Top 500 Seanan McGuire Quotes (2025 Update)
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401. “Please don’t mistake villainy for evil. The two can exist side by side while remaining quite distinct.”

— Seanan McGuire

402. “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

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

— Seanan McGuire

404. “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

405. “I’m not sorry,” said Quentin. “One of them tried to take my throat away from me. With its teeth. I’m not you. I need my throat.”

— Seanan McGuire

406. “True power wasn’t convincing a cowardly lot to be afraid of something that people were already afraid of; it was giving them a complex that made them run screaming when a fluffy kitten came bounding into the room.”

— Seanan McGuire

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

— Seanan McGuire

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

— Seanan McGuire

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

— Seanan McGuire

410. “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

411. “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

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

— Seanan McGuire

413. “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

414. “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

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

— Seanan McGuire

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

— Seanan McGuire

417. “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

418. “Um, hello?” I raised a hand. “Not a traitor, and the Queen told us where to find you. Or do you think that we’re such major badasses that we fought our way through the knowe to come and loiter at you in an imposing fashion? Because I’ve got to say I’m flattered.”

— Seanan McGuire

419. “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

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

— Seanan McGuire

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

— Seanan McGuire

422. “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

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

— Seanan McGuire

424. “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

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

— Seanan McGuire

426. “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

427. “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

428. “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

429. “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

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

— Seanan McGuire

431. “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

432. “Truly, you are as generous as you are violent.”

— Seanan McGuire

433. “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

434. “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

435. “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

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

— Seanan McGuire

437. “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

438. “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

439. “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

440. “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

441. “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

442. “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

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

— Seanan McGuire

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

— Seanan McGuire

445. “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

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

— Seanan McGuire

447. “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

448. “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

449. “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

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

— Seanan McGuire