The Language of Thorns: Midnight Tales and Dangerous Magic (Grishaverse, #0.5 & 2.5 & 2.6)

by Leigh Bardugo

You see, some people are born with a piece of night inside, and that hollow place can never be filled—not with all the good food or sunshine in the world. That emptiness cannot be banished, and so some days we wake with the feeling of the wind blowing through, and we must simply endure it

“I will love an honest monster before I swear loyalty to a treacherous king.”

They pray that their children will be brave and clever and strong, that they will tell the true stories instead of the easy ones.

“I can bear ugliness,” he said. “I find the one thing I cannot live with is death.”

“Freedom is a burden, but you will learn to bear it.

“It is always the same trap,” she said gently. “You longed for conversation. The bear craved jokes. The gray wolf missed music. The boar just wanted someone to tell her troubles to. The trap is loneliness, and none of us escapes it. Not even me.”

IT IS DANGEROUS TO TRAVEL THE northern road with a troubled heart.

to use a thing is not to own it.

Wanting is why people get up in the morning. It gives them something to dream of at night. The more I wanted, the more I became like them, the more real I became.”

This is the problem with making a thing forbidden. It does nothing but build an ache in the heart.

But hope rises like water trapped by a dam, higher and higher, in increments that mean nothing until you face the flood.

The sea folk grew more cautious, more wary of disaster, more frightened of the shore, and in time, much of their music faded too. They lived long lives and kept few memories. They forgot old grievances.

she remains to this day, waiting for the lonely, the ambitious, the clever, the frail, for all those willing to strike a bargain. She never waits for long.