Top 40 Marjorie M. Liu Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “Power is transient. Power can flow from one person to another. The most powerful person in a room isn’t the wealthiest or the one with the most connections. It’s the person who believes the strongest, the one who has the most confidence. And, sometimes, it’s the person who can make everyone else feel like less of themselves.”

— Marjorie M. Liu

2. “Being alone was easier. No risk, just loneliness. No one ever died from that.”

— Marjorie M. Liu

3. “I am vulnerable, starved for kindness. And when I receive it, I lose my mind.”

— Marjorie M. Liu

4. “All of us change. Everyone in this world, from birth to death, becomes someone new. Again and again, we are remade.”

— Marjorie M. Liu

5. “Mother Wolf, you called yourself. What does a wolf teach her pups but teeth and hunger? You didn’t make me in your image. You made me into something worse. I have to know what that is.”

— Marjorie M. Liu

6. “They call us monsters because it makes it easier to hurt us. But monsters are people, too.”

— Marjorie M. Liu

7. “I’ve got a black-belt in crazy, and I know where you live.”

— Marjorie M. Liu

8. “There’s more hunger in the world than love.”

— Marjorie M. Liu

9. “Moscow was, as some said, the most beautiful mistress a man could ever want, but never cross her: like any good woman, she might just cut off your balls for the hell of it.”

— Marjorie M. Liu

10. “Yes. Miss Halfwolf scares me a lot. But that doesn’t make her a monster. Don’t be like the Witches, Master Ren. They call us monsters because it makes it easier to hurt us. But monsters are people, too.”

— Marjorie M. Liu

11. “Expect the unexpected, my mother once said. Because the unexpected most certainly will be expecting you.”

— Marjorie M. Liu

12. “The first thing you learn is how to be alone. You learn, or suffer. It is an easy lesson. You suffer more when people are around. People make you feel alone. And loneliness is a quiet wound.”

— Marjorie M. Liu

13. “Only she who trusts nothing can know real peace.”

— Marjorie M. Liu

14. “Miracles pass and I see. Great wonders speak and I listen.”

— Marjorie M. Liu

15. “How’s his appendix?“”Like crap. They almost didn’t catch it in time, and he’s still doing the ass-plant in a hospital bed, beingdoted on by an army of hot nurses. Makes me sick.“”Maybeyou should rupture something.“”Any more of these stories out of you and I just might.”

— Marjorie M. Liu

16. “Religion was no cure for dysfunction.”

— Marjorie M. Liu

17. “You must always have a safe place to go. That is the first thing you learn. Though you should know that by instinct, before anyone has to teach you. It isn’t just spies that need to run. Good times don’t last forever.”

— Marjorie M. Liu

18. “The good and the bad. It always happens together, and all you can do is press on. Press on.”

— Marjorie M. Liu

19. “Tolstoy will live forever. Some people do. But that’s not enough. It’s not the length of life that matters – just the depth of it. The chances we take. The paths we choose. How we go on after our hearts break. Hearts always break. And so we bend with our hearts. And we sway. But in the end – what matters is that we loved and lived.”

— Marjorie M. Liu

20. “He was a hot, hot former priest and she wanted to pull a Thorn Birds on his ass.”

— Marjorie M. Liu

21. “Words are reflections. What we speak comes back to us. I prefer being told the truth, so I tell the truth. Within reason.”

— Marjorie M. Liu

22. “We all burn. We burn in fire. We burn in blood. We burn in dreams. And it never ends. Dreams never end. You would not want them to. Not if it means forgetting. You can never forget. You, who are all that is left. So remember, we are born in fire. Again and again. You would live it all again. No matter how much it hurts. When it hurts you know you are alive. And you know that as long as you live, they live. And when you die, they die. You are the inheriter of memories.”

— Marjorie M. Liu

23. “But focus always on your shame, and your shame will eat you. It will become you. That is the coward’s way. A coward never has to learn.”

— Marjorie M. Liu

24. “It is possible to drown in information... and die for lack of wisdom.”

