Top 300 Naomi Novik Quotes (2026 Update)
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201. “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

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

— Naomi Novik

203. “They all claim to have been built by the author of the Golden Stone sutras, this guy named Purochana who some wizard historians believe was the guy of that name who also shows up in the Mahabharata, more or less working for the prince of Gandhara.”

— Naomi Novik

204. “Hush, sweetheart. You don’t have a mother anymore, but let me to speak to you with her voice a minute. Listen. Stepon told us what happened in your house. 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.”

— Naomi Novik

205. “I say to you, here are the dangers. Some are more likely than others. Weigh them, put them all together, and you will know the cost. Then you must say, is this what you owe?”

— Naomi Novik

206. “Some sorcerers get an affinity for weather magic, or transformation spells, or fantastic combat magics like dear Orion. I got an affinity for mass destruction.”

— Naomi Novik

207. “I was back in comfortable plain skirts again, but they looked at me anyway as they went away, not with hostility, but not the way any of them would ever have looked at a woodcutter’s girl from Dvernik. It was the way I had looked at Prince Marek, at first. They looked at me and saw someone out of a story, who might ride by and be stared at, but didn’t belong in their lives at all.”

— Naomi Novik

208. “He turned a cold certain look over them like the sweep of a scythe. “For however many of them will be left,” he said.”

— Naomi Novik

209. “The Dragon’s tower is a long way in the other direction, a piece of chalk stuck in the base of the western mountains.”

— Naomi Novik

210. “She was safe for another moment, one more moment, and all of life was only moments, after all.”

— Naomi Novik

211. “It was all right when I did it,” I said, “but when you did it, it was wrong. As though – you were following a trail, but a tree had fallen down in the meantime, or some hedge grew up, and you insisted on continuing on anyway, instead of going around it – ” “There are no hedges!” he roared. “It comes, I suppose,” I said thoughtfully, speaking to the air, “of spending too much time alone indoors, and forgetting that living things don’t always stay where you put them.”

— Naomi Novik

212. “We hadn’t taken him prisoner; he’d just followed us out, trailing after us with a puzzled look, like a man who knew he wasn’t dreaming, but felt he should have been.”

— Naomi Novik

213. “Success excuses all risks.”

— Naomi Novik

214. “I didn’t know how to answer anything so brazen; the only thing I could have managed would have been an inarticulate hiss.”

— Naomi Novik

215. “As happy as I would be to forgo the very doubtful pleasure of watching you flop about like an exhausted eel over the least cantrip,” he bit out, “we’ve already seen the consequences of leaving you to your own devices.”

— Naomi Novik

216. “I recognized that hunger: a devouring thing that would gulp down lives with pleasure and would only pretend to care about law or justice, unless you had some greater power behind you that it couldn’t find a way to cheat or break, and that would never, never be satisfied.”

— Naomi Novik

217. “I hated him and his silence ferociously: I knew he was only letting me convince myself there was nothing to be done.”

— Naomi Novik

218. “You have to ration sympathy and grief in here the way you ration school supplies.”

— Naomi Novik

219. “I’m not your dear girl,” Kasia said, with a bite in her tone that silenced him.”

— Naomi Novik

220. “The food wasn’t as bad as the Scholomance cafeteria, which was as much as you could really say for it, although they presented it with the confident triumph of someone offering you marvels of the culinary art, complete with heavy white napkins and inconvenient cutlery that repeatedly threatened to fall down and disappear into the crevices of the seat or into spots unreachable except by someone with arms like a flamingo’s legs.”

— Naomi Novik

221. “But he wasn’t going for the sake of corruption or the kingdom. His tower was broken, he’d drunk Spindle-water, and he’d held my hand. So now he was going to run away as quick as he could, and find himself some new stone walls to hide behind. He’d keep himself locked away for ten years this time, until he withered his own roots, and didn’t feel the lack of them anymore.”

— Naomi Novik

222. “That is all we can do for each other in the world, to keep the wolf away.”

— Naomi Novik

223. “I’m sorry,” I said, feeling stupid in the way I’m sorry always feel stupid when you mean it.”

— Naomi Novik

224. “But my father’s irritation told me otherwise. I had been a disappointment to him from the beginning, my mother having taken an excessive number of years to produce me, and shortly afterwards miscarrying the overdue son and dying with him.”

