Top 500 Seanan McGuire Quotes (2026 Update)
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351. “Not that we’d had much opportunity for casual conversation – all our conversations so far had been focused on killing each other, killing something else, or trying not to get ourselves or anybody else killed.”

— Seanan McGuire

352. “Hope means you keep on holding to things that won’t ever be so again, and so you bleed an inch at a time until there’s nothing left.”

— Seanan McGuire

353. “We cared about the fact that for the first time, we didn’t have to pretend to be something we weren’t. We just got to be. That made all the difference in the world.”

— Seanan McGuire

354. “Sometimes, good intentions do more damage than all the wicked plots in all the world.”

— Seanan McGuire

355. “There are worlds built on rainbows and worlds built on rain. There are worlds of pure mathematics, where every number chimes like crystal as it rolls into reality. There are worlds of light and worlds of darkness, worlds of rhyme and worlds of reason, and worlds where the only thing that matters is the goodness in a hero’s heart.”

— Seanan McGuire

356. “Grandma married him because he was the first man she’d ever met who wasn’t affected by her telepathy. This is the sort of thing that Internet dating sites never have a field for.”

— Seanan McGuire

357. “Some days it’s not worth crawling out of the shallow woodland grave, I swear. “Be.”

— Seanan McGuire

358. “Are you always this fond of stating the obvious, or am I just the lucky recipient of your sarcasm?” “Bit of both,” said Basil. “Right.”

— Seanan McGuire

359. “I would greatly prefer it if you didn’t put a bullet into my brain; it would complicate my plans for life, most of which involve not being dead.”

— Seanan McGuire

360. “She was a story, not an epilogue.”

— Seanan McGuire

361. “It can be easy, in the end, to forget that children are people, and that people will do what people will do, the consequences be damned.”

— Seanan McGuire

362. “I love ‘sort of,’ ”I said dryly. “It’s such a beautifully useless phrase.”

— Seanan McGuire

363. “The bedroom was as opulently decorated as the front room, with a bed large enough to hold six, and a wardrobe that should by all rights have contained a doorway to Narnia, or at least the deeper lands of Faerie.”

— Seanan McGuire

364. “Older than I look, younger than I ought to be. My skin is a riddle not to be solved, and even letting go of everything I love won’t offer me the answer. My window is closing, if that’s what you’re asking. Every day I wake up a little more linear, a little less lost, and one day I’ll be one of the women who says ‘I had the most charming dream,’ and I’ll mean it. Old enough to know what I’m losing in the process of being found.”

— Seanan McGuire

365. “It was like they had all learned to be a little kinder, or at least a little more careful about what they based their judgements on.”

— Seanan McGuire

366. “Now, if you will excuse me, a dead woman is trying to convince me to drink something that comes in layers.”

— Seanan McGuire

367. “Alex would make a terrible Martian,” said Sarah. “He doesn’t have a giant laser and he’s not planning an Earth-shattering kaboom.”

— Seanan McGuire

368. “These days, everyone wants to eat, but no one wants to take the time and care needed to coax the land into giving up its glories. People don’t change. We’re always selfish, and we’re always hungry. We’ve just gotten better at looking at greed and saying ‘Oh, that’s self-interest, that’s all right.’ We’ve forgotten the way the word ‘enough’ feels on the tongue.”

— Seanan McGuire

369. “Her mind – brilliant, traitorous, prone to devouring itself – did not stop fretting, but at least she was in control again. It was odd, to think of one’s own mind as the enemy. It wasn’t always.”

— Seanan McGuire

370. “Parents lied to children when they thought it was necessary, or when they thought that it would somehow make things better. It only made sense that children should lie to parents in the same way.”

— Seanan McGuire

371. “Not because we feel children shouldn’t be allowed to haunt – because they’re creepy as all hell, and we’d all feel better if they moved on.”

— Seanan McGuire

372. “I had to admire the Evil Dead-level dedication that went into thinking “I’ll take a chainsaw into battle against a werewolf,” even as I wanted to find out who thought it was a good idea and shake them until they realized the error of their ways. Almost.”

— Seanan McGuire

373. “Her scapulae were delicate wings; her skull was a psalm to the elegant dancer waiting beneath the flesh of all who walked the earth.”

— Seanan McGuire

374. “No matter how bad the world gets, you still have to feed the cats.”

— Seanan McGuire

375. “Sumi was just explaining how you’re the most boring cardboard parody of a girl ever to walk this world or any other, and we should all feel sorry for you,” said one of the strangers, adjusting her glasses as she turned to look at Nancy. “That makes you sound like my kind of person. Please, sit, and relieve some of the tedium of our table.”

