Top 300 Naomi Novik Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “Justice is expensive. That is why there is so little of it, and it is reserved for those few with enough money and influence to afford it.”

— Naomi Novik

2. “There’s no kindness in offering false hope.”

— Naomi Novik

3. “The Magicians brilliantly explores the hidden underbelly of fantasy and easy magic, taking what’s simple on the surface and turning it over to show us the complicated writhing mess beneath. It’s like seeing the worlds of Narnia and Harry Potter through a 3-D magnifying glass.”

— Naomi Novik

4. “But I had not known that I was strong enough to do any of those things until they were over and I had done them. I had to do the work first, not knowing.”

— Naomi Novik

5. “I should rather have you than a heap of gold, even if it were very comfortable to sleep on.”

— Naomi Novik

6. “She says it’s too easy to call people evil instead of their choices, and that lets people justify making evil choices, because they convince themselves that it’s okay because they’re still good people overall, inside their own heads.”

— Naomi Novik

7. “What could make the Napoleonic Wars more exciting? Dragons.”

— Naomi Novik

8. “And we must still try or we would be leaving our friends to fight without us. I think this is what you have meant by duty, all along; I do understand, at least this much of it.”

— Naomi Novik

9. “Fire wouldn’t burn he; blade wouldn’t cut her, no matter how long we hacked away.”

— Naomi Novik

10. “There was a song in this forest, too, but it was a savage song, whispering of madness and tearing and rage.”

— Naomi Novik

11. “I’m not stupid, nor a liar,” I said, “and if I can’t do any good, I can at least do something.”

— Naomi Novik

12. “Bring me the winter king, and I will make you a summer queen.”

— Naomi Novik

13. “No, it is just pyrite, but it is very pretty, is it not? I suppose you are one of those hoarding creatures,” Laurence said, looking affectionately up at Temeraire; many dragons had an inborn fascination with jewels or precious metals. “I am afraid I am not rich enough a partner for you; I will not be able to give you a heap of gold to sleep on.” “I should rather have you than a heap of gold, even if it were very comfortable to sleep on,” Temeraire said. “I do not mind the deck.” He.”

— Naomi Novik

14. “You can actually muck with history and think about what if, why not. What if there were dragons in the Incan Empire that allowed them to resist colonization? What if there were a massive dragon empire in the middle of the interior of southern Africa that decided to take objection to the slave trade?”

— Naomi Novik

15. “No one was enchanted beyond saving in the songs. The hero always saved them. There was no ugly moment in a dark cellar where the countess wept and cried out protest while three wizards put the count to death, and then made court politics out of it.”

— Naomi Novik

16. “He wasn’t a person, he was a lord and a wizard, a strange creature on another plane entirely, as far removed as storms and pestilence.”

— Naomi Novik

17. “You intolerable lunatic,” he snarled at me, and then he caught my face between his hands and kissed me.”

— Naomi Novik

18. “It wasn’t that I wanted a husband and a baby; I didn’t, or rather, I only wanted them the way I wanted to live to a hundred: someday, far off, never thinking about the particulars.”

— Naomi Novik

19. “I know i’m making her sound like something out of a story. But it was the other way around. When my mother told me stories about the spinning princess or the brave goose-girl or the river-maiden, in my head I imagined them all a little like Kasia; that was how I thought of her. And I wasn’t old enough to be wise, so I loved her more, not less, because I knew she would be taken from me soon.”

— Naomi Novik

20. “I am very tired of this Government, which I have never seen, and which is always insisting that I must do disagreeable things, and does no good to anybody.”

— Naomi Novik

21. “I glared at him speechlessly; how dare he put a pet name on me?”

— Naomi Novik

22. “Of course I was afraid. But I had learned to fear other things more: being despised, whittled down one small piece of myself at a time, smirked at and taken advantage of. I put my chin up and said, as cold as I could be in answer, “And what will you give me in return?”

— Naomi Novik

23. “I don’t want more sense!” I said loudly, beating against the silence of the room. “Not if sense means I’ll stop loving anyone. What is there besides people that’s worth holding on to?”

— Naomi Novik

24. “The river flows to the sea, whatever the wind says about it.”

— Naomi Novik

25. “There are men who are wolves inside, and want to eat up other people to fill their bellies. That it what was in your house with you, all your life. But here you are with your brothers, and you are not eaten up, and there is not a wolf inside you. You have fed each other, and you kept the wolf away. That is all we can do for each other in the world, to keep the wolf away. And if there has been food in my house for you, then I am glad, glad with all my heart. I hope there will always be.”

