Top 500 Erin Morgenstern Quotes (2025 Update)
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201. “This person is a place Zachary could lose himself in, and never wish to be found.”

— Erin Morgenstern

202. “When she opens her eyes, they are standing on the quarterdeck of a ship in the middle of the ocean. Only the ship is made of books, its sails thousands of overlapping pages, and the sea it floats upon is dark black ink.”

— Erin Morgenstern

203. “I love you but I will not sit here and wait for the story to change – I’m going to make it change.”

— Erin Morgenstern

204. “A boy at the beginning of a story has no way of knowing that the story has begun.”

— Erin Morgenstern

205. “Celia Bowen sits at a desk surrounded by piles of books. She ran out of space for her library some time ago, but instead of making the room larger she has opted to let the books become the room.”

— Erin Morgenstern

206. “The space Dorian enters is the antithesis of what he has left, warm brightness erasing the dark cold. A large open hall filled with firelight and books, dark wood beams and windows covered in frost. It smells of spiced wine and baking bread. It is comforting in a way that defies words. It feels like a hug, if a hug were a place.”

— Erin Morgenstern

207. “To find a key, you have to understand the lock.”

— Erin Morgenstern

208. “You smile as though you have a secret.”

— Erin Morgenstern

209. “He reads histories and mythologies and fairy tales, wondering why it seems that only girls are ever swept away from their mundane lives on farms by knights or princes or wolves. It strikes him as unfair to not have the same fanciful opportunity himself... During the hours spent watching the sheep as they wander aimlessly around their fields, he even wishes that someone would come and take him away, but wishes on sheep appear to work no better than wishes on stars.”

— Erin Morgenstern

210. “It is a matter of perspective, the difference between opponent and partner,” Tsukiko says. “You step to the side and the same person can be either or both or something else entirely. It is difficult to know which face is true.”

— Erin Morgenstern

211. “Reading a book four times in one day is perfectly normal behavior.”

— Erin Morgenstern

212. “It’s too normal. It’s disconcerting and making him dizzy and 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.”

— Erin Morgenstern

213. “How are you feeling? Zachary asks. “Like I’m losing my mind but in a slow, achingly beautiful sort of way.”

— Erin Morgenstern

214. “Because if the girl had not been beautiful and clever, she would have been easier to resist, and then there would be no story at all.”

— Erin Morgenstern

215. “A subtle sweetness at the edges of the cold.”

— Erin Morgenstern

216. “And so Time goes on 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.”

— Erin Morgenstern

217. “It is not the way of cats to interfere with fate.”

— Erin Morgenstern

218. “You will pry this Adventure Time notebook from my cold dead hands, ya ding-dong.”

— Erin Morgenstern

219. “Names are not of nearly as much import as people like to suppose.”

— Erin Morgenstern

220. “It is part of who I was, who I am, and who I will be.”

— Erin Morgenstern

221. “Reading a book four times in one day is perfectly normal behavior... Having a physical response to a lack of book is not unusual.”

— Erin Morgenstern

222. “You may tell a tale that takes up residence in someone’s soul, becomes their blood and self and purpose.”

— Erin Morgenstern

223. “He sits at the bar, feeling like a failure and yet overwhelmed by all that has happened as he attempts to catalogue the entire evening. Drank rosemary for remembrance. Looked for a cat. Danced with the king of the wild things. Excellent-smelling man told me a story in the dark. Cat found me.”

— Erin Morgenstern

224. “There are tents, I am certain, that I have not discovered in my many visits to the circus. Though I have seen a great deal of the sights, traveled a number of the available paths, there are always corners that remain unexplored, doors that remain unopened.” -Friedrick Thiessen, 1896.”

— Erin Morgenstern

225. “The stag’s antlers are gold and covered with candles, twisting and burning like a crown of flame and wax.”

— Erin Morgenstern

226. “He tells her things he’s never told anyone. About the man who broke his heart in such a long, drawn out process that he couldn’t discern hurt from love and how whenever he tries to sort out how it feels now, long after the end of it the feeling is just a void.”

