Top 300 Naomi Novik Quotes (2026 Update)
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151. “But none of that matters at all.” His head raised to stare balefully at me, but I said, incoherent yet convinced, “It’s just – a way to go. There isn’t only one way to go.” I waved at his notes. “You’re trying to find a road where there isn’t one. It’s like – it’s gleaning in the woods,” I said abruptly. “You have to pick your way through the thickets and the trees, and it’s different every time.”

— Naomi Novik

152. “I hated her; I wanted her to burn, the way so many of the corrupted had burned, because she’d put her hold on them. But wanting cruelty felt like another wrong answer in an endless chain.”

— Naomi Novik

153. “I missed home like the ache of hunger, something in me left empty. I’d missed it every day since we crossed out of the valley, going over the mountains. Roots – yes. There were roots in my heart, as deep as any corruption could go.”

— Naomi Novik

154. “What I mean – what we mean by it is – it’s like credit,” I said, suddenly thinking of my grandfather. “Gifts, and thanks – we’ll accept from someone what they can give then, and make return to them when it’s wanted, if we can. And there are some cheats, and some debts aren’t paid, but others are paid with interest to make up for it, and we can all do the more for not having to pay as we go.”

— Naomi Novik

155. “How far would we have to go to run from winter?”

— Naomi Novik

156. “How did you,” he said, pushing himself up on an elbow, indignation finally dawning, and I pushed him back down and kissed him.”

— Naomi Novik

157. “But hope is good strong drink, especially when you can get someone else to buy it for you.”

— Naomi Novik

158. “And more to the point, I was reasonably certain he wasn’t going to try and devour my soul. My expectations for a husband had lowered.”

— Naomi Novik

159. “I’d chosen- not the lesser evil, but the less immediate one.”

— Naomi Novik

160. “My head ached worst of all, some part of me tethered back to the valley, stretched out of recognizable shape and trying to make sense of myself when I was so far from anything I knew.”

— Naomi Novik

161. “That man with my brother is an envoy.”

— Naomi Novik

162. “Dragon intelligence was a mystery to men who made a study of the subject; he had no idea how much the dragon would hear or understand, but thought it better to avoid the risk of giving offense.”

— Naomi Novik

163. “I do not know that the Chinese system is any worse; there is a limit to the evil one despot alone can do, and if he is truly vicious he can be overthrown; a hundred corrupt members of Parliament may together do as much injustice or more, and be the less easy to uproot.”

— Naomi Novik

164. “He was a thing of books and alembics to me, library and laboratory.”

— Naomi Novik

165. “I reached out my hands to them, suddenly: I put out my hand to Sergey on one side, and to Stepon on the other, and they put out their hands to me, and to each other, and we held tight, tight; we made a circle together, my brothers and me, around the food that we had been given, and there was no wolf in the room.”

— Naomi Novik

166. “There was only me to save me, because no one else cared.”

— Naomi Novik

167. “I watched them roam awhile, and had a small weep, but even grief had its limits. By dinner-time I was horribly bored.”

— Naomi Novik

168. “It’s a lie that matches his desire.”

— Naomi Novik

169. “If they cannot be woken to a natural affection for their country, such as we feel, it is our fault and not theirs.”

— Naomi Novik

170. “I thought I could smell the sorcery in him, a sharp pungent mix of cinnamon and pepper and resin of pine, and deep below it burning woodsmoke.”

— Naomi Novik

171. “Fear and work weren’t all bad, as companions went. They were both better than loneliness, and the deeper fears, the worse ones that I knew would come true: that I wouldn’t see my mother and father for ten years, that I’d never live again in my own home, never run wild in the woods again, that whatever strange alchemy acted on the Dragon’s girls would soon begin to take hold of me, and make me into someone I wouldn’t recognize at the end of it.”

— Naomi Novik

172. “I leaned against his side, his irritation oddly comforting. After a moment he grudgingly put his arm around me. The deep quiet was already settling back upon the grove, as if all the fire and rage we’d brought could make only a brief interruption in its peace.”

— Naomi Novik

173. “Because that’s what the story’s really about: getting out of paying your debts.”

— Naomi Novik

174. “Solya may not be wicked, but he likes to be too clever for everyone’s good.”

— Naomi Novik

175. “Little Irina must be a woman grown by now. A beauty, I have heard, surely?′ It was more mockery: he had heard nothing of the sort, of course. I had traveled with my father; the court and his advisers knew I was nothing out of the ordinary, and hardly a girl to turn a young tsar’s head – if he had been in any danger of turning his head at all, except perhaps all the way round like an owl.”

