Top 50 Michelle Sagara Quotes (2024 Update)

1. “Success and failure are two edges of the same blade, two sides of the same coin. To fear one is to forever deny the possibility of the other.”

— Michelle Sagara

2. “Truth, like beauty, is in the eyes of the beholder.”

— Michelle Sagara

3. “Kaylin is not known for her punctuality. She is known, in fact, for her lack – even by those outside of the Hawklord’s command.”

— Michelle Sagara

4. “Not all of our heartless plans work as we intend; nor do all of our good intentions. We are where we are, and we can rarely predict where we will go, no matter how firm our beliefs.”

— Michelle Sagara

5. “We all fail. But none of us fail all the time.”

— Michelle Sagara

6. “Hope is often bitter, but it drives us, and we cling.”

— Michelle Sagara

7. “The look he gave her made her turn away for a moment. Sometimes you couldn’t look too closely at another person’s pain.”

— Michelle Sagara

8. “What humans do when they’re desperate is just an expression of fear. What they do when they feel safe is a better indication of whether or not you can trust them.”

— Michelle Sagara

9. “I hate being the only mortal in a gathering full of Immortals who think killing each other cleverly is the height of good manners.”

— Michelle Sagara

10. “Trying is fine. Failing is inevitable. Don’t let it devour you.”

— Michelle Sagara

11. “If hearts really could sink, Kaylin’s was busily rearranging her internal organs.”

— Michelle Sagara

12. “If life were fair, we would never have suffered what we suffered at all; having suffered it and survived, we’re still reacting to things that don’t exist anymore.”

— Michelle Sagara

13. “Stop judging your life only by the failures.”

— Michelle Sagara

14. “The gods where like the weather; sometimes good, sometimes bad, and either way, always beyond her.”

— Michelle Sagara

15. “Lies were something you told other people to make things easier, somehow – hopefully, for them, but often more selfishly for yourself.”

— Michelle Sagara

16. “History is not our guide, it is not our friend. It is a passing stranger, one which shadows legend, sprinkling it with the seeds of truth.”

— Michelle Sagara

17. “Sanabalis never seemed to eat, and he deflected most of her questions about Dragon cuisine. Then again, he deflected most of her questions about Dragons, period. Which was annoying because he was one, and could in theory be authorative.”

— Michelle Sagara

18. “The truth was only another mask, even if it was the best fit, the closest to skin and all that lay beneath.”

— Michelle Sagara

19. “Generally, I like to appear smart. I don’t admit being stupid when there’s any hope I’m not.”

— Michelle Sagara

20. “Maybe home is something we have to make, and remake, over and over.”

— Michelle Sagara

21. “There is not a man born among us who dreams – at first – of service, although in the end, many are bent that way.”

— Michelle Sagara

22. “I don’t like people much – they irritate and annoy me. But I’m fascinated by them anyway.”

— Michelle Sagara

23. “The children watch,′ she added softly. As if the children were the keepers of all conscience. And maybe, Kaylin thought, just maybe, they were a good keeper. To protect your children, you struggled with your anger, mastered it. Your struggled to explain away your fear, or theirs. There probably wasn’t all that much difference, in the end. You worked hard to be worthy of the trust they so carelessly – and completely – placed in you.”

— Michelle Sagara

24. “They are acknowledging previous failures in the only good way they can: by refusing to continue to fail. “I.”

— Michelle Sagara

25. “But home, for us, is each other, no matter where we happen to be.”

— Michelle Sagara

26. “Some days, Kaylin fervently wished that she had already passed Adult 101 and could get on with being the person she wanted to be.”

— Michelle Sagara

27. “She had a choice; she had chosen to listen. She had offered, wordless and desperate, to help.”

— Michelle Sagara

28. “Kaylin. The shape of a girl on the edge of the long climb into adulthood.”

— Michelle Sagara

29. “She’d learned early that if she couldn’t be on time to save her life, she’d better cultivate the unseemly art of groveling.”

— Michelle Sagara

30. “Kaylin glanced at the small dragon, who exhaled the sigh of the long-suffering everywhere.”

— Michelle Sagara

31. “Yes, attempts at murder are often misunderstandings. Unless it involves armies, in which case it’s diplomacy.”

— Michelle Sagara

32. “I don’t know what’s happening – but Spike says things are getting worse. She hesitated.”

— Michelle Sagara

33. “Because sometimes saying it – where only you can hear it, but forcing yourself to find the actual words – is helpful. Or at least it has been for some of my tenants. Not all of them, of course; all of you are different individuals. But some found it helpful – almost as if saying it out loud was an exorcism. It released the words instead of allowing them to remain trapped in their thoughts, wearing deeper and deeper grooves.”

— Michelle Sagara

34. “Angry Leontine Sergeant, angry Aerian Commander in Chief, slightly bored Dragon, and panicked human – you could practically call it a racial congress, with humans in their usual position.”

— Michelle Sagara

35. “Her hair was a flyaway mess, and her cheeks, she knew, would be a little too red for dignity – but she often had to choose between dignity and living another hour.”

— Michelle Sagara

36. “Safety, he said sharply, is an illusion. It has always been an illusion.”

— Michelle Sagara

37. “There were days when boredom – or the possibility that things could get boring – was as much of a gift as life was willing to give.”

— Michelle Sagara

38. “In practice, the Hawks are people. People are political. I don’t expect any group of people to be perfect, theoretical beings – for one, the pay isn’t nearly high enough. Some of the racial decisions made are purely pragmatic; the Barrani are preferentially sent into figurative war zones because we’re much more likely to survive them. There is no equality because we are not equal; we are different. I attempt to respect those differences.”

— Michelle Sagara

39. “Right or wrong is decided on the basis of a significant moment.”

— Michelle Sagara

40. “Ignorance and stupidity are not the same. Remember that. Ignorance can always be alleviated.”

— Michelle Sagara

41. “Trust me – you come close to death, you’ll remember how you stepped out of its way.”

— Michelle Sagara

42. “Kaylin hated politics. Hated them. She hated the stupid decisions, the game playing, the grandstanding. She hated political decisions made by people who never had to do any of the law’s actual work. She hated the pervasive sense of superiority and smugness that underlay all of the rules.”

— Michelle Sagara

43. “The past, of course, is a different country; it is occupied, frequently, by regret, and it is ruled by tyrants. They cannot be moved.”

— Michelle Sagara

44. “Leontines were a tad on the possessive side, they didn’t share space well, and they responded to an order as if it were a suicide wish and they were magic wands.”

— Michelle Sagara

45. “They feared you, and love can’t exist when there’s that much fear.”

— Michelle Sagara

46. “The Swords were the city’s peacekeepers, something illsuited to Kaylin; the Wolves were its hunters, and often, its killers. And the Hawks? The city’s eyes. Ears. The people who actually solved crimes.”

— Michelle Sagara

47. “We’re not what we were. We’re not what we will be. Everyone changes. Everyone can change. Let it go.”

— Michelle Sagara

48. “She told him she was fine. Except the words she used were “No. I’m not.”

— Michelle Sagara

49. “Communication was often like this, though: stumbling, tripping, getting up again. Moving, however clumsily, forward.”

— Michelle Sagara

50. “Hope. Such a simple word, to hold so much. I like it,” she added. “I think it’s appropriate.”

— Michelle Sagara