Top 500 Seanan McGuire Quotes (2026 Update)
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451. “Truly, you are as generous as you are violent.”

— Seanan McGuire

452. “The laws of magic, like the laws of nature, are not always as balanced as they might seem.”

— Seanan McGuire

453. “She was Katherine, she was the teacher’s pet, and when she grew up, she was going to be a librarian, because she couldn’t imagine knowing there was a job that was all about books and not wanting to do it.”

— Seanan McGuire

454. “Don’t let anyone tell you, ever, that this is a zero-sum game. Your genius does not threaten me. It delights and inspires me.”

— Seanan McGuire

455. “Hearts that have been stopped without being damaged can sometimes start again, under the right circumstances. When the right circumstances cannot be arranged, lightning can make a surprisingly good substitute.”

— Seanan McGuire

456. “This, you see, is the true danger of children: they are ambushes, each and every one of them.”

— Seanan McGuire

457. “Time is the substance from which I am made. – Jorge Luis Borges.”

— Seanan McGuire

458. “But oh, sometimes the future is a very long way away, and sometimes the present matters more than anything that might be coming down the line.”

— Seanan McGuire

459. “Toby will find a way to fix it,” said Quentin. “She always does.” “I wish I had as much faith in me as you do,” I said. “Believing in you is not your job,” said Tybalt mildly. “It’s ours.”

— Seanan McGuire

460. “I guess I have to change with them. That’s what humans do, after all. We change. Leave the stasis to the gods.”

— Seanan McGuire

461. “Elsewhere was a legend and a lie, until it came looking for you.”

— Seanan McGuire

462. “There’s nothing wrong with having a few monsters in the shadows. They keep me remembering what it is that I’m walking away from.”

— Seanan McGuire

463. “Total freedom was terrifying. Boundaries made it controllable, and hence enjoyable again.”

— Seanan McGuire

464. “I have never seen any place on Earth as beautiful, improbable, and beautifully ridiculous as Australia. Whatever god or devil first conceived of the place deserves some sort of award, and possibly a smack in the head.”

— Seanan McGuire

465. “I know, I know, panic is fun, but sometimes revenge is better,” she said. “Choose revenge. Choose better. I brought you gloves.”

— Seanan McGuire

466. “There was peace in stillness, a serenity that couldn’t be found anywhere else in this hot, fast, often terrible world.”

— Seanan McGuire

467. “We don’t teach you how to dwell. We also don’t teach you how to forget. We teach you how to move on.”

— Seanan McGuire

468. “Nobody gets to tell me how my story ends but me.”

— Seanan McGuire

469. “Sometimes I think Faerie goes to war as much because we can’t find anyone who’d rather talk things out as for any other reason. Diplomacy is not a valued skill among the Courts. Most of our nobles would prefer to do the dance of manners and then slide a knife between someone’s ribs. It’s more fun than actually discussing trade sanctions and why it’s rude to kill your neighbors.”

— Seanan McGuire

470. “This is terrible,” said Sumi brightly. “I mean, we knew it was going to be terrible when we followed a mad scientist and her dead girlfriend to a horrifying murder world, but this is bonus terrible. This is the awful sprinkles on the sundae of doom.”

— Seanan McGuire

471. “The mind is an imperfect engine, and it does what it will with the information it receives.”

— Seanan McGuire

472. “I didn’t love him, but there was a time when I might have, and that was enough to move me forward. I needed to be needed. This wasn’t the right way.”

— Seanan McGuire

473. “Yes, that’s a brilliant idea. Choose the career path most likely to lead to an early, painful death, and you’re sure to find job satisfaction.”

— Seanan McGuire

474. “The trouble with wanting to do the right thing is that frequently the right thing today is the wrong thing for tomorrow, or the wrong thing for the people who are standing between you and your perfect, platonic future.”

— Seanan McGuire

475. “Faeries are real. Magic is real. My tendency to greet dangerous situations by plunging in headfirst and seeing how long it takes to get myself covered head to toe in blood is also real.”

— Seanan McGuire

476. “She was a bitter, resentful, maladjusted kid who grew into an equally maladjusted teenager; it was only natural that we’d become friends the day we met.”