— Marjorie M. Liu

25. “What happened once, will happen again... but in a different form. To become a future-teller, one needs only to study history.”

— Marjorie M. Liu

26. “I listened to the wind bury winter; and when I tasted his grace, his grace had no name; only, night became something else in his presence, as though darkness had a soul, here, swaying to heartbeats roaring.”

— Marjorie M. Liu

27. “Too bad people don’t rebuild themselves so easily.”

— Marjorie M. Liu

28. “We’re all the same inside the cage. When they put the collars on us.”

— Marjorie M. Liu

29. “Running was not always the coward’s route; it was a matter of survival. The fewer violent encounters one invited, the longer the life.”

— Marjorie M. Liu

30. “There was an art to living, and sometimes it required the inexorable, relentless resolve just to keep plowing forward, one step at a time, no matter what the hell it was you were doing.”

— Marjorie M. Liu

31. “Just because you are afraid you won’t have anything tomorrow doesn’t mean you shouldn’t help people today.”

— Marjorie M. Liu

32. “Dreams, stories, art- they were, and are, instruments of divine intervention that molded you into a woman who dwells in possibility: who now feels herself serene with comfort and strength.”

— Marjorie M. Liu

33. “You’re my wife,” he replied, but behind those words, in his eyes, I knew what that really meant was, You’re my friend, and I love you. The.”

— Marjorie M. Liu

34. “There’s never honor where there’s power.”

— Marjorie M. Liu

35. “I have hunted for less. I have killed for less. But never with as much pleasure.”

— Marjorie M. Liu

36. “There are wolves in the night. The soldiers would say that, when I was a girl. My uncles and brothers in war. My friends. Raising me on the battlefield because there was no where else to go. There are wolves, they would say. And there are stories about wolves and girls. Girls in red. All alone in the woods. About to get eaten up. Wolves and girls. Both have sharp teeth.”

— Marjorie M. Liu

37. “I should have known this would happen. But I got happy, and soft. I forgot that secrets never keep.”

— Marjorie M. Liu

38. “You always knew what you had to do. No one ever told you. You had the resolve even then. Nor were you afraid of the dark or what waited for you there. But sometimes, I wish you had been.”

— Marjorie M. Liu

39. “I flexed my hands, trying to muster the darkness within my heart – wondering, briefly, what it took to get a girl in the mood for murder.”

— Marjorie M. Liu

40. “But no one builds better homes than those who have lost home.”

— Marjorie M. Liu

41. “I was security. A good right hook. A thousand yard stare.”

— Marjorie M. Liu

42. “I had begun to keep a journal. Not for myself, but for the future. My bloodline. Every Hunter kept a record, meant to inspire and teach from beyond the grave. I felt sorry for the kid who inherited mine.”

— Marjorie M. Liu

43. “I was a spy. I was trusted. Until I changed sides. Funny how that happens. I gave up one country for another. One country for an ideal. I didn’t think of it that way at the time. Call me crazy. But I just wanted to be free.”

— Marjorie M. Liu

44. “I tried my best, but she pulled ahead, and I was loath to shout after her. Instead, I practiced throwing rude and unflattering thoughts in her direction. Killy glanced over her shoulder at me, and her pace slowed to a very fast walk.”

— Marjorie M. Liu

45. “I outlived all the men who raised me. I stayed young while they faded, and died from bullets and disease. Or old age. You forget so much. You forget them. Friends. Family. You put aside what can’t be changed. Like death. Until something small and unexpected catches you.”

— Marjorie M. Liu

46. “There are miracles, Maxine. Even in death, and betrayal, and grief – there are still miracles. Cling to that, cling to hope. No matter how terrible things get, or how helpless you feel. Hope is what will save you, again and again. So get up. Get up off that floor where I found you. Fight, Maxine. Fight for your life. Fight for other lives that haven’t been born. Fight for your hope. Fight for your heart. You’ll find a miracle if you do. I promise.”

— Marjorie M. Liu