Top 180 Marie Rutkoski Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “Isn’t that what stories do, make real things fake, and fake things real?”

— Marie Rutkoski

2. “The Winner’s Curse is when you come out on top of the bid, but only by paying a steep price.”

— Marie Rutkoski

3. “If I die, you’ll survive. If you die, it will destroy me.”

— Marie Rutkoski

4. “If you won’t be my friend, you’ll regret being my enemy.”

— Marie Rutkoski

5. “A lover? Maybe. Something tender, anyway. But tender like a bruise.”

— Marie Rutkoski

6. “The sky was a feather blanket of clouds, save for one blue hole in the fabric. A blue cloud in a white sky.”

— Marie Rutkoski

7. “A veces crees que quieres algo, cuando lo que tienes que hacer es renunciar a ello.”

— Marie Rutkoski

8. “It’s a midnight lie... a kind of lie told for someone else’s sake, a lie that sits between goodness and wrong, just as midnight is the moment between night and morning.”

— Marie Rutkoski

9. “A dagger wants flesh, her father would say. Find it.”

— Marie Rutkoski

10. “Marry him,” Arin said, “but be mine in secret.”

— Marie Rutkoski

11. “Go away, little ghost. Go haunt someone else.”

— Marie Rutkoski

12. “The general’s daughter? We’d be fools not to. You talk about her as if she’s made of spun glass. Know what I see? Steel.”

— Marie Rutkoski

13. “This was not like the poem in Harvers’s book, where dawn came like a thief. Nothing had been stolen from me. Maybe it never would be.”

— Marie Rutkoski

14. “You are your own best weapon.” Kestrel.”

— Marie Rutkoski

15. “I want you to be mine, wholly mine, your heart, too. I want you to feel the same way.”

— Marie Rutkoski

16. “It’s best to recognize the things one cannot change.”

— Marie Rutkoski

17. “There is a difference between you and me. If I die, you’ll survive. If you die, it will destroy me.”

— Marie Rutkoski

18. “She felt suddenly light and sheer, as if this moment were encased in golden glass.”

— Marie Rutkoski

19. “She would never give him her dagger. “I tried so hard to live in your world,” she told him. “Now it’s your turn to live in mine.”

— Marie Rutkoski

20. “A glass of wine in one’s hand is rather like a jewel, isn’t it, a large, liquid one?”

— Marie Rutkoski

21. “Once there was a girl who was too sure of herself. Not everyone would call her beautiful, but they admitted that she had a certain grace that intimidated more often than it charmed. She was not, society agreed, someone you wanted to cross. She keeps her heart in a porcelain box, people whispered, and they were right.”

— Marie Rutkoski

22. “A snowfall softens all the hard noises and hard corners. It’s a natural liar. I saw the sky sprinkle down a hundred, a thousand little white lies, and decided I didn’t owe Orion anything.”

— Marie Rutkoski

23. “Kestrel thought that maybe she had been wrong, and Risha had been wrong, about forgiveness, that it was neither mud nor stone, but resembled more the drifting white spores. They came loose from the trees when they were ready. Soft to the touch, but made to be let go, so that they could find a place to plant and grow.”

— Marie Rutkoski

24. “You don’t need to be gifted with a blade. You are your own best weapon.”

— Marie Rutkoski

25. “Arin wondered if she would lift her eyes, but wasn’t worried he would be seen in the garden’s shadows. He knew the law of such things: people in brightly lit places cannot see into the dark.”

— Marie Rutkoski

26. “But Arin saw Kestrel as she had been last night before the ball. How her hair had been a spill of low light over his palms. He had threaded desire into the braids, had wanted her to sense it even as he dreaded that she would. He had met her eyes in the mirror and didn’t know, couldn’t tell, her feelings. He only knew the fire of his own.”

— Marie Rutkoski

27. “It seemed to Kestrel that her life had taken the shape of a folded knife, her heart a blade inside a body of wood.”

— Marie Rutkoski

28. “Say what you want about me, about what happened between us, about the shape of the sun and the color of the grass and any other truths in this world you want to deny. Deny everything until the gods strike you down. But you can’t say that I don’t know you.”

— Marie Rutkoski

29. “You snored,” Kestrel said. “I did not.” “You did. You snored so loudly that the people in my dreams complained.”

— Marie Rutkoski

30. “He felt like that: like a dark, curling force was working through him. It flooded to the tips of his fingers and warmed him. It spread his ribs wide with each breath.”

— Marie Rutkoski

31. “There was dishonor, she decided, in accepting someone else’s idea of honor without question.”

— Marie Rutkoski

32. “Nothing in dreams can hurt you, her father had said – which was another way of saying that life can.”

— Marie Rutkoski

33. “People in brightly lit places cannot see into the dark.”

— Marie Rutkoski

34. “The reason you enjoy my company is because I look like how you feel.”

— Marie Rutkoski

35. “My soul is yours”, he said. “You know that it is.”

— Marie Rutkoski

36. “Kestrel could read an expression as if looking through shifting water to see the grainy bottom, the silt rising or settling, the dart of a fish.”

— Marie Rutkoski

37. “Looks like someone’s suffering the Winner’s Curse.”

— Marie Rutkoski

38. “Later, Kestrel wished she had spoken then, that no time had been lost. She wished that she’d had the courage that very moment to tell Arin what she’d finally known to be true: that she loved him with the whole of her heart.”

— Marie Rutkoski

39. “Arin’s god slapped him across the face. Pay attention, death demanded. Arin did, and after that, no one could touch him. When.”

— Marie Rutkoski

40. “Arin pulled her onto his lap. He held her shaking form, tucked his face into the crook of her cold neck as she sobbed against him. He murmured that he loved her more than he could say. He promised that he would always choose her first.”

— Marie Rutkoski

41. “Arin used to clutch his head in disgusted wonder at how fascinated he’d once been by the daughter of the Valorian general. He used to sting at her rejection. Now, though, the thought of Kestrel gave him a cold relief. Ice on a bruise.”

— Marie Rutkoski

42. “But nothing is as it is. Everything comes from something. There is nothing and no one without a past.”

— Marie Rutkoski

43. “Arin would trade his heart for a snarled knot of thread if it meant he would never have to see Kestrel again.”

— Marie Rutkoski

44. “Kestrel felt Arin’s tension, the way he looked at the prince. Arin’s worry was plain, his hands still at his sides yet slightly open, as if his friend might shatter and Arin needed to be ready to catch the pieces.”

— Marie Rutkoski

45. “You are important to me,” she said, and touched his face. Important. The word swelled and deflated. More than he’d thought. Less than he wanted.”

— Marie Rutkoski

46. “Feelings like guilt and anxiety and missing people should have a certain life span.”

— Marie Rutkoski

47. “I’m going to miss you when I wake up.”

— Marie Rutkoski

48. “Her blood felt laced with black powder. How could she have forgotten what it was like to burn on a fuse before him?”

— Marie Rutkoski

49. “You don’t, Kestrel, even though the god of lies loves you.”

— Marie Rutkoski

50. “But how could he? Why couldn’t he love me most? Or enough. Why couldn’t he love me enough to choose me over his rules?”

— Marie Rutkoski