— Seanan McGuire

477. “Do you need anything else?” “Basket, oil, herbs,” she said. “And a pony, but I never get that, unless you count the Kelpies, which I don’t. Kelpies are too naughty to count as ponies.” “They’re also horrifying and full of teeth,” said Patrick.”

— Seanan McGuire

478. “Reality, it must sadly be said, has a way of complicating things, even things we might believe could never be that complicated.”

— Seanan McGuire

479. “In that moment, Roger is sure – absolutely certain – of two things: Dodger is real, and he wants her to be his friend.”

— Seanan McGuire

480. “Faerie: where it’s only a little weird to realize that my boyfriend is older than the internal combustion engine.”

— Seanan McGuire

481. “There’s a reason you were all pulled into worlds that suited you so well. Imagine, for a moment, if you’d fallen into the world described by your neighbor instead.”

— Seanan McGuire

482. “My hair is hungry,” announced Carol. That brought the conversation to its second screeching halt in as many minutes, as everyone turned to stare at the gorgon.”

— Seanan McGuire

483. “Not dying at all would have been better – way better – but I guess I always knew that we couldn’t win forever. That’s not how the universe works. Sooner or later everyone has to lose. Even the good guys.”

— Seanan McGuire

484. “As always, my alarm went off too early, yanking me back into a world I wasn’t quite prepared to deal with. I looked automatically toward the window as I sat up. Only three bloody crescents marked the spots where bluebirds had managed to slam themselves to death against the glass.”

— Seanan McGuire

485. “She had thought to pay for a lifetime. Now, it seemed, she might pay for a life instead.”

— Seanan McGuire

486. “Painters and sculptors and designers, they take raw materials and turn them into art. Dancers turn themselves into art. We are poetry in motion.”

— Seanan McGuire

487. “At least someone was having a good day. Of course, the cats would have a good time in nuclear winter, as long as somebody was left to feed them.”

— Seanan McGuire

488. “Sometimes I envy kids for the way they dismiss the things that don’t matter. They still get bogged down in details, but at least they’re different details.”

— Seanan McGuire

489. “I kissed her like she was my Annabel Lee, and in some ways, in some places in my heart, I think that I’m kissing her still.”

— Seanan McGuire

490. “His claws, draped in velvet and wrapped in affectation, are sharp enough to slaughter the world.”

— Seanan McGuire

491. “But that’s what family is, isn’t it? It’s traditions and trinkets that only matter when we hold them up against the mirrors of our lives, lending them meaning, lending them weight, until they become heavy enough to endure without us. We create the past in the things that we choose to remember about it. We turn everything into stories, and those stories matter because we say that they do. It’s all a wheel, and ours are the hands that turn it.”

— Seanan McGuire

492. “That’s because the worlds we experienced barely seemed to match up, despite being the same place.”

— Seanan McGuire

493. “Through the words on the page she followed Alice down rabbit holes and Dorothy into tornados, solved mysteries alongside Trixie Belden and Nancy Drew, flew with Peter to Neverland, and made a wonderful journey to a Mushroom Planet. Her family was reasonably well-off, and there was no shortage of books, either through the shops or the library, which seemed to be entirely without limits.”

— Seanan McGuire

494. “If monarchs are that much against being overthrown, they shouldn’t do things that would make it seem like a good idea.”

— Seanan McGuire

495. “You lost a great deal of blood.” “I didn’t lose it,” I said. “I know exactly where it is.”

— Seanan McGuire

496. “She was a woman with something to protect. That made her more dangerous than they could ever have suspected.”

— Seanan McGuire

497. “Sometimes you say ‘nonsense’ like it’s an idea and sometimes you say it like it’s a proper name,” said the Baker. “Why is that?”

— Seanan McGuire

498. “What you mean and what you say should be similar, or you risk people not understanding you.”

— Seanan McGuire

499. “The day you don’t have a problem, you’ll probably decide that that’s a problem, and go looking for one.”

— Seanan McGuire

500. “If anyone was going to get themselves murdered to guarantee they would remain the center of attention, it would be him.”

— Seanan McGuire