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

What a lovely display of personhood. He's like a good book cover that grabs your gaze. Read me. I'm fun but smart. You won't be able to put me down.

— Laini Taylor

What can a soldier do when mercy is treason, and he is alone in it?

— Laini Taylor

What do you think I live on, rainwater and daydreams?

— Laini Taylor

What's a horizon?' Lazio asked, straight-faced. 'Is it like the end of an aisle of books?

— Laini Taylor

What's the point of being old if you can't beleaguer the young with your vast stores of wisdom? And what's the point of being young if you can't ignore all advice?

— Laini Taylor

What was he? Storyteller and secretary and doer of odd jobs, neither Tamerlane nor delegate, just someone along for the dream.

— 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

Why not open the door, and open their arms, and close them again around each other? Did they not understand how, in the strange chemistry of human emotion, his suffering and her, mingled together, could... countervail each other?

— Laini Taylor

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

— Laini Taylor