Top 500 Erin Morgenstern Quotes (2026 Update)
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451. “A man this far into a story has his path to follow. There were many paths, once, in a time that is past, lost many miles and pages ago. Now there is only one path.”

— Erin Morgenstern

452. “Hours or days or weeks. Some will leave and return, keeping the place as an escape, a retreat, a sanctuary. Living lives both above and below.”

— Erin Morgenstern

453. “This is the rabbit hole. Do you want to know the secret to surviving once you’ve gone down the rabbit hole?” Zachary nods and Mirabel leans forward. Her eyes are ringed with gold. “Be a rabbit,” she whispers.”

— Erin Morgenstern

454. “It won’t be the same when you get back,” Eleanor says. “Sometimes you can’t go back to the same old place, you have to go to the new ones.” “I’m not trying to get back to the place,” Dorian says. “I’m trying to get back to a person.” Admitting it aloud feels like an affirmation. “People change, too, you know.”

— Erin Morgenstern

455. “They go deeper than any resident, any acolyte. They light their own candles. They see what no one else sees. They see what has come before. They may not ask questions. They may simply observe.”

— Erin Morgenstern

456. “A sword, perhaps three or four inches in length, is tattooed on each guardian. Each sword is unique. It has been designed for this guardian and no other.”

— Erin Morgenstern

457. “In this significant moment, if the boy turns the painted knob and opens the impossible door, everything will change. But he does not. Instead, he puts his hands in his pockets. Part of him decides he is being childish and that he is too old to expect real life to be like books. Another part of him decides that if he does not try he cannot be disappointed and he can go on believing that the door could open even if it is just pretend.”

— Erin Morgenstern

458. “I am not particularly fond of believing in impossible things.”

— Erin Morgenstern

459. “They are gods with lost myths, writing themselves new ones. Can you hear the buzzing yet?”

— Erin Morgenstern

460. “The mug is filled with warm coconut milk with turmeric and black pepper and honey.”

— Erin Morgenstern

461. “Doors are closing, taking possibilities with them. The story is recorded even when she is unsure of how it goes and now someone else follows after her, reading. Looking for the ending.”

— Erin Morgenstern

462. “He tells himself that it is not a bad life. That there is nothing wrong with being a farmer. But still, the discontent remains. Even the ground beneath his feet feels unsatisfying to his boots.”

— Erin Morgenstern

463. “They seek each other our, these people of such specific like mind.”

— Erin Morgenstern

464. “That who he is, or who he thinks he is, is just a collection of references to other people’s art and he is so focused on story and meaning and structure that he wants his world to have all of it neatly laid out and it never, ever does and he fears it never will.”

— Erin Morgenstern

465. “A few include disturbingly worded marriage proposals.”

— Erin Morgenstern

466. “Passionate love stories that were manipulated into the vacancies between raindrops and vanished with the end of the storm.”

— Erin Morgenstern

467. “Los nombres no son de tanta importancia como las personas han de suponer, una etiqueta asignada para identificarte.”

— Erin Morgenstern

468. “This is their world, starless and sacred.”

— Erin Morgenstern

469. “The night of the anniversary party,” she says. “The night you kissed me. I thought it that night. I didn’t want to play anymore, I only wanted to be with you. I thought I would ask you to run away with me and I meant it. The very moment I convinced myself that we could manage it, I was in so much pain I could barely stand. Friedrick didn’t know what to make of me, he sat me in a quiet corner and held my hand and did not pry when I couldn’t explain because that’s how kind he is.”

— Erin Morgenstern

470. “Do not be afraid; our fate can not be taken from us; it is a gift.”

— Erin Morgenstern

471. “Inside the tower room the small girl looked at the darkness and the darkness looked back.”

— Erin Morgenstern

472. “I’ve spent a great deal of my life doing what other people wanted for me and not what I wanted myself and I’m trying to change. Impulse decisions. No shoes. It’s refreshing in a terrifying sort of way.”

— Erin Morgenstern

473. “Maybe once you go to wonderland you’re supposed to stay there because nothing will ever be the same in the real world, in the other world, afterward. Afterworld.”

— Erin Morgenstern

474. “It will take a great deal more than that charming smile of yours to seduce me.”

