Top 200 Sarah Rees Brennan Quotes (2025 Update)
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51. “There isn’t any kind of relationship that’s all problem-free delightful unicorns. You can’t have a relationship without issues and prejudices. The way to be equals is if both people agree to be equals, and treat themselves and each other as equals, despite all that.”

— Sarah Rees Brennan

52. “I have changed my mind. You can help cook by standing in a corner and not touching anything. Do it carefully. -Nick to Jamie.”

— Sarah Rees Brennan

53. “I realise people exist who don’t read. But it’s like I knew there were people who didn’t breathe or eat: I can’t imagine a life like that.”

— Sarah Rees Brennan

54. “Jared sidled up. He was not very good at sidling; he was more of a loomer.”

— Sarah Rees Brennan

55. “She’d felt like being nice cost her something, even if it was just feeling a little bit lesser, every time she smiled without meaning to.”

— Sarah Rees Brennan

56. “What, you people expect women to tear apart their bodies and then go to all the bother of raising the children? That takes years, you know,” Serene remarked sternly. “The women’s labour is brief and agonizing, and the man’s is long and arduous. This seems only just. What on earth are men contributing to their children’s lives in the human world? Why would any human woman agree to have a child?” “The more she talks the more sense it all makes,” said Elliot. “Has anyone else discovered that?”

— Sarah Rees Brennan

57. “He’s alive,” she said in a voice that sounded so bored Holly might’ve been imagining the thread of relief running through it. “That’s the best I can do for him. His evil sorcerer buds can heal him or take him to the hospital and bring him an evil magic fruit basket for all I care.”

— Sarah Rees Brennan

58. “She looked defeated, a castle stormed, torn down, with no one living inside. She looked like a hollowed-out creature, only shell and no soul.”

— Sarah Rees Brennan

59. “Nick observed the flicker of appreciation in her brown eyes. He wasn’t particularly surprised. She was just the type to like them tall, dark, and carrying a lethal weapon.”

— Sarah Rees Brennan

60. “I said once that my idea of happiness is to always be with you, and it is. I’m always going to think of you as the source of everything. To me, the sun rises and sets on you. You make all things true. I am in love with you, and I cannot imagine being in love with anyone else. It would be like becoming someone else. Your name was the first word for love I ever knew.”

— Sarah Rees Brennan

61. “Makes sense to me,” she said. “Why be broken when you can be gold?”

— Sarah Rees Brennan

62. “Technically speaking, you drive like a rabid chicken who has hijacked a tractor.”

— Sarah Rees Brennan

63. “Oh no,” Elliot moaned, and sat down heavily on his bunk bed. “This is magic Sparta.”

— Sarah Rees Brennan

64. “It’s better this way,” said Elliot. “And if I came back – you’re probably both going to die. I’d be stranded and you’d be dead.” They were soldiers. This way, Elliot would never know if they died. He put the photo down. “I didn’t mean that,” he said. “You’re not going to die. I don’t know why I said that.”

— Sarah Rees Brennan

65. “Lillian shut her eyes briefly, as if she hoped when she opened them she would behold a world in which people never said ridiculous things.”

— Sarah Rees Brennan

66. “Fourteen wasn’t horrible, but it was more complicated, and sometimes that felt like the same thing.”

— Sarah Rees Brennan

67. “She had always thought she needed to be in control, but now she found she did not want to put any limits on herself at all. She wanted to be the person she was, and not the person anyone, including herself, had ever thought she should be. She had thought a lot lately about making all the love stories her own, of telling them her own way.”

— Sarah Rees Brennan

68. “Jon Glass had vaulted over the fence and was now approaching a horse chosen by some sort of weird horse-knowledge method, or possibly because it was shiny.”

— Sarah Rees Brennan

69. “You make a really compelling argument. Join me or get walled up alive with a corpse? You should be a politician.”

— Sarah Rees Brennan

70. “She was god-awfully hideous. I swear she looked like a bad-tempered mutant tomato, and she was making a sound like a cat being fed into a printer.”

— Sarah Rees Brennan

71. “Oh God, Mae,” said Jamie in a hollow voice, descending the stairs. “I will never drink again. I’m only seeing in black and white. My arms feel all floppy, like flightless wings. I caught a glimpse of myself in the mirror and I looked like a very sad penguin.”

— Sarah Rees Brennan

72. “Happiness is self-sabotage, a mean trick that your own mind plays on you. It makes you careless, makes you lose your grip and once you lose your grip, you lose everything. You certainly aren’t happy anymore.”

— Sarah Rees Brennan

73. “Lillian’s face went white and her eyes looked blind as a creature’s that had lived underground all its life and only now emerged into the horror of the sun.”

