Top 40 Carrie Vaughn Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “One inch at a time, that was how her father had taught her. You can’t do anything but worry about the few inches right in front of you.”

— Carrie Vaughn

2. “All you know is what you think you know, but that isn’t always what’s real.”

— Carrie Vaughn

3. “Stupid, fragile mortals.”

— Carrie Vaughn

4. “The worst storms were the ones that changed you. The ones you remembered not for how bad they objectively were, but for how much damage they did to your own world. Banners, planted in memory.”

— Carrie Vaughn

5. “You know, I’m sick and tired of people pointing rifles at me.”

— Carrie Vaughn

6. “It’s only a scratch, don’t cut my arm off!”

— Carrie Vaughn

7. “What the hell kind of name is Kitty for a werewolf?”

— Carrie Vaughn

8. “Don’t underestimate her ability to talk, it’s her superpower.”

— Carrie Vaughn

9. “The underworld, the old world, is the womb that gave birth to humanity. The journey from under the earth is the journey from ignorance to wisdom.”

— Carrie Vaughn

10. “Because all Robin Hood stories are fanfiction. Robin Hood started out as fanfiction and has never been anything else.”

— Carrie Vaughn

11. “He’s a bully. I love bullies. They have such big, shiny red buttons to push.”

— Carrie Vaughn

12. “Lack of subtlety, that’s how you beat magic.”

— Carrie Vaughn

13. “When someone out there says that I’m not really human – what are they giving themselves permission to do to me?”

— Carrie Vaughn

14. “You’re Regina Luporum,” Ned, Master of London, had said. “Of course strange things are happening to you.”

— Carrie Vaughn

15. “Apparently it was unethical for lawyers to sleep with their clients. This from a man who offered legal representation to assassins.”

— Carrie Vaughn

16. “A lot of these women had to overcome cultural conditioning against hurting other people, or even confronting anyone physically.”

— Carrie Vaughn

17. “So is he cute? Good-looking, I mean? Because I can’t really tell with guys, and it looked like you two might have hit it off.” I grinned at him. “Jealous?” He grinned right back. “That’s a trick question. If I say yes you’ll accuse me of being paranoid and unreasonable, and if I say no you’ll make some defensive crack about how I don’t think you’re worth getting jealous over.” This was what I got for hooking up with a lawyer.”

— Carrie Vaughn

18. “You only get married the first time once.” There was the philosophy of a generation wrapped up in a tidy little sentence.”

— Carrie Vaughn

19. “This city had been a city for two thousand years, and I could feel that with every step I took. bits of all that time were still here, alive, even if it was just in the form of collective memory.”

— Carrie Vaughn

20. “I looked at my two wolves. When I knelt they came to me rubbed against me smelling me and I stroked them. “Thank you for believing in me ” I said and maybe they understood and maybe they didn’t.”

— Carrie Vaughn

21. “Hey, Cormac. You ever have to deal with a PMSing werewolf?”

— Carrie Vaughn

22. “Then I realized that most of the world’s problems stemmed from macho dickheadism, and if I cold defeat that I could save the world.”

— Carrie Vaughn

23. “All right. I’ll bite. Here’s what I think, with the caveat that I may be wrong. I think we’re here to make the world a better place than we found it. I think we don’t always deserve the cards we’re dealt, good or bad. But we are judged by how we play the cards we’re dealt. Those of us with a bum deal that makes it harder to do good – we just have to work a little more is all. There’s no destiny. There’s just muddling through without doing to much damage.”

— Carrie Vaughn

24. “What all the stories and romances don’t say is that happily ever after doesn’t just happen. You have to work at it. You have to keep working at it.”

— Carrie Vaughn

25. “I imagined calling in to my own radio show: Yeah hi, I’m a werewolf, and I’m stuck in a cabin in the woods with another werewolf and a werewolf hunter...”

— Carrie Vaughn

26. “I don’t like going into this with a half-baked plan.” “It’s not half-baked,” I said. “It’s mostly baked. Just a little soft in the middle.” Actually, that was bravado.”

— Carrie Vaughn

27. “But the longing was the phantom ache of an amputated limb. It was part of her, and most of the time she didn’t notice. But certain moments were like reaching for something with a hand that wasn’t there.”

— Carrie Vaughn

28. “Even with the high-tech air filtration system in a modern facility, the place still smelled like archival storage: old paper, stale manila folders, cardboard, and dust. Libraries and accountants’ basements all over the world smelled like this. It was the scent of information waiting to be discovered.”

— Carrie Vaughn

29. “That we have purpose for being who we are, and what we are, though we may not always know it.”

— Carrie Vaughn

30. “You mean like some kind of A Midsummer Night’s Dream shtick? For real?”

— Carrie Vaughn

31. “If vampires ever spend less time playing theatrics and living down to their stereotypes, they might actually take over the world someday.”

— Carrie Vaughn

32. “And try to remember how to be an idealist.”

— Carrie Vaughn

33. “Did you think of anyone else?” Enid had asked the folk of this household. “Did you think of the next generation that’ll have to work this land and wonder why they’re getting half the yield they should? Or the ones who’ll starve when the land gives up because you” – she had pointed at them, with two stiff fingers – “couldn’t be bothered to take care of it?”

— Carrie Vaughn

34. “In the end, maybe that was what separated the real paranormal investigators from the charlatans. The charlatans kept up the aura of mystery and obfuscation. The real investigators kept asking why and how.”

— Carrie Vaughn

35. “Love had sneaked up on us rather than bursting upon us like cannons and fireworks.”

— Carrie Vaughn

36. “I always told my callers, you can choose. You can decide what to do. Don’t blame your homicidal urges or basic assholeness on being a monster, because you can choose. God help me. God, help me.”

— Carrie Vaughn

37. “A lot of what we’re doing here deals with perception rather than truth. Many would argue that reality depends more on the former than the latter.”

— Carrie Vaughn

38. “A werewolf isn’t supposed to have parents.” Brenda said, grumbling. “They’re not supposed to have mothers. How am I supposed to shoot you now, knowing it’ll upset that really nice woman?”

— Carrie Vaughn

39. “As if death were a resource that had to be earned, that could ever be used up or wasted.”

— Carrie Vaughn

40. “Had to stay human. Wolf couldn’t drive the freaking car. Or hold the gun.”

— Carrie Vaughn

41. “Cormac drove. He eyed me in the rearview mirror. “Anyone you want me to beat up?”

— Carrie Vaughn