— Naomi Novik

176. “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. And yes, fine. But I think that after a certain number of evil choices, it’s reasonable shorthand to decide that someone’s an evil person who oughtn’t have the chance to make any more choices. And the more power someone has, the less slack they ought to be given.”

— Naomi Novik

177. “Oh, Hammond-intolerable, but he will see the job through.”

— Naomi Novik

178. “She was thinner than she had been. The thing ate only sparingly. Enough to keep Kasia alive, not enough to keep me from watching her wear away, her body growing gaunt and her face hollow-cheeked.”

— Naomi Novik

179. “I do not care if Laurence tells me not to squash you.”

— Naomi Novik

180. “Well, I would have struck him, but I would have had to get up. You have no notion how difficult it is to arrange skirts when sitting down; it took me five minutes together the first time.”

— Naomi Novik

181. “I had forgotten to fear him, from too much time spent too close.”

— Naomi Novik

182. “All maps are fiction when the world is seen from the sky. But if ten thousand dragons choose to believe in this one, I think you will find it nearer truth than otherwise.”

— Naomi Novik

183. “That was a story, too; they all had stories.”

— Naomi Novik

184. “He roared at me furiously for ten minutes after he finally managed to put out the sulky and determined fire, calling me a witless muttonheaded spawn of pig farmers-“My father’s a wood-cutter,” I said- “adOf axe-swinging lummocks!” he snarled.”

— Naomi Novik

185. “Because that’s what the story’s really about: getting out of paying your debts. That’s not how they tell it, but I knew. My father was a moneylender, you see.”

— Naomi Novik

186. “A life before you in the moment isn’t worth a hundred elsewhere, three months from now.”

— Naomi Novik

187. “I worked very hard after that. I took as much of Da’s work as I could. I didn’t want to make a row of dead babies and die.”

— Naomi Novik

188. “Now come on. Let’s find the baby unicorns and get out of here.”

— Naomi Novik

189. “Don’t stand there like a cretin,” he said. “Take it.”

— Naomi Novik

190. “I didn’t really understand what mothers were, because mine was in a tree, but I knew they were very good things and you were very angry and sad if you lost them.”

— Naomi Novik

191. “Oh, how I’d enjoyed all that sweet crisp righteous anger, my favorite drug: I’d nearly ridden the high straight into murder.”

— Naomi Novik

192. “We’re cannon fodder, and human shields, and useful new blood, and minions, and janitors and maids, and thanks to all the work the losers in here do trying to get into an alliance and an enclave after, the enclave kids get extra sleep and extra food and extra help, more than if it was only them in here. And we all get the illusion of a chance. But the only chance they’re really giving us is the chance to be useful to them.”

— Naomi Novik

193. “The Magnati have all been summoned for the funeral, and I’ll be announcing our betrothal once they’re gathered.”

— Naomi Novik

194. “Was I starting to feel evil? Yes. Now I was worrying I’d be turned to the dark side by too much crochet.”

— Naomi Novik

195. “I turned back and tried again, and once more I was sure that I was understanding, and all of it made perfect sense – better than perfect sense, even; it had the feeling of truth, of something that I’d always known and just hadn’t ever put into words, or of explaining clearly and plainly something I’d never understood.”

— Naomi Novik

196. “No one had ever shouted at me in my life: my mother with her quiet voice, my gentle father. But I found something bitter inside myself, something of that winter blown into my heart: the sound of my mother coughing, and the memory of the story the way they’d told it in the village square so many times, about a girl who made herself a queen with someone else’s gold, and never paid her debts.”

— Naomi Novik

197. “He obviously wanted to leave on a snappy comeback, but couldn’t think of one. I suppose he wasn’t ever called on to produce them in the ordinary course of things. After a moment of struggle, he just scowled and stalked out. I’m delighted to report my repaired door slammed shut on his heels beautifully.”

— Naomi Novik

198. “My darling girl, I love you, have courage, my mother wrote, and keep far away from Orion Lake.”

— Naomi Novik

199. “I tried to make him a young court-wizard in my mind – he almost looked the part in his fine clothes, pursuing some lovely noblewoman – and there my imagination stumbled. He was a thing of books and alembics to me, library and laboratory.”

— Naomi Novik

200. “What perfectly sensible advice. It sat in my stomach, an indigestible lump.”

— Naomi Novik