Top 200 Shannon Hale Quotes (2025 Update)
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151. “But sometimes, it’d be nice just to hold something real in your hands that felt like a measure of your worth.”

— Shannon Hale

152. “Briar stood, pushing up her sleeves. ‘It’s about to get all nonfiction in here’.”

— Shannon Hale

153. “You are not doing something foolish, are you?” In fact, she was, but that didn’t mean she had to stop glaring.”

— Shannon Hale

154. “She read like a woman drinks water after nearly dying of dehydration. The stories pulled out of her sensation after sensation: a fluttering in her belly, a laugh on her lips, a pounding in her heart.”

— Shannon Hale

155. “If we’re mad, we’re mad in large numbers, at least larger than yours.”

— Shannon Hale

156. “We see the surface, blue or silver or gray, and waves hitting the shore. But we know there’s so much we can’t see, so what we love about it becomes in part what we imagine it is hiding.”

— Shannon Hale

157. “That’s the word he’d used – stunning. It’s a difficult word to dismiss. She longed to be that word to someone.”

— Shannon Hale

158. “Her eyes followed the long road that began south of the Great City.”

— Shannon Hale

159. “Being a writer is a good, good thing.”

— Shannon Hale

160. “Generally speaking, if a guy breaks your jaw and leg and cuts off your robotic arm, you file charges and get a restraining order. The only exception is when subtle machinations are needed to save the world from a massive, catastrophic alien takeover. But in no other circumstance.”

— Shannon Hale

161. “I’m going to find whoever is responsible for me sleeping out side with outside without pillows and kick them in the shins!-Enna.”

— Shannon Hale

162. “Romance. That seemed silly... Now-so cheap, mass market-, high-discount. It was temporary insanity caused by the brain. It was a biological trick to ensure the survival of the species.”

— Shannon Hale

163. “I wasn’t aware until this precise and awkward moment that when startled in a strange place, my instincts would have me pretend to be a ninja.”

— Shannon Hale

164. “Katar had given her a small gift by opening her heart and showing her pain. Miri tucked the moment in her own heart and hoped somehow to repay.”

— Shannon Hale

165. “Whenever I get bird meat, I like to eat it in the open, let the falcons and hawks see who the boss is. Me. I’m the boss.”

— Shannon Hale

166. “She made herself take two deep-rooted yoga breaths, smiled back, and thought of men in breeches.”

— Shannon Hale

167. “When thoughts aren’t sticking, are thicker than stew What is true? What to do? When strife is looming, naught brewing for you Ask anew, what to do? Peder.”

— Shannon Hale

168. “If it had been a color, it might have been green. If it had touched her ears, it might have sounded rhythmic, like the creak of a rocking chair or drone of a bee. If it had a scent, it might have been sweet and drowsy, like fresh pine on the fire.”

— Shannon Hale

169. “I couldn’t see what was real until time had washed away everything else.”

— Shannon Hale

170. “The point of education is to learn other ways too. Don’t just assume that all you know is right. Learn more and then chose.”

— Shannon Hale

171. “My heart’s so light it floats and carries me so my feet don’t walk. I sing all day and I don’t mind the washing, and that’s how I know I’m in love. Completely smitten with My Lord the cat.”

— Shannon Hale

172. “Don’t beat yourself up,” said Charlotte. “True love can be so easily mistaken for other things-friendship, humane concern, indigestion...”

— Shannon Hale

173. “Don’t let the inconsequential fairy tales stand in your way! You do what makes you happy, no matter what.”

— Shannon Hale

174. “He did a very good impression of a stone column.”

— Shannon Hale

175. “Goodness knows she is too fierce for you Goodness knows she has eyes for a lord Goodness knows she yet will prove untrue Her cheek’s blush is as false as her word.”

— Shannon Hale

176. “Rin slept inside the oak’s thought. Its own memories of weather and growth continued to hum, and like a pond, its stillness reflected back herself.”

— Shannon Hale

177. “It must be a marvelous thing to feel so sure, to be able to meet someone’s eyes and not look away.”

— Shannon Hale

178. “Years ago, before this estate was generously and unwillingly turned over to the crown, the lord here was a genuine dimwit. He had a minister stashed behind his throne to whisper clever things to say.”

— Shannon Hale

179. “She thought now it was time to be tested, to make decisions and find her own roads, to stop falling where she was told to fall and to stand only when allowed to stand.”

— Shannon Hale

180. “Courage is not fearlessness.”

— Shannon Hale

181. “15. “Master Filippus believes that three disciplines define us as humans,” Miri said while they walked to the peat pits. “History, Philosophy, and Poetry. History is human memory, the examination of what came before us. Philosophy is human reason, or an attempt to make sense of what is. Poetry is human imagination, seeking to express what is, even while dreaming of what might be. History, Philosophy, and Poetry – that’s what sets humans apart from animals.”

— Shannon Hale

182. “As a general rule, writing is very inconvenient.”

— Shannon Hale

183. “Even the jerks earn some of our affection. We can be glad they’re gone and yet still mourn the good parts.”

— Shannon Hale

184. “It’s good to cry a bit, ’cause that helps us get through the rough parts. And the winter is though, there’s no doubt. But we just hang on until spring when that ache will be all but swallowed up.”

— Shannon Hale

185. “Each time, Jane’s heart banged, her skin chilled, and she clamped down on the distracting ache in her gut with a bowl of something naughty, like Cocoa Pebbles.”

— Shannon Hale

186. “Maybe T-shirts should stick to something obvious, like i’m a girl or 80% water or likely to breathe.”

— Shannon Hale

187. “Go get dressed, Eddie,” she called out. “If any hopeful murderers attack us, Lizzy has promised to beat them with her curling iron.”

— Shannon Hale

188. “No use leaning on someone else’s story all your life.”

— Shannon Hale

189. “The army slew a thousand and showed little pity The king ordered fealty from the conquered city The prince charmed its people with words wise and witty And the queen sat on a couch, looking very pretty.”

— Shannon Hale

190. “A heart is a heart in a child or a man.”

— Shannon Hale

191. “Is this why women wear heels? thought Jane. We hobble ourselves so we can still be rescued by men?”

— Shannon Hale

192. “Later, when they would spend straight hours conversing in the dark, Jane would realize that Henry kissed the way he talked- his entire attention taut, focused, intensely hers.”

— Shannon Hale

193. “I want to be happy. I used to want Mr. Darcy, laugh at me if you want, or the idea of him. Someone who made me feel all the time like I felt when I watched those movies.”

— Shannon Hale

194. “Miri laughed in return and felt her face go hot again, and it occurred to her that after so much burning her cheeks should be ashes by now.”

— Shannon Hale

195. “The woman gestured to a seat and put on a patient face. An impatient sort of patient face, like an impatient face dressing up as a patient one for Halloween.”

— Shannon Hale

196. “More than a thousand days we’ve been together, more than a thousand songs I’ve sung for her, and only now, I think, do I see Saren truly begin to heal.”

— Shannon Hale

197. “She spoke quickly, her tongue feeling like a hummingbird’s wing; she was so afraid of boring him if she took too long.”

— Shannon Hale

198. “This was the part where Charlotte, heroine, remembered she was a twenty-first-century woman and a mother. This was Charlotte saying, Hell no!”

— Shannon Hale

199. “Ingridan was an ancient city. Memory ached in its stone arches, crept down its narrow alleys, sluiced through its seven rivers. And its newest memory still burned, raw and sore – a failed war, a nation shamed, and an army dishonored.”

— Shannon Hale

200. “Never fear, protecting my womb from Gothic novels is my first priority.”

— Shannon Hale