Top 70 Liz Braswell Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “Her eyes were full of hate. Full. And... at the same time, empty. Soulless. Like those horrible creatures she keeps around her. The dragon was frightening... but Maleficent, she was bone-chilling.”

— Liz Braswell

2. “You had a magic mirror that let you see life outside your tiny world. Your castle. I had books. Reading them is like traveling to other places. Being other people. Living other lives. It made life far less... lonely.”

— Liz Braswell

3. “It’s not bravery if you don’t feel fear, right? If you’re not afraid, then you’re not really forcing yourself to do something brave.”

— Liz Braswell

4. “Everyone should have a journey – and everyone should also have a home, too. Go out into the world for adventure, come home for love.”

— Liz Braswell

5. “I cannot expect people to do for me what I cannot.”

— Liz Braswell

6. “Whether you’re Huguenot or Catholic or Jewish or gypsy or short or have dark skin- or blue skin. Everyone is different. Each person has his or her own soul and is master of his or her own destiny.”

— Liz Braswell

7. “You can’t have adventures without risk. You can’t have great things if you constantly fear loss.”

— Liz Braswell

8. “You don’t get it. They gave me beauty and song, and then I was left in the woods to grow up for sixteen years before being handed over to you. I don’t know anything about ruling. I don’t even really know what taxes are. I was in the woods in the real world. In the dreamworld, I hid like a mouse and then organized balls and parties.”

— Liz Braswell

9. “Go out into the world for adventure, come home for love.”

— Liz Braswell

10. “When you’re young, you think the world will make room for who you are and what you want... And then you find the world of adults is even more limiting than the world of children. With no room for adventure, much less yer own thoughts.”

— Liz Braswell

11. “He threw my father into a cold prison cell, then took me in his place! I think tying him up in front of a warm roaring fire is plenty generous, considering!”

— Liz Braswell

12. “And then... she heard voices. Her aunt’s voice... ‘Your daughter?’ Maleficent asked, her voice rising in dramatic surprise. ‘Really? What kind of loving mother hands her daughter off to the fairies for sixteen years?’... Maleficent swung around, arching her arms and fingers like an animal, lowering her yellow eyes to their level.”

— Liz Braswell

13. “Amor does not vincit omnia, you ignorant man... when the woman doesn’t amat you back!”

— Liz Braswell

14. “She wished, just once, someone would show an interest in the same things she did.”

— Liz Braswell

15. “He first saw her in a ray of sunshine. She was dancing and singing in a forest clearing, her golden hair sparkling as it swirled around her. Her voice was the very essence of a happy, sunny day distilled into song. She was as weightless on her toes as golden motes in a drowsy beam, floating their way up to the ceiling.”

— Liz Braswell

16. “Life is a strange mixture of all of these genres, she mused, and it doesn’t have nearly as neat and happy an ending as you often get in books.”

— Liz Braswell

17. “Every age has its darkness.”

— Liz Braswell

18. “It wasn’t enough to catch a glimpse of these lands and ideas through the small window of the pages she turned. She wanted to step through and feel the yellow waters of the Yangtze herself, to hear the celestial music of foreign pipes, to taste the foods described by adventurers who traveled purposefully into the areas on maps labeled ‘Here be tygres.”

— Liz Braswell

19. “How could Belle, a lonely little bookworm of a country girl, ever come from someone so great that she meted out curses and blessings like candy and then took over an entire castle with her presence?”

— Liz Braswell

20. “Trying to steel her nerves, she walked forward more forcefully, as if this were her choice. As if she were just going to seek out a mystery she forgot. Not a scared, lonely girl in her nightgown with a candle, like some daft heroine from one of the lighter romance books she read. This thought, too, gave her courage; she was Belle, not an idiot.”

— Liz Braswell

21. “I had books. Reading them is like travelling to other places. Being other people. Living other lives.”

— Liz Braswell

22. “When was the last time those two kids had a full meal or a good, long, clean drink of water? This was the way he had been as a child. Nothing had changed. The sultan still sat in his beautiful golden-domed palace, playing with his toys while people starved on the streets. Nothing would ever change until the sultan- or someone-woke up and saw how his people were suffering.”

— Liz Braswell

23. “It wasn’t unreasonable to imagine her father, having noticed the mysterious ruins, deciding on a whim to investigate them. ‘Like Don Quixote and his golden helmet of Mambrino,’ she thought, looking at his yellow hat. ‘Off on a silly quest.”