— Erin Morgenstern

475. “It is easier to be in love in a room with closed doors.”

— Erin Morgenstern

476. “And so time goes as it should and events that were once fated to happen are left instead to chance, and Chance never falls in love with anything for long. But the world is strange and endings are not truly endings no matter how the stars might wish it so. Occasionally Fate can pull itself together again. And Time is always waiting.”

— Erin Morgenstern

477. “If all endings are beginnings, are all beginnings also endings?”

— Erin Morgenstern

478. “But most of the memories are stories.”

— Erin Morgenstern

479. “Zachary puts the candy on his tongue. He was right, peppermint. No, steel. Cold steel. The story unfolds in his head more than in his ears and there are words but there aren’t, pictures and sensations and tastes that change and progress from the initial mint and metal through blood and sugar and summer air. Then it’s gone.”

— Erin Morgenstern

480. “These doors will sing. Silent siren songs for those who seek what lies behind them.”

— Erin Morgenstern

481. “The Queen of the Bees has been waiting for you Tales hidden within to be told Bring her a key that has never been forged And another made only of gold.”

— Erin Morgenstern

482. “Drowning Ophelia made with gin and lemon and fennel syrup, served with a sprig of rosemary and a napkin with an appropriate Hamlet quote printed on it.”

— Erin Morgenstern

483. “I am tired of denying myself what I want for fear of breaking things I cannot fix. They will break no matter what we do.”

— Erin Morgenstern

484. “It’s important to you, isn’t it?” Eleanor asks. “Yes, it is.” “Important things hurt sometimes.”

— Erin Morgenstern

485. “Perhaps a face is too complicated to capture in words.”

— Erin Morgenstern

486. “You think you don’t have a house to go home to but you do now, understand?”

— Erin Morgenstern

487. “Once there was a woman who sculpted stories.”

— Erin Morgenstern

488. “He drinks his wine while he weighs his options and his future and his past and his story. How far he’s come. The unknowable distance left to go.”

— Erin Morgenstern

489. “Los mejores placeres son siempre los inesperados.”

— Erin Morgenstern

490. “You can talk, can’t you?” he asks. “No,” says the cat. It bows its head and turns, walking off into the shadows, leaving Zachary staring dumbly after it.”

— Erin Morgenstern

491. “Disoriented and woozy, his mind a second behind his body, like pulling himself through crystal-clear mud. As though he’s still drunk but doing it wrong.”

— Erin Morgenstern

492. “Once there they wander through the stone halls, finding things to look at and things to touch and things to read. They find stories tucked in hidden corners and laid out on tables, as though they had been there always, waiting for their reader to arrive.”

— Erin Morgenstern

493. “The place on your back.” Dorian puts a hand up to his shoulder, touching the topmost edge of the very elaborate, very real tattoo that covers his back. The branches of a tree, the canopy of a forest of cherry blossoms, star-sparkling with lanterns and lights though all of that is background for the centerpiece: a tree stump covered in books dripping with honey under a beehive with an owl sitting atop it, wearing a crown.”

— Erin Morgenstern

494. “All stories do, no matter what form they take. Something was, and then something changed. Change is what a story is, after all.”

— Erin Morgenstern

495. “They live and they work. They consume art and stories and create new art and new stories to add to the shelves and the walls. They find friends and lovers. They put on performances and play games and weave community out of camaraderie.”

— Erin Morgenstern

496. “Not in the way that one smiles at a random member of the audience when one is in the middle of performing circus tricks with unusually talented kittens but in the way that one smiles when one recognizes someone they have not seen in some time.”

— Erin Morgenstern

497. “The climb was long but the day was bright, the wolves asleep, or perhaps the wolves were a thing that people talked about and not a thing that was.”

— Erin Morgenstern

498. “Being dead should not feel this perilous.”

— Erin Morgenstern

499. “A book is an interpretation,” she says. “You want a place to be like it was in the book but it’s not a place in a book it’s just words. The place in your imagination is where you want to go and that place is imaginary. This is real,” she places her hand on the wall in front of them.”

— Erin Morgenstern

500. “For some reason laundry concerns drag him back to the reality of the situation, dreams or hallucinations probably don’t involve such mundane problems.”

— Erin Morgenstern