— Erin Morgenstern

227. “The wind howls after him as he leaves in fear of what is to come, but a mortal cannot understand the wishes of the wind no matter how loud it cries and so these final warnings go unheeded.”

— Erin Morgenstern

228. “Every element of the circus blends together in a wonderful coalescence. Acts that have been training in separate countries on separate continents now perform in adjacent tents, each part melding seamlessly into a whole. Each costume, each gesture, each sign on each tent is more perfect than the last.”

— Erin Morgenstern

229. “We are fish in a bowl, dear.”

— Erin Morgenstern

230. “I am so very tired of the romance of the dead girl. Aren’t you?”

— Erin Morgenstern

231. “Perhaps she herself is a page that was torn from a story and folded into a star and thrown in the shadows to be forgotten. Perhaps she should not steal books from hidden archives only to rip out their pages and then, give them away. But it is too late to change any of that now. And a beloved book is still beloved even if it was stolen to begin with. And imperfect. And then lost.”

— Erin Morgenstern

232. “I have literally always been the kid who believes in fairy tales but I didn’t know what to do because I wasn’t a kid, I was a twenty-something in a cocktail bar who never feels old enough to drink.”

— Erin Morgenstern

233. “Is it not that bad to be trapped somewhere, then? Depending on where you’re trapped?” “I suppose it depends on how much you like the place you’re trapped in,” Widget says. “And how much you like whoever you’re stuck there with,” Poppet adds, kicking his black boot with her white one. Her brother laughs and the sound echoes through the tent, carried over the branches that are covered in candles. Each flame flickering and white.”

— Erin Morgenstern

234. “The truest tales require time and familiarity to become what they are.”

— Erin Morgenstern

235. “Climbing is not for girls.” “Anything is for girls.”

— Erin Morgenstern

236. “Do you ever think about how many stories are out there?′ she asks, placing a finger on the glass. ‘How many dramas are unfolding around us right at this very moment? I wonder how long a book you would need to record them. You’d probably need an entire library to hold a single evening in Manhattan. An hour. A minute.”

— Erin Morgenstern

237. “Marionettes that control their own strings.”

— Erin Morgenstern

238. “There are so many pieces to a person. So many small stories and so few opportunities to read them.”

— Erin Morgenstern

239. “This is what his mother would call a moment with meaning. A moment that changes the moments that follow.”

— Erin Morgenstern

240. “He wishes he had brought the wine-colored book with him, but he is trying to make a point of not having his nose constantly in a book. It is an attempt to appear friendlier that he’s not certain is working yet.”

— Erin Morgenstern

241. “You’re not destined or chosen, I wish I could tell you that you were if that would make it easier, but it’s not true. You’re in the right place at the right time, and you care enough to do what needs to be done. Sometimes that’s enough.”

— Erin Morgenstern

242. “It began as a dollhouse. Over time, it has become more than that. A dolltown. A dollworld. A dolluniverse.”

— Erin Morgenstern

243. “This is the precise flavor that the circus should be. Unusual yet beautiful. Provocative while remaining elegant.”

— Erin Morgenstern

244. “Magic is secreand secrets are magic...”

— Erin Morgenstern

245. “This is not the first time they have stood together on these shores. It will not be the last. This is a story they will live over and over again, together and apart. The cage that contains them both is a large one that does not have a key. Not yet.”

— Erin Morgenstern

246. “These things happened. Sometimes it might sound weird but sometimes life is like that. Sometimes life gets weird. You can try to ignore it or you can see where weird takes you.”

— Erin Morgenstern

247. “I also think most of us are two steps away from jumping off something most of the time and you never know if the next day is going to push you in one direction or another.”

— Erin Morgenstern

248. “While earlier Marco had determined her to be little more than mildly intriguing and fairly pretty, this revelation is something more.”

— Erin Morgenstern

249. “It is a sanctuary for storytellers and storykeepers and storylovers. They eat and sleep and dream surrounded by chronicles and histories and myths.”

— Erin Morgenstern

250. “Everything is lit with glowing chandeliers and copious candles, so that the light is not bright but deep and warm and bubbling.”

— Erin Morgenstern