— Sarah Rees Brennan

74. “He had been wishing for love his whole life, and if he’d had just one wish that wish would have been her. He was not sure how it had happened, or why: but the wish granted, he had to prove he could deserve it. He did not know how to be grateful enough.”

— Sarah Rees Brennan

75. “Nick looked vaguely homicidal, but that was sort of his default expression.”

— Sarah Rees Brennan

76. “Angela looked fondly reminiscent. “We’ve had some good times together, haven’t we? I’ll always remember them. After you go away.”

— Sarah Rees Brennan

77. “Respect the sheep.”

— Sarah Rees Brennan

78. “It’s bits of dead cow; don’t ask it to perform miracles.”

— Sarah Rees Brennan

79. “So far magic school was total rubbish.”

— Sarah Rees Brennan

80. “If the truth didn’t help anyone, and love didn’t last, what was there left to struggle toward?”

— Sarah Rees Brennan

81. “You are full of cruelty and mockery,” Kami said. “My heart breaks to think of the day I entrusted you with the fragile flower of my girlish friendship.”

— Sarah Rees Brennan

82. “So this is the “smug idiot thinks he’s funny” face, Kami observed. Not to be confused with other “smug idiot” variants. And everyone told me English girls were so sweet, Jared said, and then: Oh, hey.”

— Sarah Rees Brennan

83. “Kami got to school the next day without any incidents like being kidnapped by pirates or having the earth open up and swallow her, which on the whole Kami thought was a pity.”

— Sarah Rees Brennan

84. “February air slid into the thin material of Kami’s dress like a sly pickpocket, warmth stolen before she knew it.”

— Sarah Rees Brennan

85. “Do you mean am I worried about people seeing me with my jeans off? Sure. Sometimes people are overcome. They fall down. They hit their heads. It’s worrying.”

— Sarah Rees Brennan

86. “She’d always thought she was sensible about romance: she hadn’t ever wanted any sort of wild destructive passion that would interfere with college applications. She had thought love would change the story she told about herself too much, that love would make her story less smart or less meaningful.”

— Sarah Rees Brennan

87. “But the power to rule meant the power to destroy – that was the darkness at the heart of ruling. It meant you had the power of life and death over people, and because you had the power, you thought that meant you had the right.”

— Sarah Rees Brennan

88. “There are none so deaf as those listening to ‘All by Myself’ over and over and over again.”

— Sarah Rees Brennan

89. “It is always about you for me.”

— Sarah Rees Brennan

90. “Angela spared a glare for Kami, and then resumed her marathon glaring session at Jared. ‘It’s too weird. I’m going to call you Carl.’ Jared scowled. ‘I don’t want you to call me Carl.’ ‘That’s interesting, Carl,’ said Angela, cheering up.”

— Sarah Rees Brennan

91. “Oh, you need Alan to betray Nick and then you’ll steal Nick’s powers and kill them both,” said Mae. “Great idea. Hey, can i come? I’ll bring a picnic lunch if you promise not to let blood get on the sandwiches.”

— Sarah Rees Brennan

92. “I do not regret anything I have ever done. That is a policy of mine.”

— Sarah Rees Brennan

93. “Jared swung out from behind the desk to stand in front of Kami. “And about that,” he continued. “Now that Kami and I have met, she likes me better than you. So you can leave.”

— Sarah Rees Brennan

94. “I am so sad about my underwear,” Kami announced, and Ash looked as if he regretted all of his life decisions.”

— Sarah Rees Brennan

95. “Oh, Alan Ryves,” she said. “You’re such a fantastic liar. You are the smoothest con man of them all.”

— Sarah Rees Brennan

96. “I don’t need you to explain to me the concept of a magical land filled with fantastic creatures that only certain special children can enter. I am acquainted with the last several centuries of popular culture. There are books. And cartoons, for the illiterate.”

— Sarah Rees Brennan

97. “Maybe both of our societies are messed up, and they each only think one type of person is really a person. And the type of person they think is really a person is allowed to show imperfections and age... whereas the type of person they think is an object should show no signs of being a person.”

— Sarah Rees Brennan

98. “Oh,” she said, in a very different way. “Well. Thanks for my part in the compliment. Naturally I’d love to be watched and controlled, but I think I may be washing my hair that day.”

— Sarah Rees Brennan

99. “Your courtship method of arrogance self-loathing, and then telling me how beautiful other girls are is pretty unique,” said Kami. “I like it. I don’t know what that says about me.”

— Sarah Rees Brennan

100. “He was naturally kind, she was starting to realize, which was better than being charming.”

— Sarah Rees Brennan