Top 250 Sabaa Tahir Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “All my rage seethes inside me and there’s no place for it to go. I thrash. I scream. I snarl and bite. I let it course through me. I let it take me.”

— Sabaa Tahir

2. “Your emotions make you human. Even the unpleasant ones have a purpose. Don’t lock them away. If you ignore them, they just get louder and angrier.”

— Sabaa Tahir

3. “As long as there is life, there is hope.”

— Sabaa Tahir

4. “You are broken. But it is broken things that are the sharpest. The deadliest. It is broken things that are the most unexpected, and the most underestimated.”

— Sabaa Tahir

5. “Mercy is weakness. Offer it to your enemies and you might as well fall upon your own sword.”

— Sabaa Tahir

6. “The stories we tell have power, of course. But the stories that go untold have just as much power.”

— Sabaa Tahir

7. “But I’m not strong. I’m weak, and I’m sick of pretending I’m not.”

— Sabaa Tahir

8. “This is what it means to have faith, to believe in something greater than yourself.” A.”

— Sabaa Tahir

9. “It is not all that I wanted. But it is not nothing either.”

— Sabaa Tahir

10. “Hope is stronger than fear. It is stronger than hate.”

— Sabaa Tahir

11. “I want sand and stories and a clear night sky. I want to stare up into pale gray eyes filled with love and that edge of wickedness I ache for. I want to know what he said to me in Sadhese, a year and a half ago, when we danced at the Moon Festival in Serra. I want Elias Veturius back.”

— Sabaa Tahir

12. “Nothing ever changes, she had said. Nothing ever will. Maybe we’re the ones who change it, I’d told her.”

— Sabaa Tahir

13. “Few people want witnesses to their pain, and grief is the worst pain of all.”

— Sabaa Tahir

14. “Laia. The Scholar girl. Another ember waiting to burn the world down,′ she says. ‘Will you hurt her too?”

— Sabaa Tahir

15. “A veces, es mejor morir que vivir como un monstruo.”

— Sabaa Tahir

16. “I can say something in Sadhese, if you like.” He drops his lips to my ear, and the spice of his breath sends a pleasant shiver through me. “Menaya es poolan dila dekanala.” I sigh. No wonder Tribesmen can sell anything. His voice is warm and deep, like summer honey dripping off the comb. “What – ” My voice is hoarse, and I clear my throat. “What does it mean?” He gives me that smile again. “I’d really have to show you.”

— Sabaa Tahir

17. “I wish I could live a thousand lives so I could fall in love with you a thousand times. But if all we get is this one, and I share it with you, then I will never want for anything...”

— Sabaa Tahir

18. “Failure doesn’t define you. It’s what you do after you fail that determines whether you are a leader or a waste of perfectly good air.”

— Sabaa Tahir

19. “You are my temple. You are my priest. You are my prayer. You are my release.”

— Sabaa Tahir

20. “Fear is only your enemy if you allow it to be. Too much fear and you’re paralyzed. Too little fear and you’re arrogant.”

— Sabaa Tahir

21. “Draw a line in your mind. Never cross it again. You have a soul. It’s damaged, but it’s there. Don’t let them take it from you, Elias.”

— Sabaa Tahir

22. “Rage can fuel you. But grief gnaws at you slow, a termite nibbling at your soul until you’re a whisper of what you used to be.”

— Sabaa Tahir

23. “Each moment joins the next, a murmuration of starlings exploding out o the rafters of my mind and into the the heavens, moving as one, revealing a greater purpose.”

— Sabaa Tahir

24. “We are, all of us, just visitors in each other’s lives.”

— Sabaa Tahir

25. “The field of battle is my temple. The swordpoint is my priest. The dance of death is my prayer. The killing blow is my release.”

— Sabaa Tahir

26. “I wonder what it’s like to be with someone who can love you through your rage.”

— Sabaa Tahir

27. “I wish I could live a thousand lives so I could fall in love with you a thousand times.”

— Sabaa Tahir

28. “But mostly it taught me that music can be more of a home than four walls and a roof.”

— Sabaa Tahir

29. “You are an ember in the ashes, Elias Veturius. You will spark and burn, ravage and destroy. You cannot change it. You cannot stop it.”

— Sabaa Tahir

30. “If we are lost, God is like water, finding the unknowable path when we cannot.”

— Sabaa Tahir

31. “I’m too hot to care.”

— Sabaa Tahir

32. “I miss you. I’ll always miss you. Even when I’m a ghost.”

— Sabaa Tahir

33. “All the beauty of the stars means nothing when life here on earth is so ugly.”

— Sabaa Tahir

34. “Sometimes, there is no reason. Sometimes you kill and you hate killing but you are a soldier through and through so you keep killing. Your friends die. Your lovers die. And what you have at the end of your life is not the surety that you did it for some grand reason, but the hard knowledge that something was taken from you and you also gave it away. And you know you will carry that weight with you always. For it is a regret that only death can relieve.”

— Sabaa Tahir

35. “Emifal firdaant. May death claim me first.”

— Sabaa Tahir

36. “But you are not finished. You are my masterpiece, Helene Aquilla, but I have just begun. If you survive, you shall be a force to be reckoned with in this world. But first you will be unmade. First, you will be broken.”

— Sabaa Tahir

37. “My dress, black silk with a corset-tight bodice and diamond-patterned skirt, is the finest thing I’ve ever worn. I hate it on sight. The.”

— Sabaa Tahir

38. “Rise, Elias Veturius.” Tas smacks my face, and I blink at him in surprise. His eyes are fierce. “You gave me a name,” he says. “I want to live to hear it on the lips of others. Rise.” I.”

— Sabaa Tahir

39. “There is success,” I say. “And there is failure. The land in between is for those too weak to live. Duty first, unto death.”

— Sabaa Tahir

40. “First you will be unmade. First you will be broken.”

— Sabaa Tahir

41. “The woman in the mirror is not Helene Aquilla. She is the Blood Shrike. The Blood Shrike is not lonely, for the Empire is her mother and father, her lover and her best friend. She needs nothing else. She needs no one else. She stands apart.”

— Sabaa Tahir

42. “I’d rather die than live with no mercy, no honor, no soul.”

— Sabaa Tahir

43. “She was not of my body or my blood, this child. But she was of my soul.”

— Sabaa Tahir

44. “I do not doubt, I do not hesitate. I am the Lioness’s daughter, and I have the Lioness’s strength.”

— Sabaa Tahir

45. “The space he leaves is vast, that gnawing loneliness of showing your heart to someone only to find they never wanted to see it.”

— Sabaa Tahir

46. “Curse this world for what it does to the mothers, for what it does to the daughters. Curse it for making us strong through loss and pain, our hearts torn from our chests again and again. Curse it for forcing us to endure.”

— Sabaa Tahir

47. “You are my temple,” I murmur as I kneel beside her. “You are my priest. You are my prayer. You are my release.”

— Sabaa Tahir

48. “My brother is still fighting, and his screams slice right through me. I know then that I will hear them over and over again, echoing in every hour of every day until I am dead or I make it right. I know it.”

— Sabaa Tahir

49. “Seeing the enemy as human. A general’s ultimate nightmare.”

— Sabaa Tahir

50. “You have suffered. You have created suffering. You have killed. But you have also paid. With your life, twice over now, and with your heart, with your mind. You have guided thousands of lost souls. You have saved thousands of lives. You have done good in this world. Which will define you? The good? Or the suffering?”

— Sabaa Tahir