Phoebe > Phoebe's Quotes

“War doesn't determine who's right. War determines who remains.”
― R.F. Kuang, The Poppy War

“There are no bargains between lion and men. I will kill you and eat you raw.”
― Madeline Miller, The Song of Achilles

“What is truth? Scholars seek it. Poets write it. Good Kings pay gold to hear it. But in trying times, truth is the first thing we betray.”
― Joan He, Descendant of the Crane

“Na razrusha'ya. I am not ruined. E'ya razrushost. I am ruination.”
― Leigh Bardugo, Ruin and Rising

“I have become something wonderful, she thought. I have become something terrible. Was she now a goddess or a monster? Perhaps neither. Perhaps both.”
― R.F. Kuang, The Poppy War

“Nothing is written," said the Phoenix. "You humans always think you're destinied for greatness. Destiny is a myth. Destiny is the only myth. The gods choose nothing. You chose. You chose to take the exam. You chose to come to Sinegard. You chose to pledge Lore, you chose to study the paths of the gods, and you chose to follow your commander's demands over your master's warnings. At every critical juncture you were given an option; you were given a way out. Yet you picked precisely the roads that led you here. You are at this temple, kneeling before me, only because you wanted to be.”
― R.F. Kuang, The Poppy War

“She would bloom where she was planted and let her roots close around the throats of her enemies.”
― Julie C. Dao, Forest of a Thousand Lanterns

“I could recognize him by touch alone, by smell; I would know him blind, by the way his breaths came and his feet struck the earth. I would know him in death, at the end of the world.”
― Madeline Miller, The Song of Achilles

“He is half of my soul, as the poets say.”
― Madeline Miller, The Song of Achilles

“He is a weapon, a killer. Do not forget it. You can use a spear as a walking stick, but that will not change its nature.”
― Madeline Miller, The Song of Achilles

“At deception he means. Perhaps I am better than some, but every woman has a great deal of experience presenting herself as someone other than who she is, since no girl is ever everything the world wants her to be.”
― Sherry Thomas, The Magnolia Sword: A Ballad of Mulan

“Do you believe in reincarnation?"
"I . . . I don't know."
"I do. Next lifetime, let's not waste years upon years. Let's be friends from the very beginning.”
― Sherry Thomas, The Magnolia Sword: A Ballad of Mulan

“There were no simple questions, or simple answers, Hesina decided bitterly. There were only truths sacrificed for other truths.”
― Joan He, Descendant of the Crane

“ What is power? Hesina had thought it was wielding the knife, or getting someone to wield it for her. Now she realized it was neither. Power was yielding. It was taking the bloodstained knife out of a thousand frenzied hands and making it hers alone.”
― Joan He, Descendant of the Crane

“You cannot harden your heart to the future just because of your past. You cannot use cruelty against yourself to justify cruelty to others.”
― Marie Lu, The Midnight Star

“After a lifetime of darkness, I want to leave something behind that is made of light.”
― Marie Lu, The Midnight Star

“I’m going to follow her, of course,” Magiano says. “As the night sky turns. When she appears on the other side of the world, I will be there, and when she returns here, so will I.”
― Marie Lu, The Midnight Star

“Someday, when I am nothing but dust and wind, what tale will they tell about me?”
― Marie Lu, The Midnight Star

“We were never meant to exist, Adelina," he says. "And we will never exist again. But we cannot take the entire world with us." He meets my gaze. "No matter how it has wronged us.”
― Marie Lu, The Midnight Star

“The first time Raffaele ever saw Adelina, it was a stormy-wracked night that changed her life and, indeed, the world. He recalls looking down from the window in his Dalia lodging to see a girl with silver-bright hair, conjuring an illusion of darkness such that he had never seen. He remembers the day she first came to his chambers in Estenzia, when Enzo was still alive and she was still innocent, and the way she looked up at him with her uncertain, damaged gaze. He remembers her test, and what he said to Enzo that night. How long ago that had been. How he had judged her wrongly.”
― Marie Lu, The Midnight Star

“Yuyeh sesh. Despise your heart. Ni weh sesh. I have no heart.”
― Leigh Bardugo, Ruin and Rising

“I'm the Sun Summoner. It gets dark when I say it does.”
― Leigh Bardugo, Ruin and Rising

“Destroying what someone else cherished never brought back what you yourself had lost. All it did was spread grief like a contagion.”
― Shelley Parker-Chan, She Who Became the Sun

“He had done what he had to do, and in doing so he had destroyed the world.”
― Shelley Parker-Chan, She Who Became the Sun

“The greater the desire, the greater the suffering, and now she desired greatness itself.”
― Shelley Parker-Chan, She Who Became the Sun

“She saw someone who seemed neither male nor female, but another substance entirely: something wholly and powerfully of its own kind. The promise of difference, made real.”
― Shelley Parker-Chan, She Who Became the Sun

“She was grieving her life as she never had before, and it was all this monk's fault for having conjured the impossible fantasy of a world in which she was free to desire.”
― Shelley Parker-Chan, She Who Became the Sun

“The body became used to exercise, particular sounds and sensations, or even physical pain. But it was strange how shame was something you never became inured to: each time hurt just as much as the first.”
― Shelley Parker-Chan, She Who Became the Sun

“Learn to want something for yourself, Ma Xiuying. Not what someone says you should want. Not what you think you should want. Don’t go through life thinking only of duty. When all we have are these brief spans between our nonexistences, why not make the most of the life you’re living now? The price is worth it.”
― Shelley Parker-Chan, She Who Became the Sun

“Most strong-willed people never understand that will alone isn’t enough to guarantee their survival. They don’t realize that even more so than will, survival depends upon an understanding of people and power.”
― Shelley Parker-Chan, She Who Became the Sun