Top 200 Samantha Shannon Quotes (2025 Update)
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101. “Sabran laughed. A rare sound. Like a vein of gold hidden in rock, loathe to show itself.”

— Samantha Shannon

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

— Samantha Shannon

103. “But Warden cared if I laughed. He cared if I lived or died. He had seen me as I was, not as the world saw me. And that meant something. It had to. Didn’t it?”

— Samantha Shannon

104. “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

105. “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

106. “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

107. “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

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

— Samantha Shannon

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

— Samantha Shannon

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

— Samantha Shannon

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

— Samantha Shannon

112. “La lealtad es el mejor de los regalos.”

— Samantha Shannon

113. “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

114. “Time became shapeless and strange.”

— Samantha Shannon

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

— Samantha Shannon

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

— Samantha Shannon

117. “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

118. “It was a strange place to touch someone, the wrist. The skin that knew the patterns of the heart.”

— Samantha Shannon

119. “I imagined, too. And so imagination became my nemesis; my mind created monsters out of nothing.”

— Samantha Shannon

120. “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

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

— Samantha Shannon

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

— Samantha Shannon

123. “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

124. “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

125. “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

126. “Soon enough, the fine grains of his sanity would begin to course between his fingers.”

— Samantha Shannon

127. “Art is not one great act of creation, but many small ones. When you read one of my poems, you fail to see the weeks of careful work it took me to build it – the thinking, the scratched-out words, the pages I burned in disgust. All you see, in the end, is what I want you to see.”

— Samantha Shannon

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

— Samantha Shannon

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

— Samantha Shannon

130. “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

131. “I couldn’t stop. I’d never felt anything like this in my life – this rising in my chest, this need to touch.”

— Samantha Shannon

132. “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

133. “Cuando la historia no es capaz de arrojar luz sobre la verdad, el mito se crea la suya propia.”

— Samantha Shannon

134. “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

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

— Samantha Shannon

136. “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

137. “All of us have shadows in us’, he said. ‘I accept yours.’ He placed a hand over her ring. ‘And I hope you will also accept mine.’ With a tired smile, she threaded her fingers between his. ‘Gladly’.”

— Samantha Shannon

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

— Samantha Shannon

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

— Samantha Shannon

140. “I never expected to love him so much. In the Priory, we are not supposed to cleave too close to our own flesh. We all belong to the Mother, she said. Yet as soon as he was born, he had my heart.”

— Samantha Shannon

141. “Their breaths were hushed, held in anticipation of a knock on the door, a key in the lock, a torch to bare their union. It would light a flame of scandal, and the fire would rise untill it scorched them both. But Ead called fire her friend, and she would plunge into the furnace for Sabran Berthnet, for just one night with her. Let them come with their swords and their torches. Let them come.”

— Samantha Shannon

142. “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

143. “Like seeds from a dandelion clock.”

— Samantha Shannon

144. “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

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

— Samantha Shannon

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

— Samantha Shannon

147. “Be silent and learn something.”

— Samantha Shannon

148. “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

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

— Samantha Shannon

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

— Samantha Shannon