— Naomi Novik

26. “But the world I wanted wasn’t the world I lived in, and if I would do nothing until I could repair every terrible thing at once, I would do nothing forever.”

— Naomi Novik

27. “They come and go like seasons, the winter that gives no thought to the spring.”

— Naomi Novik

28. “However, I must disagree with you very strongly that providing ordinary and reasonable care in any way constitutes coddling, and I have always found that deprivation and hardship, when necessary, can be better endured by men who have not been subjected to them previously for no cause.”

— Naomi Novik

29. “You were challenged beyond the bounds of what could be done, and found a path to make it true.”

— Naomi Novik

30. “There are men who are wolves inside, and want to eat up other people to fill their bellies. That is what was in your house with you, all your life. But here you are with your brothers, and you are not eaten up, and there is not a wolf inside you. You have fed each other, and you kept the wolf away.”

— Naomi Novik

31. “But it was all the same choice, every time. The choice between the one death and all the little ones.”

— Naomi Novik

32. “I will lay my hand upon the flow of time, if need be, that you shall have however much of it you seek.”

— Naomi Novik

33. “There were forest depths in her eyes, green and unending.”

— Naomi Novik

34. “A servant is easy to make dishonest when they bring you coin and never touch any themselves,” he said. “Let her feel that her fortune rises with yours.”

— Naomi Novik

35. “I’m an engineer and a writer. And I find that those two things are not uncomplementary.”

— Naomi Novik

36. “If you don’t want a man dead, don’t bludgeon him over the head repeatedly.”

— Naomi Novik

37. “No, my dear,” he said at last, softly, knowing it was only the truth. “I would rather have you than any ship in the Navy.”

— Naomi Novik

38. “A robber who steals a knife and cuts himself cannot cry out against the woman who kept it sharp.”

— Naomi Novik

39. “And I wasn’t old enough to be wise, so I loved her more, not less, because I knew she would be taken from me soon.”

— Naomi Novik

40. “I am of the opinion”, Tharkay said, “that you ought not assign to free will something more likely the consequence of a sharp blow to the skull.”

— Naomi Novik

41. “I was a glaring blot on the perfection. But I didn’t care: I didn’t feel I owed him beauty.”

— Naomi Novik

42. “And then finally the magic flowed, but not the same way as when the Dragon’s spell-lessons dragged it in a rush out of me. Instead it seemed to me the sound of the chanting became a stream made to carry magic along, and I was standing by the water’s edge with a pitcher that never ran dry, pouring a thin silver line into the rushing current.”

— Naomi Novik

43. “The only thing that had ever done me any good in my father’s house was thinking: no one had cared what I wanted, or whether I was happy. I’d had to find my own way to anything I wanted. I’d never been grateful for that before now, when what I wanted was my life.”

— Naomi Novik

44. “So the fairy silver brought you a monster of fire for a husband, and me a monster of ice. We should put them in a room together and let them make us both widows.”

— Naomi Novik

45. “A power claimed and challenged and thrice carried out is true.”

— Naomi Novik

46. “He snorted. “He thinks killing a day-old hydra has made him a hero.” None of the songs had ever mentioned the Vandalus Hydra being one day old: it diminished the story more than a little.”

— Naomi Novik

47. “As a novelist you have just unlimited budget, total creative control. You really get to have your cake – all the cake – and then you can have a second cake if you wanted to.”

— Naomi Novik

48. “The creaking was every song I’d ever heard about war and battle; the horses clopping along, the drumbeat. All those stories must have ended this same way, with someone tired going home from a field full of death, but no one ever sang this part.”

— Naomi Novik

49. “Once down by the shore, only Temeraire went directly into the deep water and began to swim. Maximus came tentatively into the shallows, but went no further than he could stand, and Lily stood on the shore watching, nosing at the water but not going in. Levitas, as was his habit, first wavered on the shore, and then dashed out all at once, splashing and flapping wildly with his eyes tightly shut until he got out to the deeper water and began to paddle enthusiastically.”

— Naomi Novik

50. “He made her give him gold just to live, as if she belonged to him because he was strong enough to kill her. My father was strong enough to kill me but that did not mean I belonged to him.”

— Naomi Novik