Top 500 Leigh Bardugo Quotes (2026 Update)
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151. “Despise your heart. I wanted to. I didn’t want to grieve anymore, to feel loss or guilt, or worry. I wanted to be hard, calculating. I wanted to be fearless.”

— Leigh Bardugo

152. “The life you live, the hate you feel – it’s poison. I can drink it no longer.”

— Leigh Bardugo

153. “Did you tell him what I showed you in the dark?”

— Leigh Bardugo

154. “You’ve cheated death many times. Greed may do your bidding, but death serves no man.”

— Leigh Bardugo

155. “Stop punishing yourself for being someone with a heart. You cannot protect yourself from suffering. To live is to grieve. You are not protecting yourself by shutting yourself off from the world. You are limiting yourself.”

— Leigh Bardugo

156. “The volcra, the nichevo’ya, they were my monsters, all of them. And he was my monster, too.”

— Leigh Bardugo

157. “Fear is a powerful ally, but feed it too often, make it too strong, and it will turn on you.”

— Leigh Bardugo

158. “I will have you without armor, Kaz Brekker. Or I will not have you at all.”

— Leigh Bardugo

159. “We can endure all kinds of pain. It’s shame that eats men whole.”

— Leigh Bardugo

160. “He’d lied. He did like the way she talked.”

— Leigh Bardugo

161. “Men mock the gods until they need them, Kaz.”

— Leigh Bardugo

162. “You are strong enough to survive the fall.”

— Leigh Bardugo

163. “None of us move on without a backward look. We move on always carrying with us those we have lost.”

— Leigh Bardugo

164. “He grinned at her, his smile sudden and jarring as a thunderclap, his eyes the near-black of bitter coffee. “We’ll be kings and queens, Inej. Kings and Queens.”

— Leigh Bardugo

165. “The thought filled me with grief, grief for the dreams we’d shared, for the love I’d felt, for the hopeful girl I would never be again.”

— Leigh Bardugo

166. “I don’t hold a grudge. I cradle it. I coddle it. I feed it fine cuts of meat and send it to the best schools. I nurture my grudges, Rollins.”

— Leigh Bardugo

167. “I got used to seeing him waiting for me at the end of corridors, or sitting at the edge of my bed when I fell asleep at night. When he didn’t appear, I sometimes found myself looking for him or wondering why he hadn’t come, and that frightened me most of all.”

— Leigh Bardugo

168. “Facts are for the unimaginative.”

— Leigh Bardugo

169. “Greed bows to me. It is my servant and my lever.”

— Leigh Bardugo

170. “Though he’d trusted her with his life countless times, it felt much more frightening to trust her with his shame.”

— Leigh Bardugo

171. “Ravka was many things to him: a grand lady who required constant courting, a stubborn child unwilling to stand on its own, and most often, a drowning man – the more Nikolai struggled to save it, the harder it fought. But with the help of the scientists and soldiers at the Gilded Bog, he might just drag his country to shore yet.”

— Leigh Bardugo

172. “But would it have mattered if she’d been someone else? If she’d been a social butterfly, they would have said she liked to drink away her pain. If she’d been a straight-A student, they would have said she’d been eaten alive by her perfectionism. There were always excuses for why girls died.”

— Leigh Bardugo

173. “The first time I’d entered the Fold, I’d feared the darkness and my own death. Now, darkness was nothing to me, and I knew that soon death would seem like a gift. I’d always known I would have to return to the Unsea, but as I looked back, I realized that some part of me had anticipated it.”

— Leigh Bardugo

174. “The moment our lips met, I knew with pure and piercing certainty that I would have waited for him forever.”

— Leigh Bardugo

175. “Ketterdam is made of monsters. I just happen to have the longest teeth.”

— Leigh Bardugo

176. “Shame holds more value than coin ever can.”

— Leigh Bardugo

177. “I would come for you and if I couldn’t walk I would crawl to you.”

— Leigh Bardugo

178. “We learn to hold our heads as if we wear crowns. We learn to wring magic from the ordinary. That was how you survived when you weren’t chosen, when there was no royal blood in your veins. When the world owed you nothing, you demanded something of it anyway.”

— Leigh Bardugo

179. “My mother was an oyster, And I’m the pearl.”

— Leigh Bardugo

180. “We were all supposed to make it,” said Wylan softly.”

— Leigh Bardugo

181. “In the end, maybe love just meant longing for something impossibly bright and forever out of reach.”

— Leigh Bardugo

182. “Hope was the wind that came from nowhere to fill your sails and carry you home.”

— Leigh Bardugo

183. “The storm had come out of nowhere, tossing the ship like a toy on the waves. The sea had played along until it had tired of the game, and dragged their boat under in a tangle of rope and sail and screaming men.”

— Leigh Bardugo

184. “Her father would have said the shadows were about their own business tonight. Something bad was going to happen here.”

— Leigh Bardugo

185. “If I want to watch men dig holes to fall into, I’ll find myself a cemetery.”

— Leigh Bardugo

186. “Mati en sheva yelu. This action will have no echo. It means we won’t repeat the same mistakes, that we won’t continue to do harm.”

— Leigh Bardugo

187. “There are no others like us, Alina,” he whispered. “And there never will be.”

— Leigh Bardugo

188. “Progress is a river. It cannot be called back once it leaps its banks.”

— Leigh Bardugo

189. “I am done being careful. I am done being quiet. Let them see me angry. Let them hear me wail at the top of my lungs.”

— Leigh Bardugo

190. “Do you blame me for every mistake I made? For every girl I tumbled? For every dumb thing I’ve said? Because if we start running tallies on stupid, you know who’s going to come out ahead.”

— Leigh Bardugo

191. “Most of us can hide our greatest hurts and longings. It’s how we survive each day. We pretend the pain isn’t there, that we are made of scars instead of wounds.”

— Leigh Bardugo

192. “For now they were safe. But despite the rattle of the wagon’s wheels, Inej could tell Kaz’s breathing had gotten worse – shallow, rapid pants like an animal caught in a trap. It was a sound she’d never thought to hear from him. It was because she was listening so closely that she knew the exact moment when Kaz Brekker, Dirtyhands, the bastard of the Barrel and the deadliest boy in Ketterdam, fainted.”

— Leigh Bardugo

193. “When the world owed you nothing, you demanded something of it anyway.”

— Leigh Bardugo

194. “Do not be afraid. Fear is how they control you. There’s so much in the world you don’t have to be afraid of, if you would only open your eyes.”

— Leigh Bardugo

195. “The really bad monsters never look like monsters.”

— Leigh Bardugo

196. “My only comfort is that you never could have been mine. But know that I would have gladly been yours.”

— Leigh Bardugo

197. “Welcome home. Welcome back. We missed you. I missed you more than I should have, more than I wanted to. I went to hell for you. I’d do it again.”

— Leigh Bardugo

198. “He turned to me then, his expression serious, the firelight playing over the perfect planes of his features. “I’ve spent my life searching for a way to make things right. You’re the first glimmer of hope I’ve had in a long time.”

— Leigh Bardugo

199. “Tell him you see me when he takes you in his arms.”

— Leigh Bardugo

200. “You can only sharpen a blade so far. In the end, it comes down to the quality of metal.”

— Leigh Bardugo