— Naomi Novik

225. “So I put together a street-going rig and came up with the courier.”

— Naomi Novik

226. “You feel like it’s going to rain.”

— Naomi Novik

227. “I’ve got quite well-developed willpower when it comes to doing necessary work. I just have very little willpower when it comes to indulging petty resentment:.”

— Naomi Novik

228. “But just because it’s a forty-sixth-order derivative equation or something doesn’t mean that I can’t work out which side of that equation is the guilty one.”

— Naomi Novik

229. “I’d want to. If you want, I want.”

— Naomi Novik

230. “But I couldn’t just be angry at her. Obviously I wanted to scream at her and set her whole enclave on fire, but that was just habit.”

— Naomi Novik

231. “We’re going home tomorrow. I’m going home. And my mother is going to be so happy, and for a long time, she won’t care about anything, except that I’m back. But then she’s going to want me to want the right things again. The things that the family think are the right things.” She stopped, and took a deep breath and let it out. “But I’m not going to. I’m going to want the things I want, and help them the way I can help them. And those are going to be the right things, too.”

— Naomi Novik

232. “When Orion finally got round to dumping me, I wanted to come out of this mess as something more than a school-wide reputation for being a bit of a slapper.”

— Naomi Novik

233. “Stop thinking how you can help the people nearest to you. Think about what help you can give best, and look for the nearest person who needs that help.”

— Naomi Novik

234. “More or less, I informed the eldritch horror it had no business existing with so much aggression, that I shoved it entirely out of reality.”

— Naomi Novik

235. “I’m delighted to report my repaired door slammed shut on his heels beautifully.”

— Naomi Novik

236. “I had people, in the plural, that I could ask to join me in the library, and even if they said no, they weren’t really saying no, they were only saying not this time.”

— Naomi Novik

237. “I’ve been taught any number of ways to manage anger, and they really work. What she’s never been able to teach me is how to want to manage it. So I go on seething and raging and knowing the whole time that it’s my own fault, because I do know how to stop.”

— Naomi Novik

238. “All of magic essentially involves sneaking something you want past reality while it’s distracted and looking the other way.”

— Naomi Novik

239. “Yes, now I was worrying I’d be turned to the dark side by too much crochet.”

— Naomi Novik

240. “Something about the aura of future monstrously dark sorceress must put them off.”

— Naomi Novik

241. “Knowing how to make a potion that will heal the lining of your stomach after you’ve accidentally drunk some lyesmoke-infused apple juice is its own reward, really.”

— Naomi Novik

242. “You’re the only right thing I’ve ever wanted.”

— Naomi Novik

243. “Mum always told me that you couldn’t know what people would do in a crisis, but I’d thought she just meant you should forgive people for behaving like weasels under bad circumstances, not that a stale biscuit like Khamis might suddenly come over all heroic in a tight corner.”

— Naomi Novik

244. “The Staryk didn’t know anything of keeping records: I suppose it was only to be expected from people who didn’t take on debts and were used to entire chambers wandering off and having to be called back like cats.”

— Naomi Novik

245. “I couldn’t be his savior; I had enough to do saving myself.”

— Naomi Novik

246. “I’m not some sort of pallid romantic who insists on being loved for my shining inner being. My inner being is exceptionally cranky and I often don’t want her company myself.”

— Naomi Novik

247. “I’m glad you and Chloe have become friends,” in an alarmingly hopeful way that was very clearly only one unfortunate literature assignment away from turning into come live with me and be my love, optionally etched onto metal with little hearts around it.”

— Naomi Novik

248. “To be fair, you’re the only person I’ve ever met who’d come up with the idea of being wildly rude and hostile to the guy who saved your life twenty times,” Aadhya said. I glared at her. “Thirteen times! And I’ve saved his life at least twice.” “Catch up already, girl,” she said, unrepentantly.”

— Naomi Novik

249. “Also I hadn’t lost an ounce of the passionate desire to beat him over the head with a large stick, and surely that was a sign of true love.”

— Naomi Novik

250. “I wasn’t alone anymore. They were saving me, and I was going to save them. It felt more like magic than magic.”

— Naomi Novik