Top 280 Sabaa Tahir Quotes (2026 Update)
Page 5 of 6

201. “She was our Tribe’s Kehanni, our tale-spinner, and she wove whole worlds with her voice, with the flick of a hand or the tilt of her head.”

— Sabaa Tahir

202. “Pop used to say that standing by someone during their darkest times creates a bond. A sense of obligation that is less a weight and more a gift.”

— Sabaa Tahir

203. “She has no idea how pretty she is – or what kind of problems her beauty will cause for her at a place like Blackcliff. The wind pulls at her hair again, and I catch her scent – like fruit and sugar.”

— Sabaa Tahir

204. “And he is my ally – the only person who can help me save my brother, Darin, from a notorious Martial prison.”

— Sabaa Tahir

205. “After I pull my eyes away from her, I realize that I’m not the only one dumbstruck. Many of the young men around me sneak glances at her. She doesn’t seem to notice, which, of course, makes her all the more intriguing.”

— Sabaa Tahir

206. “The Scholars around us scatter, running every which way, driven by a fear that’s been hammered into our bones. Always us! Our dignity shredded, our families annihilated, our children torn from their parents. Our blood soaking the dirt. What sin was so great that Scholars must pay, with every generation, with the only thing we have left: our lives?”

— Sabaa Tahir

207. “You humans give your loyalty so willingly for just a little hope.”

— Sabaa Tahir

208. “Elias,′ he says after a moment, the slightest bit of warmth entering those cold gray eyes. ‘From you I prefer Elias.”

— Sabaa Tahir

209. “He melts into the crowd, and I hurry back toward Blackcliff. If Izzi knows of an entrance, I still have time to see it for myself and head back here to pass along the information. The Resistance can get Darin out, and I’ll be done with all of this. No more scars or whippings. No more terror and fear. And maybe, a quiet part of me whispers, I’ll get more than just a few moments with Keenan. I.”

— Sabaa Tahir

210. “Don’t make vows when you don’t know the cost.”

— Sabaa Tahir

211. “What is the point of learning to be brave if we’re not brave for the right reasons?”

— Sabaa Tahir

212. “I am alone, and I am a Mask.”

— Sabaa Tahir

213. “The Empire trained us. It made us what we are. But at some point, you accepted it.”

— Sabaa Tahir

214. “There is hope in life.”

— Sabaa Tahir

215. “Look at me. Don’t make me face this alone.”

— Sabaa Tahir

216. “We must understand the creatures, fey or human, who populate our tales. Respect them. Love them, despite the villainous things they do. We must see them. Else how will our stories echo in the hearts of those who hear them? How will the stories survive beyond one telling?”

— Sabaa Tahir

217. “I was eighteen. Full of fear. I should have prayed instead for a man unbroken.”

— Sabaa Tahir

218. “No matter how rich and varied the lives of humans, they were falling stars in my world. They flared bright and brief, and then they burned out.”

— Sabaa Tahir

219. “Above, the heavens glow, the sky pale with starlight. Some long-buried part of me understands that this is beauty, but I am unable to wonder at it, the way I did when I was a boy. Back then, I clambered up spiky Jack trees to get closer to the stars, sure that a few feet of height would help me see them better. Back then, my world had been sand and sky and the love of Tribe Saif, who saved me from exposure. Back then, everything was different.”

— Sabaa Tahir

220. “You’re not like the others. You killed to save. You put others first.”

— Sabaa Tahir

221. “The only place you’ll find a map of Blackcliff,” a raspy voice intrudes, “is in the Commandant’s head. And I don’t think you want to go rummaging around in there.”

— Sabaa Tahir

222. “So many bleeding, stupid questions. Do girls think like this all the time? No wonder they’re so confusing.”

— Sabaa Tahir

223. “His beauty would have been intimidating, but his hands told the truth.”

— Sabaa Tahir

224. “I throw her over my shoulder.”

— Sabaa Tahir

225. “The world seems to slow, as if time no longer exists. It is a moment of perfect chaos, and within it, I hear my nan. Where there is life, there is hope. I will not accept death. Why should I, when there is life yet burning in my veins?”

— Sabaa Tahir

226. “I tear strips of cloth off my shirt and wrap my feet. I have only what I fell asleep with – my fatigues and my dagger. I’m suddenly, fervently grateful that I was too exhausted from combat training to strip before sleeping. Traveling the Great Wastes naked – that would be its own special sort of hell.”

— Sabaa Tahir

227. “Willpower alone cannot change one’s fate.”

— Sabaa Tahir

228. “You will be chained to the darkness within yourself as surely as if chained to the walls of a prison cell.”

