Top 500 Leigh Bardugo Quotes (2025 Update)
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251. “Pekka Rollins couldn’t count the threats he’d heard, the men he’d killed, or the men he’d seen die, but the look in Brekker’s eye still sent a chill slithering up his spine. Some wrathful thing in this boy was beginning to get loose, and Rollin’s didn’t want to be around when it slipped its leash.”

— Leigh Bardugo

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

— Leigh Bardugo

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

— Leigh Bardugo

254. “Who would speak for Lilyana, for Genya and Alina and Baghra if she did not? Who will speak for me?”

— Leigh Bardugo

255. “So why do your eyes keep searching the crowd for her?” “They do not,” Matthias protested. She had to laugh at the ferocity of his scowl. He drew a finger through a pile of crumbs. “Nina is everything you say. It’s too much.” “Mmm,” Inej murmured, taking a sip from her mug. “Maybe you’re just not enough.”

— Leigh Bardugo

256. “Perfect night for tearing a hole in the universe, no?”

— Leigh Bardugo

257. “Kaz had been impressed with the sketches. “You think like a lockpick,” he’d told Wylan. “I do not.” “I mean you can see space along three axes.” “I’m not a criminal,” Wylan protested. Kaz had cast him an almost pitying look. “No, you’re a flautist who fell in with bad company.”

— Leigh Bardugo

258. “I trade in information, Geels, the things men do when they think no one is looking. Shame holds more value than coin ever can.”

— Leigh Bardugo

259. “Zoya was surprised to find she liked seeing Alina’s name on churches, liked hearing it spoken in prayers. Ravka had given too much of its love to men like the Darkling, the Apparat, even the Lantsov kings. They owed a little of it to an orphan girl with no dress sense.”

— Leigh Bardugo

260. “What about the nobodies and the nothings, the invisible girls? We learn to hold our heads as if we wear crowns. We learn to wring magic from the ordinary.”

— Leigh Bardugo

261. “Every act of violence was deliberate, and every favor came with enough strings attached to stage a puppet show.”

— Leigh Bardugo

262. “But if you couldn’t open a door, you just had to make a new one.”

— Leigh Bardugo

263. “Six people, but a thousand ways this insane plan could go wrong.”

— Leigh Bardugo

264. “Someone to mourn me... No grave... for them to desecrate.”

— Leigh Bardugo

265. “Curse you and all your Saints,′ he said to no one at all, then realized he was smiling.”

— Leigh Bardugo

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

— Leigh Bardugo

267. “What you want and what the world needs are not always in accord.”

— Leigh Bardugo

268. “When they backed you in a corner, you cut a hole in the roof.”

— Leigh Bardugo

269. “Nikolai had been told that hope was dangerous, had been warned of it many times. But he’d never believed that. Hope was the wind that came from nowhere to fill your sails and carry you home.”

— Leigh Bardugo

270. “I just know there’s no way to live without pain – no matter how long or short your life is. People let you down. You get hurt and do damage in return.”

— Leigh Bardugo

271. “It was stupid. It was dangerous. But Ana Kuya used to tell me that hope was tricky like water. Somehow it always found a way in.”

— Leigh Bardugo

272. “I like to bet on myself whenever I can. But usually with other people’s money.”

— Leigh Bardugo

273. “And if there was another reason, a tall, lanky reason with a too-strong taste for games of chance, he wasn’t going to think about that right now.”

— Leigh Bardugo

274. “Wind in your hair, sea spray on your skin. The cold of the living.”

— Leigh Bardugo

275. “She rested her head on his shoulder. “You’re better than waffles, Matthias Helvar.” A.”

— Leigh Bardugo

276. “They fear you as I once feared you,” he said. “As you once feared me. We are all someone’s monster, Nina.”

— Leigh Bardugo

277. “Does the bird feel the weight of its wings?”

— Leigh Bardugo

278. “If you were going to hell together, murder seemed like a good place to start.”

— Leigh Bardugo

279. “You are owed nothing. Steel is earned.”

— Leigh Bardugo

280. “The truth of it rang through me. Like calls to like.”

— Leigh Bardugo

281. “Watch yourself, Nikolai,” Mal said softly. ” Princes bleed just like other men.”

— Leigh Bardugo

282. “The purest Marxists are always men. Calamity comes too easily to women. Our lives can come apart in a single gesture, a rogue wave. And money? Money is the rock we cling to when the current would seize us.”

— Leigh Bardugo

283. “Dunyasha Lazareva is dead.”

— Leigh Bardugo

284. “Chaos will come and I will be its master.”

— Leigh Bardugo

285. “I had spared the stag’s life. The power of that life belonged to me as surely as it belonged to the man who had taken it.”

— Leigh Bardugo

286. “Kaz heard Wylan retching. He tossed the eyeball overboard and jammed his spit-soaked handkerchief into the socket where Oomen’s eye had been. Then he grabbed Oomen’s jaw, his gloves leaving red smears on the enforcer’s chin. His actions were smooth, precise, as if he were dealing cards at the Crow Club or picking an easy lock, but his rage felt hot and mad and unfamiliar. Something within him had torn loose.”

— Leigh Bardugo

287. “I’m the kind of bastard they only manufacture in the barrel.”

— Leigh Bardugo

288. “When the coffers are empty and their bellies growl, even good men turn bad.”

— Leigh Bardugo

289. “If any of you survive, make sure I have an open casket,” Jesper said as he hefted two slender coils of rope over his shoulder and signalled for Wylan to follow him across the roof. “The world deserves a few more moments with this face.”

— Leigh Bardugo

290. “To his left, he heard Inej laugh behind her mask. He’d never heard her laugh like that, giddy and wild.”

— Leigh Bardugo

291. “Jesper gave him a little shake. “Pull it together, kid.” “Not a kid,” Wylan mumbled, batting Jesper’s hands away. “Fine, you’re an elder statesman. Do you know how to shoot?” Wylan nodded slowly. “Skeet.”

— Leigh Bardugo

292. “Let’s let the Ice Court know the Dregs have come to call.”

— Leigh Bardugo

293. “Maybe love was superstition, a prayer we said to keep the truth of loneliness at bay.”

— Leigh Bardugo

294. “You’re late,” said Zoya. “I’m the king,” said Nikolai. “That means you’re early.”

— Leigh Bardugo

295. “He doesn’t need a donkey,” says Ana Kuya. “He has a wife.”

— Leigh Bardugo

296. “I wonder sometimes how much we really understand our own gifts.”

— Leigh Bardugo

297. “Nina screamed, a howl that tore from the black space where her heart had beat only moments before. She searched for his pulse, for the light and force that had been Matthias.”

— Leigh Bardugo

298. “Well, we’ve managed to get ourselves locked into the most secure prison in the world. We’re either geniuses or the dumbest sons of bitches to ever breathe air.”

— Leigh Bardugo

299. “Mirror magic is all about reflection and perception. A lie isn’t a lie until someone believes it. It doesn’t matter how charming you are if there’s no one to charm.”

— Leigh Bardugo

300. “Barrel boys don’t have parents. We’re born in the harbour and crawl out of the canals.”

— Leigh Bardugo