Top 50 Nina Varela Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “It only takes One clever fox to best a thousand men.”

— Nina Varela

2. “Strength isn’t measured by the ability to cause harm.”

— Nina Varela

3. “If the universe were static, I could stand anywhere in this world and I swear my line of sight would end on you. I swear I’d find you in the dark.”

— Nina Varela

4. “Because you deserve to be known, in whatever capacity you wish. I am trying to become a person who deserves to know you. I want that more than anything.”

— Nina Varela

5. “I told you once I’m not a book to be read,” Ayla continued. “I take it back. I’m a book. Read me.”

— Nina Varela

6. “Perhaps the butterfly was actually a wasp.”

— Nina Varela

7. “But you just do what you think is right, Ayla. It was never really a choice, was it? Wanting her. Killing her.”

— Nina Varela

8. “There was no room inside her for emotions like this. For yearning like this. For loneliness like this. But she was so human-shaped.”

— Nina Varela

9. “Do wolves concern themselves with the slaughter of sheep?”

— Nina Varela

10. “Wars were won by whichever side caused the most suffering. How was that something to be proud of?”

— Nina Varela

11. “Crier wanted to point to her chest, this is the hurting part, this is the bleeding part, fix it or take it out.”

— Nina Varela

12. “Another lie. This one better than the last, though.”

— Nina Varela

13. “Cruelty was wasted on the kind.”

— Nina Varela

14. “If we look only at the past, we lose sight of the future. And what a future it could be.”

— Nina Varela

15. “If longing is madness, then none of us are sane.”

— Nina Varela

16. “A tiny pathetic thought: the warmth of Ayla’s touch rivaled the afternoon sun.”

— Nina Varela

17. “You clever girl. Oh, you clever, fearsome girl.”

— Nina Varela

18. “They melted into a series of deep, lush kisses, hot and dizzying and endless, lips moving together, Crier’s mouth opening beneath Ayla’s, the taste of her like summer rain. Ayla pushed into her over and over again, taking her mouth, already addicted to this, to her, to Crier, everything about her, taste and scent and the warmth of her skin under Ayla’s hands.”

— Nina Varela

19. “She didn’t usually feel the aloneness quite this much, but it was harder, this time of year, to ignore the graveyard in her chest.”

— Nina Varela

20. “There was no room inside her for emotions like this. For yearning like this. For loneliness like this. But she was so human-shaped. She was so human-shaped. How could she live in this vessel and not feel any attachment to the world, to its people?”

— Nina Varela

21. “I have a heart like you, Ayla.” Crier repeated, pressing Ayla’s hand harder against her chest. Ayla heard her own heartbeat and felt Crier’s – a song tapping against her palm, a racing pulse beneath her fingers. Ayla was breathing too hard. She was breathing too hard. “I feel things too,” Crier whispered.”

— Nina Varela

22. “They were still holding hands. They hadn’t let go, not even once. Ayla’s hand was sweaty; there was dirt and sweat and probably blood slicking their palms, but she didn’t want to lose this point of contact. This point of warmth, solidity, in the middle of a huge and frightening thing. The machinery of war.”

— Nina Varela

23. “She carried the same intensity about her, like heat waves rising from her skin, even though she was just standing in the doorway and not currently in the middle of saving Crier’s life. Like she was more than a human girl. Like she was a summer storm made flesh.”

— Nina Varela

24. “The truth of Ayla, the pain of her, was like a song you could feel vibrating on the air, even if you didn’t know the words.”

— Nina Varela

25. “Like so much else, it was a carefully constructed lie. Rowan was no sparrow. She was a bird of prey.”

— Nina Varela

26. “There was no beginning to her, no end, no parameters; her body was not the truth of her;.”

— Nina Varela

27. “Time kept blurring, rolling over itself, going belly-up like a dead animal.”

— Nina Varela

28. “A drop of water gleamed on Ayla’s lower lip. Strangely, it made Crier want to – drink.”

— Nina Varela

29. “Their faces were so close – she had the advantage of height over Ayla, and something about staring down into Ayla’s face, even when it was all twisted with indignant anger, made Crier’s blood sing.”

— Nina Varela

30. “Justice was a god, and Ayla didn’t believe in such childish things. She believed in blood.”

— Nina Varela

31. “Crier wanted to study her like a map. Draw an easy path between all the specific yet scattered points of her.”

— Nina Varela

32. “My hear, if I have one, is a house of empty rooms and empty halls. My thoughts and footsteps echo. Sometimes I feel like a guest in the house of myself. But sometimes, someone’s footsteps cross my floor, and that is enough. These days, I luxuriate in my loneliness. I walk through my empty halls naked and singing.”

— Nina Varela

33. “You keep comparing yourself to a book. That is not how I see you. If I want to learn about you, it’s not for... pleasure, or leisure, or the desired mastery of a subject. I am not trying to learn you like a language. I am trying, Ayla, to learn you like a person. Like people do, with the knowledge that I will never know everything. That it is impossible to know everything. Because you deserve to be known, in whatever capacity you wish. I am trying to become a person who deserves to know you.”

— Nina Varela

34. “She had never really seen a pair of eyes like this. It was like standing in the doorway to a dark room, like balancing on a threshold, holding a lantern up and watching how it kissed some things gold and left other things in shadow. It was the kind of dark that hid and held a lot of things. A hot fluid dark, a summer tide pool dark, a wild breathless dark.”

— Nina Varela

35. “I was talking about how you never, ever stop fighting, no matter how much it hurts.”

— Nina Varela

36. “Ayla wanted to see her break things, wanted to see her broken, wanted to watch her break apart, wanted to be the cause of it.”

— Nina Varela

37. “The second was something she would not admit to herself, could not put into words because even thinking about it made her heart feel like a bridge giving way tumbling down into water, all her pieces carried off by the current of something far older and more powerful than she was.”

— Nina Varela

38. “It was the way their skin stretched over their hand-designed muscles and bones. Like it could barely keep all the monster inside.”

— Nina Varela

39. “Humanity is how you act, my lady,” said Jezen. “Not how you were Made.”

— Nina Varela

40. “One thing was becoming clear. The only way to keep going, to keep fighting, was to learn more about her past.”

— Nina Varela

41. “Crier looked at her, and smiled. Wide and bright as the whole damn sky.”

— Nina Varela

42. “We were created to be more than human, better than human, but – are we really any better, if we resort to senseless violence so easily? How far are we willing to go?”

— Nina Varela

43. “Her family’s death had left her not a person but a ghost, a ruined shell, a carcass. The parts that had survived would be tainted forever.”

— Nina Varela

44. “Her head was pillowed on her arm and the actual pillow had been tossed carelessly to the floor and she was sleeping on top of the blankets like she always did, which was something Ayla knew and did not know how to unlearn.”

— Nina Varela

45. “She had known Ayla for less than an hour total, and already she knew what she wanted.”

— Nina Varela

46. “It might have sounded as if she was arguing because she cared about humankind. Which she did.”

— Nina Varela

47. “You’re not breathing,” Ayla finally said.”

— Nina Varela

48. “Ayla was as silent as the storm was loud in Crier’s head. Her heart raced.”

— Nina Varela

49. “Crier stared at the green feathers, so flimsy and light, yet carrying so much meaning.”

— Nina Varela

50. “The wound heals over. You adjust to this new way of moving through the world. But it always aches, and not just physically, and you never forget what was lost.”

— Nina Varela