what my rainy days are going to look like now. As good as my snowy ones, I think. I'm going to need a bigger umbrella. — Laini Taylor

I love bookshelves, and stacks of books, spines, typography, and the feel of pages between my fingertips. I love bookmarks, and old bindings, and stars in margins next to beautiful passages. I love exuberant underlinings that recall to me a swoon of language-love from a long-ago reading, something I hoped to remember. I love book plates, and inscriptions in gifts from loved ones, I love author signatures, and I love books sitting around reminding me of them, being present in my life, being. I love books. Not just for what they contain. I love them as objects too, as ever-present reminders of what they contain, and because they are beautiful. They are one of my favorite things in life, really at the tiptop of the list, easily my favorite inanimate things in existence, and ... I am just not cottoning on to this idea of making them ... not exist anymore. Making them cease to take up space in the world, in my life? No, please do not take away the physical reality of my books. — Laini Taylor

We haven't been introduced'
Finding her voice, she replied 'You know who I am, and I know who you are, and-'
'-that won't serve'. His voice twined with hers, changing the scrip. And in the lapse after their words, she heard him waiting. — Laini Taylor

Once upon a time, a little girl was raised by monsters.
But angels burned the doorways to their world, and she was all alone. — Laini Taylor

Stars got tangled in her hair whenever she played in the sky. — Laini Taylor

Once upon a time ...
A journey began,
that would stitch all the worlds together with light. — Laini Taylor

It was not a happy ending but a happy middle
at last, after so many fraught beginnings. — Laini Taylor