Top 200 Samantha Shannon Quotes (2026 Update)
Page 4 of 5

151. “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

152. “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

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

— Samantha Shannon

154. “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

155. “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

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

— Samantha Shannon

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

— Samantha Shannon

158. “I am of the considered opinion that for every person, there exists a book that will sing to them. I trust that you will find yours.”

— Samantha Shannon

159. “They raise us to be soft as silk, distract us with luxury and wealth beyond measure, so we never rock the boat that carries us. They expect us to be so bored by our power that we let them do the ruling in our stead. Behind every throne is a masked servant who seeks only to make a puppet of the one who sits on it.”

— Samantha Shannon

160. “Elder Vara had managed, of course. The world could end and he would find a way to keep on reading.”

— Samantha Shannon

161. “A woman is more than a womb to be seeded.”

— Samantha Shannon

162. “Let us not think of the future this night. It is not yet dawn. We still have time for airy hopes.”

— Samantha Shannon

163. “Remember that whoever and wherever you are, the realm of adventure will never be closed to you. You are your own shield.”

— Samantha Shannon

164. “Still, she imagined the loss of a loved one would hurt like an arrowhead lodged in the body. Life would grow and twine around it, but it would remain, always hurting.”

— Samantha Shannon

165. “We canna grieve for those who’ve gone. Not before we’ve fought to change the world that took them.”

— Samantha Shannon

166. “You have been away from the tree for too long. You are a root, beloved. You must drink, or you will wither.”

— Samantha Shannon

167. “He was not imposing in the physical sense; he was fine-boned, slim as a feather, almost delicate at first glance – but his eyes were dungeons. Once he had you in his gaze, you were his until he let it go.”

— Samantha Shannon

168. “The dragons watched her. It was said they could see the deepest secrets of a soul, for human beings were made of water, and all water was theirs.”

— Samantha Shannon

169. “Pieter was depressed again. Being dead sometimes got to him.”

— Samantha Shannon

170. “Dices que deseas la verdad, pero la verdad es un tejido de muchos hilos.”

— Samantha Shannon

171. “Part of me feared, before that night. That I was a fool for wanting to know you. For seeing you in everything, everywhere I turned,” he said. “I thought it was a sentence. A haunting. Until I realized it was a gift to be haunted by you.”

— Samantha Shannon

172. “All you see, in the end, is what I want you to see. Such is politics.”

— Samantha Shannon

173. “It is not that I do not want you. Only that I might want you too much. And for too long.”

— Samantha Shannon

174. “Then there was that awful slogan: no safer place. More like no safe place. Not for us.”

— Samantha Shannon

175. “Loth smiled. “I’m glad you’re here, Kit.” “I should think so,” Kit said, his eyes shining.”

— Samantha Shannon

176. “You see, my lord,” Harlowe murmured. The light feathered in his eyes. “You can find beauty anywhere.”

— Samantha Shannon

177. “War has often been called a game, with good reason. Both have combatants. Both have sides. Both carry the risk of losing.”

— Samantha Shannon

178. “I have studied many books on human history, and if there is one thing I have learned from them, it is that it is not always possible to find reason in tradition. It is the same for Rephaim.”

— Samantha Shannon

179. “It was sleep, but not-sleep; a boundless darkness, settled by one soul. She had been chained here for a thousand years, but now, at last, she stirred.”

— Samantha Shannon

180. “Ead helped her into a corset.”

— Samantha Shannon

181. “It was customary for the vows to be taken at midnight, during the new moon, for it was in the darkest hours that companionship was needed most.”

— Samantha Shannon

182. “What I know is less important than what the world sees,’ Kit said. ‘Allow me to indulge in a little allegory. Art. 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. Such is politics.”

— Samantha Shannon

183. “She was born to be a shadow, and all shadows had to do was walk behind.”

— Samantha Shannon

184. “Arteloth, we are courtiers. We have no useful instincts.”

— Samantha Shannon

185. “A former exile who dabbles in alchemy and spent weeks in the employ of pirates. Yes, that sounds like someone they would want to mold the minds of the next generation.”

— Samantha Shannon

186. “For Rephaim, it takes a long time for a flame to cath. But once it burns, it cannot go out.” It didn’t take long to understand what he meant. “But I will,” I said. “I’ll stop. I’ll go out.” There was a long silence. “Yes,” Warden said, very softly. “You will go out.”

— Samantha Shannon

187. “I was only observing how the fiercest of warriors can hide behind such gentle faces.”

— Samantha Shannon

188. “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.”

— Samantha Shannon

189. “Some revolutions change the world in a day. Others take decades or centuries or more, and others still never come to fruition. Mine began with a moment and a choice.”

— Samantha Shannon

190. “His touch had felt strange. Warmer. It was only when I saw his hands that I realised. He wasn’t wearing gloves.”

— Samantha Shannon

191. “Books are to good for him.”

— Samantha Shannon

192. “We sat with our arms around each other, holding too tightly and not tightly enough.”

— Samantha Shannon

193. “She dared not speak, for to show she knew his language was to forge a link between them, and to betray herself. To betray the fact that just as she was now a witness to his crime, he was a witness to hers.”

— Samantha Shannon

194. “The chamber was more like a cave than the rest of the Priory, dimmed to calm the mind. Passage from one womb to another – that was how she had seen it then, in the first clouded hour of holding him close. After the clearing, in her dreams, she remembered this room not as womb, but as tomb, as comb. No honey in a womb. No bees. She had brought him from the darkness to his end.”

— Samantha Shannon

195. “I am no green child to believe what I am told without proof.”

— Samantha Shannon

196. “Hope is the lifeblood of revolution. Without it, we are nothing but ash, waiting for the wind to take us.”

— Samantha Shannon

197. “I’m afraid Clarent is much the same. Sometimes he is in the present, sometimes in the past, and sometimes nowhere at all.”

— Samantha Shannon

198. “The wisest are seldom appreciated in their time.”

— Samantha Shannon

199. “It can be a lonely feeling, not knowing where you fit.”

— Samantha Shannon

200. “You have seen more of the world than others have written of it You could shake the dust from the lecterns, breathe life into the textbooks.”

— Samantha Shannon