Top 200 Samantha Shannon Quotes (2026 Update)
Page 3 of 5

101. “Un momento, una eternidad, o algo intermedio-.”

— Samantha Shannon

102. “What if magic is just a word for power beyond our understanding, like the gods possess?”

— Samantha Shannon

103. “Ne cherche pas le soleil de minuit sur terre, car il est en toi.”

— Samantha Shannon

104. “Sabran laughed. A rare sound. Like a vein of gold hidden in rock, loathe to show itself.”

— Samantha Shannon

105. “You wear so much armour by daylight that, by night, you can carry it no longer. By night, you are only flesh. And even flesh of a queen is prone to fear.”

— Samantha Shannon

106. “History may record the end of my line as a tragedy,” the Grand Empress said, “but a house that crushes its own daughters beneath its foundations – that is no house at all. Better it burns with the rest. A different world must be drawn from the ashes.”

— Samantha Shannon

107. “Yes, and I suppose she wore a red gown for her meeting with the Saint. I suppose she was as clean as a licked kitten and smelled of rosemary.” When Kit grimaced, Melaugo said, “You have not seen death, my lord. You have only seen the mask we put on it.”

— Samantha Shannon

108. “You cannot kill death. What fire can scald the sun? Who can drown the ocean?”

— Samantha Shannon

109. “In darkness, we are naked. Our truest selves. Night is when fear comes to us at its fullest, when we have no way to fight it.”

— Samantha Shannon

110. “The first touch of our lips behind crimson drapes. The touch that should have been impossible. A collision of worlds, born of chaos and breaking, that had somehow been quiet as a moth taking flight.”

— Samantha Shannon

111. “In darkness, we are naked. Our truest selves.”

— Samantha Shannon

112. “You are not an executioner, Paige Mahoney.”

— Samantha Shannon

113. “There is courage, I think, in open-mindedness, and thinking for oneself.”

— Samantha Shannon

114. “She was adamant that any organisation that labelled one group of people as evil would eventually do the same to others. That to treat any one person as less than human was to cheapen the very substance of humanity.”

— Samantha Shannon

115. “By no means. There is great power in stories.”

— Samantha Shannon

116. “That to treat any one person as less than human was to cheapen the very substance of humanity.”

— Samantha Shannon

117. “Sabran had been dealt a cruel hand. Her Lady of the Bedchamber had died while she slept, her companion in her arms, her mother before her eyes. Her daughter had never drawn breath. Her father – if he had been her father at all – had perished in Yscalin, beyond her reach. Loss had dogged her all her life. Little wonder she was holding on so tightly.”

— Samantha Shannon

118. “We could start by not scorning one another for our beliefs, or lack of them.”

— Samantha Shannon

119. “Like seeds from a dandelion clock.”

— Samantha Shannon

120. “Desire had been a madness in her, grounded by a love that had filled her like breath – as if it had always been meant, written on her soul when it was just a seed.”

— Samantha Shannon

121. “You may not believe it, but it is what I desire the most in the world. This place has afflicted me with a terrible wanderlust. I long for the fire, for the sights you have seen. Yet here I am, two hundred years after I arrived. Still a prisoner, though I masquerade as a king.”

— Samantha Shannon

122. “Pain flowered sharply in her midriff. She closed her eyes, imagined that pain as a candle, and snuffed it. Later. She would let the grief burn when there was room for it to breathe.”

— Samantha Shannon

123. “Be silent and learn something.”

— Samantha Shannon

124. “Life, for all its wonders, is rather flimsy in the end.”

— Samantha Shannon

125. “We must never underestimate the value of libraries, or the urgency of the need to protect them, in a world that often appears to forget the importance of stories.”

— Samantha Shannon

126. “Love and fear do strange things to our souls. The dreams they bring, those dreams that leave us drenched in salt water and gasping for breath as if we might die.”

— Samantha Shannon

127. “Each of her words was the skip of a stone across a lake, forming ripples of emotion. The Queen of Inys could not cast illusions, but her voice and bearing on this night had turned her into an enchantress.”

— Samantha Shannon

128. “My heart knows your song, as yours knows mine.”

— Samantha Shannon

129. “Warden, please don’t dissuade me from the solitary mote of joy I have left in my tragedy of a life. I’m being hunted by a tyrant, my entire family is missing or dead, and I’m fresh out of the torture chamber. Please, just let me enjoy my coffee.”

— Samantha Shannon

130. “The room was an hourglass that hadn’t yet turned.”

— Samantha Shannon

131. “Seiiki had a scent to it. The perfume of the heartwood in the trees, unlocked by rain, and the green on every leaf.”

— Samantha Shannon

132. “The world could end and he would find a way to keep reading.”

— Samantha Shannon

133. “His voice was a shadow. “It roots me again. You remind me what it is to have a home.”

— Samantha Shannon

134. “She wished she could hear its voice in her mind, as she could hear the gods. She wanted to hear the voice of chaos. She wanted to hear chaos scream.”

— Samantha Shannon

135. “Normal’ and ‘natural’ were the biggest lies we’d ever created. We humans with our little minds. And maybe being normal wouldn’t suit me.”

— Samantha Shannon

136. “Fire it was, purposefully wrought – fire as makes a blade, for slaughter. Its eyes seethed with flame, not good nor evil, the sanctarian read in her mind, but also that which makes a wyrm, that is, its cunning, and its malice.”

— Samantha Shannon

137. “Our lifelines will meet only when the aether sees fit. That may not be often. It can never to always.”

— Samantha Shannon

138. “Glorian the First had drunk from a poisoned cup of wine.”

— Samantha Shannon

139. “Even the most gifted poets had never been able to capture the vastness of the forest, for none had laid eyes on its depths: its endless trees, their unthinkable heights, the layers built up over thousands of centuries.”

— Samantha Shannon

140. “I am no man’s weapon,’ Dumai said, nettled.”

— Samantha Shannon

141. “And I waited for the sun to rise – as it always had, like a song from the night.”

— Samantha Shannon

142. “Dumai said you were once called a flower grown for court. I do not see that as an insult, but an endorsement. A flower in a world of ash is proof that life endures.”

— Samantha Shannon

143. “This was what my spirit longed to do, to wander in strange lands. It couldn’t stand being trapped in one body all the time. It had wanderlust.”

— Samantha Shannon

144. “The only way I could think to honor you was by continuing to live.”

— Samantha Shannon

145. “You have not seen death, my lord. You have only seen the mask we put on it.”

— Samantha Shannon

146. “Arcturus, as your friend, I think it’s my duty to inform you that you’re not a twelfth-century monk.”

— Samantha Shannon

147. “It was all she has ever wanted. To be a Red Damsel, a slayer-in-waiting, was the dream of every girl born into the Priory.”

— Samantha Shannon

148. “Time became shapeless and strange.”

— Samantha Shannon

149. “It is your nature to warm all you see, and the sun does not ask forgiveness for shining.”

— Samantha Shannon

150. “Don’t you dare,” he said. “Don’t you dare let her see it. You are more than that. You are more than what she wants to do to you.”

— Samantha Shannon