Top 500 Seanan McGuire Quotes (2026 Update)
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401. “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

402. “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

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

— Seanan McGuire

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

— Seanan McGuire

405. “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

406. “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

407. “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

408. “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

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

— Seanan McGuire

410. “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

411. “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

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

— Seanan McGuire

413. “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

414. “A man who has lived his entire life in a cave does not mourn the sun until he sees it, and once he has, he can never go back underground.”

— Seanan McGuire

415. “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

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

— Seanan McGuire

417. “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

418. “Adversity doesn’t exist to make us stronger. Adversity exists because this world is a damn hard place to live. Prove that you’re better than the things it throws at you. Live.”

— Seanan McGuire

419. “But children, ah, children. Children follow the foxes, and open the wardrobes, and peek beneath the bridge. Children climb the walls and fall down the wells and run the razor’s edge of possibility until sometimes, just sometimes, the possible surrenders and shows them the way to go home.”

— Seanan McGuire

420. “Whatever it was, it was the size of a cow, and looked like what you’d get if you somehow managed to cross a beaver and a crocodile, looked at the results, and decided what your new monster really needed was a bunch of extra teeth.”

— Seanan McGuire

421. “I watched him walk after Mags and Quentin until he vanished into the stacks. What can I say? He was still wearing leather pants.”

— Seanan McGuire

422. “Dating Erin would be sort of like dating a blender. Sure, it makes great smoothies, but one day you’re going to be minding your own business and it’s going to switch on and remove your hand.”

— Seanan McGuire

423. “For us, places we went were home. We didn’t care if they were good or evil or neutral or what. 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

424. “Dinners are mostly dull, awful things, all meat and potatoes and things to build healthy minds and bodies. Boring. I bet your dinners with the dead people were a lot more fun.”

— Seanan McGuire

425. “They were sleek and clean and elegant, and when their webs got messed up, they ripped them down and started over again. People could learn a lot from spiders.”

— Seanan McGuire

426. “Even an echo can be afraid, given the proper motivation.”

— Seanan McGuire

427. “When I’m a woman, I eat Pop-Tarts and vindaloo. When I’m a big black bird, I eat eyeballs and spleens. It’s all part of the glorious contradiction that is me.”

— Seanan McGuire

428. “I am so tired of this gothic crap,” I muttered. “Just once, I want to meet the villain in a cheerful, brightly lit room. Possibly one with kittens.”

— Seanan McGuire

429. “Grandma Alice insists he’s alive, and my mother raised me never to contradict anyone who regularly carries grenades.”

— Seanan McGuire

430. “It was a train of thought that might have led her to some unpleasant conclusions had it been allowed to continue; this story might have ended differently. A single revelation does not change a life. It is a start.”

— Seanan McGuire

431. “I’m a lot of things, but rational where the people I love are concerned has never been one of them.”

— Seanan McGuire

432. “I know your son in all ways better than you do. Remember that, as you consider taking him from me.” “Oak and ash, Raj, don’t talk to my parents like that! Actually, don’t talk to anyone like that. You know modern grammar. Use it.” I didn’t have another roll, so I couldn’t throw it at him. I settled for wadding up my napkin and bouncing it off his head. He frowned at me, clearly unrepentant. “They’re purebloods. They don’t listen to modern grammar.”

— Seanan McGuire

433. “The part of me that actually cares about being a decent person promptly punched my inner researcher in the jaw and stuffed her in a closet at the back of my head, to be retrieved later.”

— Seanan McGuire

434. “The habit of narration, of crafting something miraculous out of the commonplace, was hard to break... Narrate the impossible things, turn them into a story, and they could be controlled...”

— Seanan McGuire

435. “It didn’t take long to write up our reports, since they mostly consisted of variations on “Rapunzel confirmed downtown, field team dispatched to resolve the incursion; incursion resolved when Agent Winters shouted at it until it agreed to go away. Resolution mechanism not recommended for future incursions.” Demi’s was even shorter: “Barely made it out of the car.”

— Seanan McGuire

436. “Sometimes heroism is pressing on when the ending is already preordained.”

— Seanan McGuire

437. “If you don’t mind, I need to fall down until my head stops hurting.” “Of.”

— Seanan McGuire

438. “Valerie didn’t have those problems. Valerie was just another dancer, and anything she needed to hide would be mundane and understandable. Sometimes I envied Valerie, even though I knew that her life was simple only because she didn’t actually exist. Maybe that was always the secret to a simple life. Reality was the complicating factor.”

— Seanan McGuire

439. “Just so you know, I had already decided I was adopting you and taking you home to meet the rest of the family. I really, really hope you wanted siblings, because you now have two sisters, a brother, a sister-in-law, a brother-in-law, and assorted cousins, aunts, uncles, and other such familial detritus.” James looked back to me, blinking in slow bewilderment. “Ah,” he said finally. “I suppose I’ll have a busy Christmas.”

— Seanan McGuire

440. “I could give you children,” said Jack, sounding faintly affronted. “You’d have to tell me how many heads you wanted them to have, and what species you’d like them to be, but what’s the point of having all these graveyards if I can’t give you children when you ask for them?”

— Seanan McGuire

441. “We’ve much to do, and time does insist on being linear here, because it’s awful.”

— Seanan McGuire

442. “So please, can we go and tell her to stop? I need to exist. It’s important.”

— Seanan McGuire

443. “Sadly, as I had come to learn, sometimes being a pincushion is my purpose in life.”

— Seanan McGuire

444. “Old enough to know what I’m losing in the process of being found.”

— Seanan McGuire

445. “I mean, how many people have jobs where they can say “I didn’t sleep last night because the mice wouldn’t stop talking” and get sympathy rather than a referral to a psychiatrist?”

— Seanan McGuire

446. “Hummingbird girl, running on caffeine and borrowed energy. He’s seen what happens when that energy runs out. He never wants to see it again.”

— Seanan McGuire

447. “Flirting was safe, flirting was fun; flirting was a way of interacting with her peers without anyone realizing that there was anything strange about her. She could have flirted forever. It was just the things that came after flirting that she had no interest in.”

— Seanan McGuire

448. “It used to be all black, like my mother’s. When I danced with the Lord of the Dead for the first time, he said it was beautiful, and he ran his fingers though it. All the hair turned white around them, out of jealousy. That’s why I only have five black streaks left. Those are the parts he touched.”

— Seanan McGuire

449. “What is wrong? Is this related to the notice I received from Queen Windermere that a war was being beta-tested, and might be cleared for release? I do not have time to allow my coders to be slaughtered. It seems very inefficient.”

— Seanan McGuire

450. “Sometimes I wonder if it’s because you spent so long lost that you must insist on bringing every lost thing home.”

— Seanan McGuire