Top 280 Sabaa Tahir Quotes (2026 Update)
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251. “Wondering how someone who filled up a room could fit into a box so small.”

— Sabaa Tahir

252. “One day my ama will die. Everything that she ever was will die with her. The way she walked quickly, and flour in her hair when she made roti, the lines in her forehead when she yelled at me for doing something stupid. Her Saturday morning parathas and her smell, cardamom and Pine-sol and lotion.”

— Sabaa Tahir

253. “The Scholar girl. All that dark hair and those curves and her damned gold eyes. How he held her hand as they fled through the courtyard. The way she said his name and how, on her lips, it sounded like a song. I.”

— Sabaa Tahir

254. “When your mind does not hear you, train your body. Your mind will follow.”

— Sabaa Tahir

255. “Alas.” The Scholar spins me in a circle, then pulls me back. “We’re the ones who survived, Empress. Unlucky, perhaps, but that’s our lot. And since we’re here, we might as well live.”

— Sabaa Tahir

256. “I witness myself through his eyes: angry and cold and weak and strong and brave and warm. Not the Blood Shrike. Helene. And I would be blind not to see what he feels for me. I am woven into his consciousness the way Elias used to be woven into mine. Harper is always aware of where I am, of whether I am all right.”

— Sabaa Tahir

257. “I’m not going to kill you,” I say, nestling the blade into his neck. “Just wanted you to know I could. Now take me to my execution, Emperor.”

— Sabaa Tahir

258. “We never had much, but whatever we did have was made with love, which I now know transforms simple fare into a feast.”

— Sabaa Tahir

259. “Three thousand bodies swing forward, three thousand pairs of boots snap together, three thousand backs jerk as if yanked straight by a puppeteer’s hand. In the ensuing silence, you could hear a tear drop.”

— Sabaa Tahir

260. “Life isn’t scary enough for you, girl?”

— Sabaa Tahir

261. “The more you ask for,” she’d say, “the better. Because it means you put your faith in something greater than yourself.”

— Sabaa Tahir

262. “Life is made of so many moments that mean nothing.”

— Sabaa Tahir

263. “For an awkward few seconds, he holds his arms away from me, as if I might take umbrage at his closeness. So I lean back against his chest, feeling safer than I have in days, like I’ve suddenly acquired a layer of armor.”

— Sabaa Tahir

264. “Pain is a choice. Succumb to it and fail. Or defy it and triumph.”

— Sabaa Tahir

265. “Why is it always us? All of these people – so many children – hunted and abused and tormented. Families stolen, lives shattered. They come all this way to be rejected yet again, sent outside the city walls to sleep in flimsy tents, to fight over paltry scraps of food, to starve and freeze and suffer more. And we are expected to be thankful. To be happy. So many are – I know it. Happy to be safe. To be alive. But it’s not enough – not to me.”

— Sabaa Tahir

266. “There’s a loneliness to him that makes me ache. He’s dying. He knows it. Perhaps life does not get more lonely than that.”

— Sabaa Tahir

267. “I don’t understand what you want”, I say. “We’re made through pain. Suffering. Through torment, blood, and tears.”

— Sabaa Tahir

268. “Also, he’s shorter than me. Considerably shorter. Half a foot, at least.”

— Sabaa Tahir

269. “No one can manipulate those with faith like a person who has none,” he said.”

— Sabaa Tahir

270. “I don’t remember this bad thing. Not remembering makes it feel like it didn’t happen. And if it didn’t happen, then I don’t know why I’m broken... A part of me is broken. Saying I’m not erases the fact that someone did something horrible to me. It erases thatI’ve survived. because yeah, maybe I’m broken, but I’m strong, too.”

— Sabaa Tahir

271. “I have tried not to think of Elias. But he haunts my thoughts, a ghost who is always on my mind and always out of reach.”

— Sabaa Tahir

272. “Quill: “When you sacrifice other people’s children on the altar of your ambition, it’s only a matter of time before you’ll be willing to sacrifice your own.”

— Sabaa Tahir

273. “I miss that girl. That Laia. That version of myself that burned brightest when Elias Veturius was near.”

— Sabaa Tahir

274. “There are some things that do not die. No matter how many blades we put into them.”

— Sabaa Tahir

275. “I will never understand the savagery of war, even when it is my foes being destroyed.”

— Sabaa Tahir

276. “When humanity turns on its children... then you know we are lost.”

— Sabaa Tahir

277. “You think I want to feel this way about you? I hate it, Elias. Watching you flirt with Illustrian girls and sleep with Scholar slaves and find the good in everyone – everyone – but me.′ A sob escapes her – the only time I’ve ever heard her cry. She chokes it back. ‘Loving you is the worst thing that has ever happened to me – worse than the Commandant’s whippings, worse than the Trials. It’s torture, Elias.”

— Sabaa Tahir

278. “This tale is the gibbet in the square... The blood on the cobblestones. It is the K carved into a Scholar girl’s skin. The mother who waited thirty years for her child. The agony of a family destroyed. This tale is a warning. And it is a promise kept.”

— Sabaa Tahir

279. “Because you’re so afraid if you feel something, you’ll actually have to do something. And that if you do something, it will be the wrong thing.”

— Sabaa Tahir

280. “I’m truly, truly sorry. It’s not enough. But it’s all I have.”

— Sabaa Tahir