Top 200 Samantha Shannon Quotes (2026 Update)
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201. “Above, the tower. Emberlight and the pendant dark. Below, the hidden world that sheltered the forsaken. And I walked the liminal between them, with a god at my side and the streets like dying coals around us, waiting to be stoked. The fire was in the citadel, in his eyes, in my skin.”

— Samantha Shannon

202. “Onren looked over her shoulder at him. ‘I thought I heard you talking. Have we met?’ When he opened his mouth, she said, ‘Don’t tell me. You’re plainly a fool, and I have no interest in befriending fools.”

— Samantha Shannon

203. “You helped set me on this path, don’t you ever tell me how to walk it.”

— Samantha Shannon

204. “For as long as I had someone I could be myself with, I could bear to be someone else with him.”

— Samantha Shannon

205. “You told me once that freedom was my right.” I held his gaze. “Maybe you should do something with it.”

— Samantha Shannon

206. “There is enough of a story there to fill a book.”

— Samantha Shannon

207. “And she knew it would rip her apart, in the end – this yearning that pulled at the seams of her being, and the duty that sewed her tighter by the day, into the robes of the Empress of Seiiki.”

— Samantha Shannon

208. “Within this impossible sea, every star, every constellation, every fold and spiral of the cosmos was reflected. As if there were two firmaments, and their ship was a ghost ship, adrift between worlds. The sea had turned itself to glass, so the heavens might finally look upon themselves.”

— Samantha Shannon

209. “Eadaz,’ Aralaq said. ‘Yes?’ ‘Do not follow stupid birds into dark places again.”

— Samantha Shannon

210. “No soy tu reina, pero soy tuya.”

— Samantha Shannon

211. “That is the problem with stories, child. The truth in them cannot be weighed.”

— Samantha Shannon

212. “I have an interest in survival, Lord Arteloth. I recommend you nurture one, too.”

— Samantha Shannon

213. “With her wind-spun hair and eyes bright from the hunt, Sabran Berethnet looked almost carefree – and for the first time in years, Ead felt her own cares lifted from her shoulders. Like seeds from a dandelion clock.”

— Samantha Shannon

214. “Just going outside put me at risk of winding up dead or captured. If I let that daunt me, I’d never do anything.”

— Samantha Shannon

215. “I felt the thick beat of him. His rhythm. My rhythm.”

— Samantha Shannon

216. “She’d known I was coming, known what I was after, and she’d only started to speak English after seeing me. She was one of them. The scarred ones.”

— Samantha Shannon

217. “Damn you to the Womb of Fire.′ Sigoso smiled, ‘I am there,’ he said, ’and it is paradise.”

— Samantha Shannon

218. “And Wulf remembered he was flesh. He was skin papered on sinew, wrapped around bone, sprouting nails and teeth and hair, and all of it could be consumed.”

— Samantha Shannon

219. “When you dream of change, it shines bright, like fire, and burns away all the rot that came before it. It’s swift and inexorable. You cry for justice, and justice is done. The world stands with you in your fight. But if there was one thing I had learned in these last few weeks, it was that change had never been that simple. That kind of revolution existed only in daydreams.”

— Samantha Shannon

220. “Then he had come back into my life, and little by little, I had started to notice. That I looked forward to seeing him. That he made me smile without ever smiling himself. That he challenged me. That I always wanted to hear his voice. And that even though he was a mystery, and there were shadows in him I might never disperse, I somehow knew him.”

— Samantha Shannon

221. “Loss had dogged her all her life. Little wonder she was holding on so tightly.”

— Samantha Shannon

222. “How horrified they would.”

— Samantha Shannon

223. “It was as if her heart had been hooked from her mouth, caught like a fish on a line.”

— Samantha Shannon

224. “I want my child to have a queendom left to rule. I want her to taste apples still crisp from the orchard. I want her to see the green of Inysh spring; to know the scent of wildflowers, the taste of bread, the sound of laughter. I do not want her life to end at her first breath, her voice strangled away by smoke.”

— Samantha Shannon

225. “She excels because she trusts her skill. I suspect you fear that yours will slip between your fingers if you loosen your grip for even a moment... I always wanted to prove to myself that I was worthy of it... All I did was practice. I forgot how to possess a skill. Instead, the skill posses me. All of me.”

— Samantha Shannon

226. “All her life, she had been too fortunate.”

— Samantha Shannon

227. “To die in the service of a better world would be the highest honor.”

— Samantha Shannon

228. “He wouldn’t have understood if I’d told him why I spend my time with criminals. He didn’t know that I belonged with them. More than I belonged with him.”

— Samantha Shannon

229. “She had not been human in that final hour. Just a paper lantern, thin and wind-torn, clinging to the flickering remnants of a soul. Yet when there was no more to climb, and she had looked up and seen nothing but the terrible beauty of the sky, she had found the strength to rise.”

— Samantha Shannon

230. “Every revolution begins with breakfast,’ I quoted as they left. ‘Is this your revolution, Jaxon?”

— Samantha Shannon

231. “When he slept, he dreamed his sheet were poisoned.”

— Samantha Shannon

232. “With the right reasons, at the right moment, even the most beaten and broken of people could rise up and reclaim themselves.”

— Samantha Shannon

233. “But be mindful, Eadaz. Do not lose your focus. It is the Mother who compels you, not this Inysh queen.”

— Samantha Shannon

234. “Writing didn’t carry the same risks as speaking. You couldn’t be shouted down or stared at. The page was both a proxy and a shield.”

— Samantha Shannon

235. “I didn’t believe in hearts. I believed in dreamscapes and spirits. Those were what mattered. Those made money. But my heart had hurt that day. For the first time in my life I’d been forced to acknowledge my heart, and acknowledge its fragility. It could be bruised. It could humiliate me.”

— Samantha Shannon

236. “Se nos juzga por el hoy, no por el ayer.”

— Samantha Shannon

237. “Have we met? Don’t tell me. You’re plainly a fool, and I have no interest in befriending fools.”

— Samantha Shannon

238. “You can convince yourself that you are nothing like me. Tell yourself that you are the black to my white, the queen that stood on the right side of the board. But one day, you will be faced with a choice, as we all are. One day you will have to choose between your own desires, your own darkest impulses, and what you know to be right... and it will harden you. You will understand that all of us are devils in the skins of men. You will become the monster that lives inside us all.”

— Samantha Shannon

239. “A picture came, unbidden, of a stranger crushing into her. Her body taken over, laden, stretching and filling beyond her control, growing a seed that unfurled in the darkness. She knew that bringing it into the light would rip a deep scar through her mind, even if she recovered in the body. It would all pull so hard on her line that it broke her, leaving her to sink. She had known for many years that she would not do it by choice.”

— Samantha Shannon

240. “Even a hawk cannot see the back of its own head.”

— Samantha Shannon

241. “He was capable of kindness, but he wasn’t kind. He could act like he cared, but it would always be an act.”

— Samantha Shannon

242. “But I missed talking to him. I missed just being near him. I wanted him – but what I wanted might be an illusion.”

— Samantha Shannon

243. “The moon was a half-closed eye, and they floated on water as dark as his thoughts.”

— Samantha Shannon

244. “To call her that would prove that chaff could grow taller than grass.”

— Samantha Shannon

245. “I did not want to believe Ead,” she replied, “but I see that my affinity with you cannot be denied.”

— Samantha Shannon

246. “Sleep well, little dreamer.”

— Samantha Shannon

247. “An astronomer. I never thought I’d say this, but we need one.”

— Samantha Shannon