Top 500 Laini Taylor Quotes (2026 Update)
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351. “Names have power, and he was, from infancy, associated with gold.”

— Laini Taylor

352. “Welcome to purgatory. Care for some soup?”

— Laini Taylor

353. “Who had ever expended so much passion on a dream, only to stand helpless as it was granted to others? Others, moreover, who had expended no passion on it at all.”

— Laini Taylor

354. “It’s all a quilt of fairy tales with a patch here and there of truth.”

— Laini Taylor

355. “And when her hearts resumed beating, she imagined she could feel a spill of light into the veins that carried her spirit.”

— Laini Taylor

356. “A kiss must end for another to begin, and it did, and did again.”

— Laini Taylor

357. “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

358. “I admit, I prefer an open mind to a closed one.”

— Laini Taylor

359. “Once upon a time, chimaera descended by the thousands into a cathedral beneath the earth. And never left.”

— Laini Taylor

360. “Weep slept. Dreamers dreamed. A grand moon drifted, and, and the wings of the citadel cut the sky in two: light above, dark below.”

— Laini Taylor

361. “One beat followed the sound, a single beat of stillness, and then chaos leapt in.”

— Laini Taylor

362. “There are maps in me but I am lost, and there are skies in me but they are dead.”

— Laini Taylor

363. “You mean he came to your school? The scandalous rodent-loaf!”

— Laini Taylor

364. “Humans had a genius for devising instruments of death. Their lives were so short and they seemed to value them so little, sending waves of men to clash in battlefields, then weighing victory by the piled corpses. And if they held their own lives so worthless, the lives of everything else were as fruit to pluck from trees.”

— Laini Taylor

365. “He’d felt this before and never wanted to feel it again. It could only diminish the memory of Madrigal; it already was. Again his memory failed to conjure her face. It was like trying to call up a melody while another song played.”

— Laini Taylor

366. “Life won’t just happen to you, boy,” he said. “You have to happen to it. Remember: The spirit grows sluggish when you neglect the passions.”

— Laini Taylor

367. “He had loved the library, and had felt, as a boy, as though it had a kind of sentience, and perhaps loved him back. But even if it was just walls and a roof with papers inside, it had bewitched him, and drawn him in, and given him everything he needed to become himself.”

— Laini Taylor

368. “It hadn’t occurred in the physical realm, that much was true. His hand had not touched her hand. But... his mind had touched her mind, and that seemed to him a deeper reality and even greater intimacy.”

— Laini Taylor

369. “A wave of weariness took him. How could life be so unrelentingly ugly?”

— Laini Taylor

370. “She tasted of fairytales.”

— Laini Taylor

371. “We only get to be one person; we don’t even get to choose that person. By the time we get ahold of ourselves, we are pieces already in play.”

— Laini Taylor

372. “The gods had been dead for fifteen years, after all, but their hate had lingered, and ruled in their stead.”

— Laini Taylor

373. “It was, in fact, quite difficult to lie to a hawk.”

— Laini Taylor

374. “She wore her ferocity like armor, and it was purely asexual armor. Liraz was untouchable and untouched.”

— Laini Taylor

375. “Plus, it would be fun. Don’t you think? I’ve always wanted to tase someone. Zap!” Zuzana mimicked convulsions.”

— Laini Taylor

376. “Seventh bearer of the cursed name Akiva.” Here he paused, speculative. “No Misbegotten ever bore that name to manhood before you. Did you know that? Old Byon the steward, he gave it out of spite. Wanted your mother to beg him not to. Any other woman in the harem would have, but not Festival. ‘Scribble whatever you like on your list, old man,’ she told him. ‘My son will not be tangled in your feeble fates.’”

— Laini Taylor

377. “Feelings. Were. Stupid.”

— Laini Taylor

378. “The function of hate, as Sarai saw it, was to stamp out compassion – to close a door to one’s own self and forget it was ever there.”

— Laini Taylor

379. “Every night she bore witness to what she could never have. It wasn’t living. It was torture.”

— Laini Taylor

380. “It’s easy to get published once you have written a really good book and the hard part, 99 percent of what you need to worry about, is really finishing it.”

— Laini Taylor

381. “The worst moment of one’s life could be seared into the memory, brighter than any joy.”

— Laini Taylor

382. “We can’t expect the world to be better than we make it.”

— Laini Taylor

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

— Laini Taylor

384. “Why should we have to disappear just because men are animals?”

— Laini Taylor

385. “Many fists against fewer, perhaps, but the fewer have magic.”

— Laini Taylor

386. “I’m a librarian,” he said.”

— Laini Taylor

387. “On the occasions that he did look up from the page, he would seem as though he were awakening from a dream.”

— Laini Taylor

388. “He’s a man, but he’s got, like, cartoon princess skin. Don’t ever tell him I said that, even though I mean it in the best possible way. He’s got the manliest cartoon princess skin.”

— Laini Taylor

389. “You know how some people were absolutely never children, but just came from a catalog fully grown, while other people you don’t even have to squint to imagine them charging down the stairs on Christmas morning in superhero pajamas? Mik’s the latter. It’s not that he’s “boyish,” though I guess he is a little – but only a little – it’s just that there’s something direct and real and electric and pure that hasn’t been lost, the intense, undiluted emotion of childhood. Most people lose it.”

— Laini Taylor

390. “I feel liquefied, like a cucumber forgotten in the crisper drawer, and I want to hold myself at arm’s length and carry me to the trash. Who is this sack of slush masquerading as me? It’s intolerable.”

— Laini Taylor

391. “Get out of doors, Strange. Breathe air, see things. A man should have squint lines from looking at the horizon, not just from reading in dim light.”

— Laini Taylor

392. “He has gotten very tired of everyone thinking the worst of him. He has decided to actively encourage them to do so. It is his perverse notion of amusement, you see.”

— Laini Taylor

393. “With his fort of books the hobgoblin had come to a smooching scene and shouted for them to pipe down.”

— Laini Taylor

394. “Inside a mist, inside a dream, a young man and woman were remade.”

— Laini Taylor

395. “Everything else in Lazlo’s mind took a step back to clear space for this new intelligence.”

— Laini Taylor

396. “Life doesnt need magic to be magical.”

— Laini Taylor

397. “So what,’ said Zuzana. ‘They had to be pretty stupid butterflies to fall for him anyway. You’ll grow new ones with more sense. New wise butterflies.”

— Laini Taylor

398. “And... a bed. A bed and a blanket to cover them, a blanket that was theirs together.”

— Laini Taylor

399. “She had inherited a story that was strewn with corpses and clotted with enmity, and was only trying to stay alive in it.”

— Laini Taylor

400. “Well,” Loraz said, her voice as dry as the rest of her was not. “At least you still have clothes on.”

— Laini Taylor