Top 500 Leigh Bardugo Quotes (2026 Update)
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351. “She wouldn’t wish love on anyone. It was the guest you welcomed and then couldn’t be rid of.”

— Leigh Bardugo

352. “Welcome to the Ice Court, Nina Zenik. Now our debt is paid.” From somewhere outside, the bells of Black Protocol began to ring.”

— Leigh Bardugo

353. “She was Inej Ghafa, and she would not quiver like a rabbit in a snare.”

— Leigh Bardugo

354. “A moment later the boy whispered, “I don’t think you’re ugly.” “Shhhh!” the girl hissed. But hidden by the deep shadows of the cupboard, she smiled.”

— Leigh Bardugo

355. “Just trust me, Nina.” “I wouldn’t trust you to tie my shoes without stealing the laces, Kaz.”

— Leigh Bardugo

356. “Nikolai set to opening the Schuyler combination locks he’d learned about from a certain master thief in Ketterdam.”

— Leigh Bardugo

357. “We learn to hold our heads as if we wear crowns. We learn to wring magic from the ordinary.”

— Leigh Bardugo

358. “Why does the brave druskelle Matthias Helvar eat no meat? ‘Tis a sad story indeed, my child. His teeth were winnowed away by a vexatious Grisha, and now he can eat only pudding.”

— Leigh Bardugo

359. “Farvell,” she said in Fjerdan. “May Djel watch over you until I can once more.”

— Leigh Bardugo

360. “Not bad looking? He’s damnably handsome. Brave in battle, smart as a whip. An excellent dancer, oh, and an even better shot.”

— Leigh Bardugo

361. “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

362. “Don’t worry, Da. People point guns at each other all the time in Ketterdam. It’s basically a handshake.”

— Leigh Bardugo

363. “Why had he called Jesper by Jordie’s name? When he looked into the past, he saw his brother through the eyes of the boy he’d been: brave, brilliant, infallible, a knight bested by a dragon dressed like a merch. But how would he see Jordie now? As a mark? Another dumb pigeon looking for a shortcut? He leaned his hands on the edge of the sink. He wasn’t angry anymore. He just felt weary.”

— Leigh Bardugo

364. “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

365. “No one knew who he was. No one knew where he came from. He’d become Kaz Brekker, cripple and confidence man, bastard of the Barrel. The.”

— Leigh Bardugo

366. “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

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

— Leigh Bardugo

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

— Leigh Bardugo

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

— Leigh Bardugo

370. “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

371. “Before you finish that sentence, I want you to think about what a promise from me costs and what you’re willing to pay for it.”

— Leigh Bardugo

372. “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

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

— Leigh Bardugo

374. “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

375. “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

376. “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

377. “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

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

— Leigh Bardugo

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

— Leigh Bardugo

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

— Leigh Bardugo

381. “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

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

— Leigh Bardugo

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

— Leigh Bardugo

384. “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

385. “Dunyasha Lazareva is dead.”

— Leigh Bardugo

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

— Leigh Bardugo

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

— Leigh Bardugo

388. “That’s the problem with Ketterdam, Jesper thought as they stumbled uncertainly through the dark. Trusting the wrong person can get you killed.”

— Leigh Bardugo

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

— Leigh Bardugo

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

— Leigh Bardugo

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

— Leigh Bardugo

392. “It was because she was listening so closely that she knew the exact moment when Kaz Brekker, Dirtyhands, the bastard of the Barrel and deadliest boy in Ketterdam, fainted.”

— Leigh Bardugo

393. “A different kind of knight, one who’d chosen to protect the girl the world wanted to destroy; one born to slay dragons, but maybe to befriend them, too.”

— Leigh Bardugo

394. “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

395. “Maybe he was the same. A bullet in a chamber, spending his whole life waiting for the moment he would have direction.”

— Leigh Bardugo

396. “There’s nothing wrong with being a mapmaker.” “Of course not. And there’s nothing wrong with being a lizard either. Unless you were born to be a hawk.”

— Leigh Bardugo

397. “Until this moment, Wylan hadn’t quite understood how much they meant to him. His father would have sneered at these thugs and thieves, a disgraced soldier, a gambler who couldn’t keep out of the red. But they were his first friends, his only friends, and Wylan knew that even if he’d had his pick of a thousand companions, these would have been the people he chose.”

— Leigh Bardugo

398. “Un secreto no es como una moneda. No conserva su valor al gastarlo.”

— Leigh Bardugo

399. “I will tell you a story, one I used to tell to a little boy with dark hair. A silent boy who rarely laughs, who listened more closely than I realized. A boy who had a name and not a title.”

— Leigh Bardugo

400. “Kaz had taught her to crack a safe, pick a pocket, wield a knife. He’d gifted her with her first blade, the one she called Sankt Petyr – not as pretty as wild geraniums, but more practical, she supposed.”

— Leigh Bardugo