— Sabaa Tahir

229. “A bloody gloaming then, and bloodier still as twilight fades to dawn.”

— Sabaa Tahir

230. “Come on, I want to add. But doing so would be like tattooing “I am up to no good” on my forehead.”

— Sabaa Tahir

231. “Slavers catch lies the way spiders catch flies.”

— Sabaa Tahir

232. “May death claim me first.”

— Sabaa Tahir

233. “Look at you, little sister,” Darin finally whispers. His smile is the sun rising after the longest, darkest night. “Look at you.”

— Sabaa Tahir

234. “In this fiery hellscape of a world, this mess of blood and madness, justice exists only for those who take it.”

— Sabaa Tahir

235. “Woh harh jagah mojood heh. Iss ghar keh dar-o-diwar bhee rotay-henh.”

— Sabaa Tahir

236. “You do not re-enter your home until your guest is on the way to their own.”

— Sabaa Tahir

237. “Our stories breathe, Laia of Serra. The stories we tell have power, of course. But the stories that go untold have just as much power, if not more. I will sing you such a story- a story that was long untold. The story of a name and its meaning. Of how that name matters more than any other single word in existence.”

— Sabaa Tahir

238. “In the middle of her rant, I walk away. Like she’s a dog barking at me instead of a human talking.”

— Sabaa Tahir

239. “What I feel for Elias is different, a flame I hold close to my heart when I feel my strength flagging. Sometimes, deep in the night as I travel, I picture a future with him. But I dare not look at it too closely. How can I, when it can never be?”

— Sabaa Tahir

240. “I can take something for her, something small. Flowers? I look around the school grounds. Blackcliff doesn’t have flowers. Maybe I’ll give her a dagger. There are plenty of those around, and skies know she needs one.”

— Sabaa Tahir

241. “This life is jihad – struggle,” Shafiq says. “Sometimes the struggle is more than any sane person can bear. I won’t judge your father for his jihad, Salahudin. How dare I, when I couldn’t begin to understand it?”

— Sabaa Tahir

242. “I am fully, foolishly in love with him. He is the weak spot in my armor, the flaw in my defense. Damn my traitorous heart to the hells.”

— Sabaa Tahir

243. “The chaiwallah brought sabz chai, Kashmiri-style. It was pink and milky, sprinkled with cardamom and brimming with crushed pistachios and almonds. A romantic tea, I always thought.”

— Sabaa Tahir

244. “I wish now that I hadn’t opened up to him. “Ah, Laia-aapan.” He uses the Mariner honorific for little sister and jostles me with an arm. “We’ve all made mistakes in love. Me most of all.”

— Sabaa Tahir

245. “After we left Serra,” Keenan says, “we’d been walking – running, really, for hours. When we finally stopped and settled into our rolls for the night, she looked up and said, ‘The stars are so different when you’re free.’” Keenan shakes his head. “After running all day, eating hardly anything, and being so tired she couldn’t take another step, she fell asleep smiling at the sky.”

— Sabaa Tahir

246. “A shadow fills the space where he stood, familiar and utterly changed at the same time. “E-Elias?” “I’m here.” He hauls me to my feet. He is lean as a rail, and his eyes appear to almost glow in the thickening smoke. “Your brother is here. Tas is here. We’re alive. We’re all right. And that was beautifully done.” He nods to the soldier, who has ripped the dagger out of his thigh and is now crawling away. “He’ll be limping for months.” I.”

— Sabaa Tahir

247. “Because I know this feeling sweeping through me far too well, the feeling that all my effort, all I have worked for, means nothing. That everything and everyone is a lie. That all is cruel and unforgiving and that there is no justice. I have survived this feeling before, and I will survive it again. In this fiery hellscape of a world, this mess of blood and madness, justice exists only for those who take it. I’ll be damned if I’m not one of them.”

— Sabaa Tahir

248. “But as the days turned into weeks and months, I grew accustomed to the pain – the same way I learned to live with the scars on my face. And instead of hating my heart, I began to marvel at its strength, at the fact that it thuds on insistently. I am here, it seems to say. For we are not done, Helene. We must live.”

— Sabaa Tahir

249. “Your mother – my mother – we can never understand their torments. Their hurts. We may suffer the consequences of their mistakes and their sins, but we should not carry them on our hearts. We don’t deserve that.”

— Sabaa Tahir

250. “Part of me wants to ask him if I have made the right decision. After so many mistakes, I yearn for the reassurance that I haven’t ruined everything yet again. He will say yes, of course. He will comfort me and tell me this is the best way. But doing the right thing now does not undo every mistake I have already made. So I do not ask. I simply nod and follow as he leads the way. Because after all that has happened, I do not deserve comfort.”

— Sabaa Tahir