The Mask Falling Quotes

“I am of the considered opinion that for every person, there exists a book that will sing to them. I trust that you will find yours.”
― Samantha Shannon, The Mask Falling

“It is a beautiful mask, but all masks fall. In the end.”
― Samantha Shannon, The Mask Falling

“I can offer you nothing,” he said. “Only a song in the shadows.”
“Sing it to me,” I whispered back.”
― Samantha Shannon, The Mask Falling

“Who can break you now, Black Moth, now there is nothing left to break?”
― Samantha Shannon, The Mask Falling

“You helped set me on this path, don't you ever tell me how to walk it”
― Samantha Shannon, The Mask Falling

“Part of me feared, before that night. That I was a fool for wanting to know you. For seeing you in everything, everywhere I turned,” he said. “I thought it was a sentence. A haunting. Until I realized it was a gift to be haunted by you.”
― Samantha Shannon, The Mask Falling

“It can be a lonely feeling, not knowing where you fit.”
― Samantha Shannon, The Mask Falling

“Do you mind it?” I asked softly. “Being linked to me?”
The silence rang with something I recognized.
“No.” His voice was a shadow. “It roots me again. You remind me what it is to have a home.”
A laugh escaped me.
“Dreamwalkers are rootless. Scion wants me dead because I have no anchor.” I traced his stone-cut features. “If you make me your home, you’ll wander forever.”
“I am not known for my wide choices, Paige Mahoney.”
― Samantha Shannon, The Mask Falling

“His voice was a shadow. "It roots me again. You remind me what it is to have a home.”
― Samantha Shannon, The Mask Falling

“Arcturus, as your friend, I think it's my duty to inform you that you're not a twelfth-century monk.”
― Samantha Shannon, The Mask Falling

“The night we met, I had thought he was the most beautiful and terrible thing I had ever laid eyes on. There was nothing terrible before me now. Sleep had stripped him of his Rephaite armour. He was in the same position, features soft and unburdened, one hand on the sheets between us.
In silence, I turned my hand so it lay palm up, and the shadows of my fingers fell across his knuckles. Then I drifted back to sleep.”
― Samantha Shannon, The Mask Falling

“When he gently tipped his forehead onto mine, I grew still. This close, I saw every detail of his face. The bow of his lips, cut as if with the tip of a knife. The eclipses of his eyes.
“Let the aether bear witness,” he said. “I will never keep from you what you should know.” I closed my eyes. “I will never conspire against you, nor betray you by word or thought or deed. I will never, by choice, abandon you to your enemies, nor forsake you in adversity.”
The cord shivered. I could feel the heat of fever in my breath, caught in the space between us.
“In body and spirit, I am bound to this oath.” He clasped my hand to his chest. “Seo í mo mhóid shollúinte.”
― Samantha Shannon, The Mask Falling

“Are you unwell, Paige?”
“Fine. My uterus is just confirming that it will not be growing a baby this month. With good reason,” I said, “since a tiny, defenseless human is not really what I need while I’m on the run from agents of tyranny.”
“You are menstruating.”
“I am menstruating,” I confirmed gravely.
“I see.” His eyes darkened. “Is it very painful?”
I considered.
“I’ve never had to describe it before,” I said, musing. “I suppose it’s like having all my lower organs crammed right down into my pelvis, then soaked in boiling water, so they’re sore and swollen. It’s a heavy, aching…downward-ness. But then it also feels like I’ve been kicked in the back. And the stomach. And the legs. Oh, and I’ve got a splitting headache.”
Arcturus had stopped plunging the coffee.
“And you feel able to train,” he said, after a long pause. “While experiencing those sensations.”
I rubbed the corner of my eye. “I’m grand.”
― Samantha Shannon, The Mask Falling

“My hand was already out of his pocket. He batted me away, obvious to the loss of his key. I waited until he had rounded the corner before I unlocked his car. Arcturus went to the passenger side.
“So,” he said, “we are choosing larceny.”
“Always so surprised when his criminal friend commits crimes.”
― Samantha Shannon, The Mask Falling

“You are not an executioner, Paige Mahoney.”
― Samantha Shannon, The Mask Falling

