The Songbird & the Heart of Stone Quotes

“This is the tale of how a chosen one falls. She does it screaming, clawing for her old life with broken fingernails. She does it slowly, over the course of decades. And in the end, she takes the whole forsaken world with her.”
― Carissa Broadbent, The Songbird & the Heart of Stone

“I’d burn with you till the end of it all, Dawndrinker.”
― Carissa Broadbent, The Songbird & the Heart of Stone

“She looked at him like he was a question answered. He looked at her like she was the only one worth asking.”
― Carissa Broadbent, The Songbird & the Heart of Stone

“And then he said, after a moment, “I just played the notes that sounded like you.” I stiffened. He spoke the words so softly, with such tender vulnerability. Like a confession to a priest. So kind it hurt. Danger, Mische. Danger. This is not what you’re supposed to do. But still, I didn’t pull away. I murmured, “It’s beautiful.” And he whispered, “Yes.”
― Carissa Broadbent, The Songbird & the Heart of Stone

“We all have ghosts in our pasts, Iliae. We can’t give them the power to define our futures, too.”
― Carissa Broadbent, The Songbird & the Heart of Stone

“It is an injustice, Mische, that this is what you got when you asked for love,” he murmured. “This isn’t what love should feel like.”
― Carissa Broadbent, The Songbird & the Heart of Stone

“He could have had any woman. And yet his heart was so hungry for her that he let it devour the world for a fleeting taste.”
― Carissa Broadbent, The Songbird & the Heart of Stone

“I’ll tell you what you’ll have if you lose the sun, Mische. You’ll have a soul gentler than any vampire’s I’ve ever known. You’ll have an incredible magic and the skill to wield it better than the bastard who gave it to you. You’ll have a soft heart and a sharp wit and the wisdom to know when to use one or the other. You’ll have countless inane questions and horrible taste in food and a penchant for making lost souls love you.” I couldn’t breathe. Couldn’t speak. He leaned closer until his forehead touched mine. “And if you’ll take it, Mische Iliae, you will have me, too.”
― Carissa Broadbent, The Songbird & the Heart of Stone

“Do you think that I don’t know what darkness is?” I said. “Why? Because I smile too much? Because I talk too much? It’s my choice to be the way that I am. A choice that I make even when it’s hard. That doesn’t make me weak, Asar.”
― Carissa Broadbent, The Songbird & the Heart of Stone

“I’m patient,” he murmured. “A man can’t rush worship.” And gods, that was what he was doing. Worshipping.”
― Carissa Broadbent, The Songbird & the Heart of Stone

“We crashed together into beautiful damnation.”
― Carissa Broadbent, The Songbird & the Heart of Stone

“For every lost soul who just needs someone to listen”
― Carissa Broadbent, The Songbird & the Heart of Stone

“We all have our regrets. Don’t follow yours to the grave.”
― Carissa Broadbent, The Songbird & the Heart of Stone

“Sometimes they only see you for the first time when you force them to.”
― Carissa Broadbent, The Songbird & the Heart of Stone

“What are you doing?” I asked. “Praying with you,” he said. As if it were obvious. “I thought you didn’t believe in prayer.” “I don’t,” he said. “But you do.”
― Carissa Broadbent, The Songbird & the Heart of Stone

“Is that what you think of yourself? That everything good about you came from a fucking church? Atroxus didn’t make you special by choosing you. He chose you because you already were, and even when you were eight Mother-damned years old, he knew that. You owe him nothing. Nothing.”
― Carissa Broadbent, The Songbird & the Heart of Stone

“I won’t let you die here because you’re too ashamed to live, Mische,” he said. “You are so much more than this. And it would be a waste to throw all that magnificence away—for what? Because the sun told you to hate yourself? No. I won’t allow that.”
― Carissa Broadbent, The Songbird & the Heart of Stone

“There is no light without darkness. There is no life without suffering.”
― Carissa Broadbent, The Songbird & the Heart of Stone

“I liked to watch Asar smile. It felt like a victory every time. I traced its path across his face now and wondered when I’d memorized the shape of it.”
― Carissa Broadbent, The Songbird & the Heart of Stone

“Some things were fated. Some things were divine. The gods were playing a bigger game than any of us could see.”
― Carissa Broadbent, The Songbird & the Heart of Stone

“Hello, Warden,” I whispered. “Hello, Dawndrinker.”
― Carissa Broadbent, The Songbird & the Heart of Stone

“If I were the god of the sun, I would have given her endless dawns and warm hearths. If I were the god of the sea, I would have given her cool rains on hot nights and currents that always brought her home. If I were the god of vitality, I would have given her sweet fruit and spring flowers. I would have given her anything, everything, because that was what she deserved—every single thing she had loved, fully and completely, about mortality. But I am not the god of any of those things. I have only one gift to lay at her feet. And so, I wait.”
― Carissa Broadbent, The Songbird & the Heart of Stone

“Let me defile you, Dawndrinker,” he murmured. “Please.”
― Carissa Broadbent, The Songbird & the Heart of Stone

“No one loves you more than someone who has no one else.”
― Carissa Broadbent, The Songbird & the Heart of Stone

“It doesn’t make the love worth less,” I said quietly, “just because you can’t help her the way you wish you could.”
― Carissa Broadbent, The Songbird & the Heart of Stone

“And if you’ll take it, Mische Iliae, you will have me, too.”
― Carissa Broadbent, The Songbird & the Heart of Stone

“But I never ran away. Not even when I should. Instead, I did what I always did: I gave that bastard the biggest, brightest smile.”
― Carissa Broadbent, The Songbird & the Heart of Stone

“Did I look like he did? So shattered? Like all his defenses had broken apart, leaving the tender vulnerability of our want exposed and raw. I’d never known it could feel so good, to let yourself be unmade.”
― Carissa Broadbent, The Songbird & the Heart of Stone

“I remember all of it, and I hate them more for that than any two-thousand-year-old betrayal. The death of one woman, one woman who was better than all of them, who had given everything until she had nothing left, was worth more than all of it. But I’m patient. I’m determined. I have plenty of time to think about Mische and what I will offer her when—not if—I find her again.”
― Carissa Broadbent, The Songbird & the Heart of Stone

“I realized, as my fading vision took in his tear-streaked face, that Asar would never let me go. Not in life, and not in death. He would shatter it all for me.”
― Carissa Broadbent, The Songbird & the Heart of Stone