Blood Over Bright Haven Quotes

“It’s much easier to tell yourself you’re a good person than it is to actually be one.”
― M.L. Wang, Blood Over Bright Haven

“The question isn’t: How do I stop feeling this way? That’s stupid. I can’t. The question is: What can I do with this feeling?”
― M.L. Wang, Blood Over Bright Haven

“Truth over delusion. Growth over comfort.”
― M.L. Wang, Blood Over Bright Haven

“So many parents will try to kill everything brilliant about a girl in the name of giving her a good life, a safe life, a chance at happiness.”
― M.L. Wang, Blood Over Bright Haven

“In refusing to be a stepping stone, she had made herself a boot.”
― M.L. Wang, Blood Over Bright Haven

“Because good people can turn desperate when the horrors are upon them—especially people whose culture of plenty has left them with no systems to cope with scarcity or cataclysm. Good people will turn monstrous when it’s down to their survival or someone else’s.” “This”
― M.L. Wang, Blood Over Bright Haven

“The worthwhile run is never the short one. You know we’re not running from oblivion, Thomil. We’re running toward hope.”
― M.L. Wang, Blood Over Bright Haven

“I’m starting to understand how ridiculous it is to demand civility when the world is so disgustingly uncivil.”
― M.L. Wang, Blood Over Bright Haven

“I will not turn my gaze," Sciona snarled the end of the prayer for him, "though Light burn me. For Light will show the Truth of the world, and all Truth in the world is of Feryn the Father."

"Behold!" She held her arms wide before the archmages. "God's work!”
― M.L. Wang, Blood Over Bright Haven

“It doesn’t matter how big, or strong, or pretty you are in magic. It doesn’t matter how much people like you. With my fingers on the keys of a spellograph, if I can just think hard enough, I’m the most powerful person in the world. That’s a feeling a woman just isn’t going to get anywhere else.”
― M.L. Wang, Blood Over Bright Haven

“You know, arrogance never made a woman more attractive.'
'When I care how attractive you find me, I'll let you know.”
― M.L. Wang, Blood Over Bright Haven

“Be cold, be hard, and don’t give them an inch, you understand? No matter what they say of you.”
― M.L. Wang, Blood Over Bright Haven

“Brilliant men - even moderately intelligent men - in this city get showered with opportunities to succeed. Brilliant women have to fight for those opportunities, and, when we get them, we have to defend them tooth and nail, or they'll be snatched away.”
― M.L. Wang, Blood Over Bright Haven

“Thomil said that a woman was weighed at the gates of Heaven by her actions and their impact. Well, Sciona was going to leave an impact. Whatever happened next, whether it led to Hell or Heaven, she was going to have a hand in directing it. Sick or sound, good or evil, she was still Sciona Freynan. And Sciona Freynan didn’t slow down. Sciona Freynan would be remembered.”
― M.L. Wang, Blood Over Bright Haven

“The brightest meadows grew from dead things.”
― M.L. Wang, Blood Over Bright Haven

“Thomil opened his eyes and knew for certain in his broken heart:
This was how the Caldonnae truly died.
In pain too big for two small souls to bear without corruption.”
― M.L. Wang, Blood Over Bright Haven

“Because good people can turn desperate when the horrors are upon them—especially people whose culture of plenty has left them with no systems to cope with scarcity or cataclysm. Good people will turn monstrous when it’s down to their survival or someone else’s.”
― M.L. Wang, Blood Over Bright Haven

“Thomil had said that how a person felt about their actions didn’t matter; only the actions themselves mattered.”
― M.L. Wang, Blood Over Bright Haven

“Magic is the one area where I can shut myself in a room with my books and my thoughts and come out more powerful than I went in.”
― M.L. Wang, Blood Over Bright Haven

“Nobody was going to care what I did just because I did it. I had to make them care.”
― M.L. Wang, Blood Over Bright Haven

“Vakul is also a common Kwen word for a valley or depression where a river might flow. There is no river there now, but there might have been once, and there might be one day again. All living creatures have in them some good, some bad, and a lot of vakul. But vakul can’t be all you are if you expect the love of your gods and fellow mortals. A ravine won’t water crops or quench the dying. At some point, there has to be a river, or what good can you really claim? If the man of good intentions never manifests a river, only calamity, should he not go to hell?”
― M.L. Wang, Blood Over Bright Haven

“I realized... your soul matters to me—whatever weighing system the gods employ in the next life. You matter to me.”
― M.L. Wang, Blood Over Bright Haven

“Husbands have been putting their names on their wives’ work in this city for three hundred years. And if it’s not a woman’s husband, it’s her boss, because women are limited to being apprentices and assistants in almost every profession worth doing. No woman ever gets credit for the work she puts in—especially in academia. She never gets the glory. Well, I’m not married, I’m no one’s apprentice, and I’ll be damned if I let a man find some other way to take my glory from me.”
― M.L. Wang, Blood Over Bright Haven

“It’s not enough to have meant to do good; if you don’t do good, most gods—those of the rivers, the sky, and the fields—don’t care for your motivations. Why should they?”
― M.L. Wang, Blood Over Bright Haven

“With her soul in the spiral on its way to Hell, Sciona’s last thought was not of vengeance or legacy. It was of love.”
― M.L. Wang, Blood Over Bright Haven

“I have to stay here?' In this utterly unacceptable reality where all the good I've ever done - all the good I've ever known - is an evil?”
― M.L. Wang, Blood Over Bright Haven

“I'm the one who saw Truth and didn't look away.”
― M.L. Wang, Blood Over Bright Haven

“Credit was a thing a woman could want out of a sense of justice, which was arguably virtuous. But a woman who wanted glory… that was a woman who had something really wrong with her.”
― M.L. Wang, Blood Over Bright Haven

“This fresh and foreign rage, hurting to the heart, was the sort of feeling that only came from betrayal, and betrayal could only come from trust.”
― M.L. Wang, Blood Over Bright Haven

“For once, the last thing she wanted was to be alone with her knowledge.”
― M.L. Wang, Blood Over Bright Haven