— Liz Braswell

24. “If she actually had friends, maybe she wouldn’t have turned out so nasty and evil.”

— Liz Braswell

25. “Belle decided to file the way the Beast said “meat” later to think about more fully. He was a several-hundred-pound beast and obviously didn’t eat toast to keep his weight up.”

— Liz Braswell

26. “This is dumb,′ her inner voice persisted. ‘Lying in this- albeit ridiculously comfy and beautiful- bed when you’re in a castle with talking teapots and wardrobes who gossip. Did Gulliver do this when a prisoner at the Brobdingnagian court? Just sulk and lie around? No, he enjoyed the adventure while doing whatever he could to get home!”

— Liz Braswell

27. “She had often dreamed of going to a teahouse to play chess or argue esoteric scholarly points with students and feisty old men and women. It was a dream forbidden to a royal princess, of course.”

— Liz Braswell

28. “Books can tell you almost everything that mankind knows. Or imagines.”

— Liz Braswell

29. “That was beautiful,” she breathed aloud. Of course she had sung duets with the greatest mer singers, male and female, ones who were hundreds of years older than she with voices trained for as long. Somehow what she had just done with Eric was far more powerful and beautiful. All with no audience except for the sea grass, the water, and the wind.”

— Liz Braswell

30. “Rose. Briar Rose. She was named after a flower that was thorny and green and strong and beautiful, with moments of unbelievable softness in white and pink.”

— Liz Braswell

31. “There is always magic. Even if you can’t see it.”

— Liz Braswell

32. “Belle, go. If I was your age, I wouldn’t have hesitated for a moment. You will always come back here, and I will always be here. And we will have those talks we need. Everyone should have a journey – and everyone should also have a home, too. Go out into the world for adventure, come home for love.”

— Liz Braswell

33. “She felt like one of the luckless peasant girls in some Russian hagiography, left to fend for her family in deep Siberian snows.”

— Liz Braswell

34. “What if, since her mother was the one who cast the spell, Belle was the only one who could break it.”

— Liz Braswell

35. “The heat of the day had long since retreated into the desert, and the city, which had drowsed through the hot afternoon, was finally coming alive. The streets filled with people drinking tea and gossiping, laughing, and visiting friends. Old men played chatrang on boards set up outside cafes; children stayed up long past their bedtimes playing their own games on the sidewalks. Men and women bought rose-flavored ices and trinkets from nighttime vendors.”

— Liz Braswell

36. “Animals raise their children, too. I don’t know why they keep them around. Kill ’em and be done with it.”

— Liz Braswell

37. “Magic comes back to you, just as the actions of people do.”

— Liz Braswell

38. “Beyond it were a dozen skeletons still shackled to the wall, left there even after they’d decomposed like a forgotten detail in a fairy tale.”

— Liz Braswell

39. “She wished a silly, girlish wish: that she’d had a chance to really fly on the carpet when it was still a carpet. With Aladdin. Zooming through the night air like she was doing now, but with his warm arms to hold on to and the entire world at their feet. They could have gone anywhere they wanted. They would have been completely free.”

— Liz Braswell

40. “It would be nice if the streets were free and safe. But please, take this bread and cheese. I’m not demanding your loyalty in return. I just want my people fed.”

— Liz Braswell

41. “The scary glow of ghoulish red dotted the city like a plague that was taking over an otherwise healthy body.”

— Liz Braswell

42. “True love doesn’t just fall into your lap. You have to go out and find your other half.”

— Liz Braswell

43. “Never Land isn’t just a simple place of childhood dreams – because childhood dreams are actually never simple.”

— Liz Braswell

44. “Don’t let life’s unfairness, don’t let how poor you are decide who you are. You choose who you will be.”

— Liz Braswell

45. “Everyone is different. Each person has his or her own soul and is master of his or her own destiny.”

— Liz Braswell

46. “There is no more powerful force on earth than a mother frightened for her children.”

— Liz Braswell

47. “Having the freedom to choose is better than having everything you want.”

— Liz Braswell

48. “Magic is only as great as the mind controlling it.”

— Liz Braswell

49. “Hatters really were said to have gone mad in the nineteenth century because of exposure to mercury in their hat-making processes: in effect, they suffered long-term mercury poisoning.”

— Liz Braswell

50. “There is magic,” she said softly. “There is always magic. Even if you can’t see it.”

— Liz Braswell