Elle (ellexamines on TT & Substack) > Elle's Quotes

“I'm not going to wear a red dress," she said.
"It would look stunning, My Lady," she called.
She spoke to the bubbles gathered on the surface of the water. "If there's anyone I wish to stun at dinner, I'll hit him in the face.”
― Kristin Cashore, Graceling

“I thought you died, but writing this, I'm not sure you did.”
― Carmen Maria Machado, In the Dream House

“(If you are reading this story out loud, force a listener to reveal a devastating secret, then open the nearest window to the street and scream it as loudly as you are able.)”
― Carmen Maria Machado, Her Body and Other Parties

“Will you look into my eyes and tell me that you love me now?”
― Daphne du Maurier, Rebecca

“Fuck one flesh, one end, Harrow. I already gave my flesh to you, and I already gave you my end. I gave you my sword. I gave you myself. I did it while knowing I’d do it all again, without hesitation, because all I ever wanted you to do was eat me.”
― Tamsyn Muir, Harrow the Ninth

“But when she was scared, she was a child again, and she was more scared of being a child again than anything else in her life.”
― Tamsyn Muir, Harrow the Ninth

“This is why she hates Alabaster: not because he is more powerful, not even because he is crazy, but because he refuses to allow her any of the polite fictions and unspoken truths that have kept her comfortable, and safe, for years.”
― N.K. Jemisin, The Fifth Season

“She was going to leave a trail of blood over the skyline.”
― Leigh Bardugo, Crooked Kingdom

“Adam pronounced love very carefully, as if it were an unfamiliar element on the periodic table.”
― Maggie Stiefvater, The Raven King

“Want and need were words that got eaten smaller and smaller: Freedom, autonomy, a perennial bank balance, a stainless-steel condo in a dustless city, a silky black car, to make out with Blue, eight hours of sleep, a cell phone, a bed, to kiss Blue just once, a blister-less heel, bacon for breakfast, to hold Blue's hand, one hour of sleep, toilet paper, deodorant, a soda, a minute to close his eyes.

What do you want, Adam?

To feel awake when my eyes are open.”
― Maggie Stiefvater, The Dream Thieves

“It's only you," whispered Orphan Girl. She was holding his hand crouched down next to him. "Why do you hate you?"
Ronan thought about it.
The albino night horror swept in, talons opening.
Ronan stood up, stretching out his arm like he would to Chainsaw.
"I don't," he said.
And he woke up.”
― Maggie Stiefvater, The Dream Thieves

“When a monster stopped behaving like a monster, did it stop being a monster? Did it become something else?”
― Kristin Cashore, Graceling

“My sister burns, and she does not burn for you.”
― E.K. Johnston, A Thousand Nights

“I want to meet you in every place I have loved.”
― Amal El-Mohtar, This Is How You Lose the Time War

“Love is a kind of killing, Addy," she says. "Don't you know that?”
― Megan Abbott, Dare Me

“When you look in the mirror, what do you want to see: yet another reminder of your hopeless attempt to be the girl of his dreams, or you? The answer should always be you.”
― Abby McDonald, Getting Over Garrett Delaney

“I want to be a body for you. I want to chase you, find you, I want to be eluded and teased and adored; I want to be defeated and victorious—I want you to cut me, sharpen me. I want to drink tea beside you in ten years or a thousand. Flowers grow far away on a planet they’ll call Cephalus, and these flowers bloom once a century, when the living star and its black-hole binary enter conjunction.I want to fix you a bouquet of them, gathered across eight hundred thousand years, so you can draw our whole engagement in a single breath, all the ages we’ve shaped together.”
― Amal El-Mohtar, This Is How You Lose the Time War

“I gave you my heart on a silver fucking platter and you ate it, piece by bloody piece.”
― Heather Demetrios, Bad Romance

“I want to meet you in every place I ever loved. Listen to me. I am your echo. I would rather break the world than lose you.”
― Amal El-Mohtar, This Is How You Lose the Time War

“I bet you could sometimes find all the mysteries of the universe in someone's hand.”
― Benjamin Alire Sáenz, Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe

“Each lie is something that’s mine, that my mom and The Giant can’t take away from me. Each lie reminds me I’m an actual person with rights and desires and the ability to make choices on her own. Each lie is power—control over my life.”
― Heather Demetrios, Bad Romance

“So then she took me home, or I took her home, or we were both somehow taken to the closest thing.”
― Emma Donoghue, Kissing the Witch: Old Tales in New Skins

“Did you know, the man who invented the atomic bomb once said that keeping peace through deterrence was like keeping two scorpions in one bottle? You can picture that, right? They know they can't sting without getting stung. They can't kill without getting killed. And you'd think that would stop them." He gave the book another boot, and it flipped closed with a snick. "But it doesn't." He looked up and his eyes were the color of Cherenkov radiation, the color of an orbital weapon. "You've got a bit of nerve, little scorpion. All I did was invent the bottle.”
― Erin Bow, The Scorpion Rules

“Once upon a time, an angel lay dying in the mist.

And a devil knelt over him and smiled.”
― Laini Taylor, Daughter of Smoke & Bone

“Maybe there were people who lived those lives. Maybe this girl was one of them. But what about the rest of us? What about the nobodies and the nothings, the invisible girls? We learn to hold our heads as if we wear crowns. We learn to wring magic from the ordinary. That was how you survived when you weren’t chosen, when there was no royal blood in your veins. When the world owed you nothing, you demanded something of it anyway.”
― Leigh Bardugo, Crooked Kingdom

“On our wedding night," she said, "I will cut out your tongue and swallow it. Then both tongues that spoke our marriage vows will belong to me, and I will be wed only to myself. You will most likely choke to death on your own blood, which will be unfortunate, but I will be both husband and wife and therefore not a widow to be pitied.”
― Kiersten White, And I Darken

“The Corporation would like to apologize for the preceding pages. Of course, it's not all right for girls to behave this way. Sexuality is not meant to be this way - an honest, consensual expression in which a girl might take an active role when she feels good and ready and not one minute before. No. Sexual desire is meant to sell soap. And cars. And beer. And religion.”
― Libba Bray, Beauty Queens

“And on the wedding contract, before me and my parents and the rabbi, and Wanda and Sergey for our witnesses, in silver ink he signed his name.

But I won't ever tell you what it is.”
― Naomi Novik, Spinning Silver

“Sometimes Ronan thought Adam was so used to the right way being painful that he doubted any path that didn’t come with agony.”
― Maggie Stiefvater, The Dream Thieves

“It was nothing, but it was Adam Parrish's nothing. How he hated and loved it. How proud he was of it, how wretched it was.”
― Maggie Stiefvater, The Dream Thieves