“Then he had come back into my life, and little by little, I had started to notice. That I looked forward to seeing him. That he made me smile without ever smiling himself. That he challenged me. That I always wanted to hear his voice. And that even though he was a mystery, and there were shadows in him I might never disperse, I somehow knew him.”
― Samantha Shannon, The Mask Falling

“Dreamwalkers are rootless… If you make me your home, you’ll wander forever.”
― Samantha Shannon, The Mask Falling

“Très française, petite-rêveuse.”
― Samantha Shannon, The Mask Falling

“The first touch of our lips behind crimson drapes. The touch that should have been impossible. A collision of worlds, born of chaos and breaking, that had somehow been quiet as a moth taking flight.”
― Samantha Shannon, The Mask Falling

“In the syndicate, you learn to smell desperation.”
“You believe we appear desperate?”
“Well, you have to be reasonably desperate to ask for help from someone dressed as a fucking jester.”
― Samantha Shannon, The Mask Falling

“Could it be that you are Paige Mahoney, the dreamwalker who has tempted the great Arcturus Mesarthim into flesh-treachery?”
“How disappointing,” I said, “that someone of your clear importance should trouble himself with gossip.”
“But you are the human in question.”
“I am.”
“Paige Mahoney.” He regarded me with newfound interest. “I expected him to be drawn to someone taller.”
“Okay, first off, I am taller than average.” I said, nettled.”
― Samantha Shannon, The Mask Falling

“He looked up. I had seen him bare-chested before, but this was the first time I had really noticed that he had no navel. His sarx—the warm gold of brass— was taught and seamless over slabs of muscle, limned by the dim light from the lamp.
“Paige,” he said, his tone questioning.
I realized I was staring like a gamal at him.
“Sorry,” I said, face warm. “You just don’t have—” I indicated my own abdomen. “But you wouldn’t, I suppose.”
Rephaim were not born. He had never been tethered to a womb, nor grown inside someone else. When he had first emerged, alone, he had looked exactly as he did now.
“You are curious about the other differences.” Arcturus closed his book. “There are none. Externally, at least.”
“But Rephaim don’t reproduce,” I said thinking aloud. “So you probably don’t have a—”
― Samantha Shannon, The Mask Falling

“You’re a clever man. Perhaps you can pretend you understand the concept of mercy.”
― Samantha Shannon, The Mask Falling: A Bone Season Novel

“Above, the tower. Emberlight and the pendant dark. Below, the hidden world that sheltered the forsaken. And I walked the liminal between them, with a god at my side and the streets like dying coals around us, waiting to be stoked. The fire was in the citadel, in his eyes, in my skin.”
― Samantha Shannon, The Mask Falling

“To disappear between shadow and stone. To walk the buried places of the world and still draw breath. To be everywhere and nowhere, seeing all, known and unknown. To ride from the depths, never seeking the sun. To live as one already dead, and with the dead beside.”
― Samantha Shannon, The Mask Falling

“Any civilisation that must subjugate a part of itself to survive is not worth saving.”
― Samantha Shannon, The Mask Falling: A Bone Season Novel

“Something tells me they didn’t mine this far just for limestone.”
“Maybe for gold. Or it could have been a siege tunnel…Or they were looking for another realm. We want that, I think. We crawl into the deepest caves, touch the bottom of the sea, try to reach the stars.” He gestured upward. “We are forever looking for other worlds. Stranger ones.”
― Samantha Shannon, The Mask Falling

“Do you mind it?” I asked softly. “Being linked to me?”
The silence rang with something I recognized.
“No.” His voice was a shadow. “It roots me again. You remind me what it is to have a home.”
A laugh escaped me.
“Dreamwalkers are rootless. Scion wants me dead because I have no anchor.” I traced his stone-cut features. “If you make me your home, you’ll wander forever.”
“I am not known for my wise choices, Paige Mahoney.”
― Samantha Shannon, The Mask Falling

“That fear – my fear – is not your cage,’ he said. ‘I will never ask you to mould yourself to it.”
― Samantha Shannon, The Mask Falling: A Bone Season Novel

“A note was folded on the mantelpiece, dated from Thursday the nineteenth. That was yesterday.”
― Samantha Shannon, The Mask Falling: A Bone Season Novel