— Seanan McGuire

376. “All’s well that ends with only minor lacerations. – Alice Healy.”

— Seanan McGuire

377. “There are a lot of issues with the three-tens,” I said. “First off, a lot of the time, the poor kids who wind up cast as ‘princes’ get thrown out of second-story windows and permanently maimed. There have been reports of Rapunzels who sunk so deep into their stories that they actually could cure blindness with their tears, but we haven’t had one of those in years, and it’s not company policy to let unmonitored memetic incursions progress to that level.”

— Seanan McGuire

378. “I’m not really into cremating my cookies.”

— Seanan McGuire

379. “Parents don’t always like to admit that things have changed. They want the world to be exactly the way it was before their children went away on these life-changing adventures, and when the world doesn’t oblige, they try to force it into the boxes they build for us.”

— Seanan McGuire

380. “It was like Rhys had ordered the whole thing from Castles R Us, and then never bothered to swing by the local Bed, Battlements, and Beyond for the accessories he’d need to make it believable.”

— Seanan McGuire

381. “It wasn’t easy, but like I’ve always said, if you can’t lie to yourself, who can you lie to? The food.”

— Seanan McGuire

382. “I don’t like parties. Someone always tries to assassinate someone I actually like, and there are never enough of those little stuffed mushroom caps.”

— Seanan McGuire

383. “Hail!” chorused the mice. “Hail the High Priest of Goddammit Eat Something Already!”

— Seanan McGuire

384. “The God of Scales and Silences is not sick,” said the mouse. The others joined in with nods and sounds of rodent agreement. “He is damaged, yes, and will need Tender Care and perhaps Kisses for his Boo-Boos, but he is not sick.”

— Seanan McGuire

385. “I could write myself out of the play, just like Ophelia before me; it could be over.”

— Seanan McGuire

386. “Please don’t mistake villainy for evil. The two can exist side by side while remaining quite distinct.”

— Seanan McGuire

387. “He likes cats. They have their own agenda, and he respects that.”

— Seanan McGuire

388. “Beauty was all the brighter against a background of briars.”

— Seanan McGuire

389. “There’s nothing wrong with making a last stand. Just make sure you bring enough grenades to share with the entire class. – Alice Healy.”

— Seanan McGuire

390. “Her mind – brilliant, traitorous, prone to devouring itself – did not stop fretting, but at least she was in control again. It was odd, to think of one’s own mind as the enemy. It wasn’t always. The tendency to obsession and irrational dread was matched by focus and attention to detail, both of which served her well in her work.”

— Seanan McGuire

391. “The trouble with denying children the freedom to be themselves – with forcing them into an idea of what they should be, not allowing them to choose their own paths – is that all too often, the one drawing the design knows nothing of the desires of their model.”

— Seanan McGuire

392. “I only looked when I was sure he couldn’t see me. Some games are too dangerous to play.”

— Seanan McGuire

393. “When all else fails, put on a fresh coat of lip gloss and pretend you have no idea what that horrible thing that just went running down Main Street was. A surprisingly large number of people will believe you.”

— Seanan McGuire

394. “Everyone who wound up at Eleanor West’s School – everyone who found a doorway – understood what it was to spend a lifetime waiting for something that other people wouldn’t necessarily understand. Not because they were better than other people and not because they were worse, but because they had a need trapped somewhere in their bones, gnawing constantly, trying to get out.”

— Seanan McGuire

395. “I dislike the dead returning to life,” said Etienne, his shoulders slumping again. “It’s untidy and inappropriate.”

— Seanan McGuire

396. “They’re all the ghostroads, and they’ve all got one thing in common: they’re all physical evidence of the scars mankind leaves on the world.”

— Seanan McGuire

397. “In the way of bookish children, she carried her books into trees and along the banks of chuckling creeks, weaving her way along their slippery shores with the sort of grace that belongs only to bibliophiles protecting their treasures.”

— Seanan McGuire

398. “It is so often easy, when one has the luxury of being sure a thing will never happen, to be equally sure of one’s answers. Reality, it must sadly be said, has a way of complicating things, even things we might believe could never be that complicated.”

— Seanan McGuire

399. “Quentin didn’t bother with the preliminaries. He grabbed a paper cup and trotted over to me, holding it at arm’s length. “Here,” he said. “Coffee.“”And thus am I reminded why I allow you to live.”

— Seanan McGuire

400. “Death was precious. That didn’t change the fact that life was limited.”

— Seanan McGuire