Laini taylor quotes

What are we fighting for? What are we killing for? What do you see when you look into the future?

We dreamed together of the world remade.

I started blogging in 2006 when I had sold my first novel but it had not yet been published, in those anxious months in between while I learned the whole process.

And yet, something tied them together, strong than any of that, something with the power to conduct her blood and breath like a symphony, so that anything she did to fight against it felt like discord, like disharmony with her self.

Oh, gross. Your stomach is full of butterfly barf!

Head held high, she stepped toward the block and sank to her knees, and it was then that Akiva started to scream. His voice soared over the pandemonium - a scream to scour the souls of all gathered, a sound to drive ghosts from their nests.

...and she felt the words come from some iron place within her that hadn't existed an hour ago. She didn't speak loudly, but there was such a change in her voice. Coming from that iron place, it was heavy and true; it wasn't persuasive, or desperate, or antagonistic. It just was.

Icon of Prague, the medieval bridge crossed the Vltava between Old Town and the Little Quarter. Gothic bridge towers rose on both sides, and the whole span — pedestrian-only — was lined by monumental statues of saints.

Hey! My body may be small, but my soul is large. It’s why I wear platforms. So I can reach the top of my soul.

Your heart is not wrong. Your heart is your strength. You don't have to be ashamed.

It's not like there's a law against flying." "Yes there is. The law of gravity.

She moved like a poem and smiled like a sphinx.

It is a condition of monsters that they do not perceive themselves as such. The dragon, you know, hunkered in the village devouring maidens, heard the townsfolk cry 'Monster!' and looked behind him.

...something was starting to take shape, out of magic and will. Smoke and bone.

I was going to say the beginning is the good part, when it's all sparks and sparkles, before they are inevitably unmasked as assholes.

An idea fell like a seed and over the next weeks it went on growing like a fig vine lush and conquering twining round her old beliefs and covering them in new growth until they were as invisible as a tiger in a thicket and just as deadly.

"Death," said Akiva. His life was leaving him fast now that he no longer held his wound. His eyes just wanted to drift closed. "I'm ready." "Well, I'm not. I hear it's dull, being dead." She said it lightly, amused, and he peered up at her. Had she just made a joke? She smiled. Smiled. He did, too. Amazed, he felt it happening, as if her smile had triggered a reflex in him. "Dull sounds nice," he said, letting his eyes flutter closed. "Maybe I can catch up on my reading."

Be an unstoppable force. Write with an imaginary machete strapped to your thigh. This is not wishy-washy, polite, drinking-tea-with-your-pinkie-sticking-out stuff. It’s who you want to be, your most powerful self. Write your books. Finish them, then make them better. Find the way. No one will make this dream come true for you but you.

A bruxis. That was the one wish more powerful than a gavriel, and its trade value was singular: The only way to purchase one was with one’s own teeth. All of them, self-extracted.

War is all we've been taught, but there are other ways to live. We can find them, Akiva. We can invent them. This is the beginning, here." She touched his chest and felt a rush of love for the heart that moved his blood, for his smooth skin and his scars and his unsoldierly tenderness. She took his hand and pressed it to her breast and said, "We are the beginning.

... and holy hell the chocolate is so intense and pure it should be named an element and given a spot on the periodic table. It would be Ch, which isn't even taken.

I've always imagined that one day the path of your life would unroll at your feet and carry you away from us. As it should, as it must. But I am glad that day is not today.

Music. Close your eyes and it's a rosebush blooming in time lapse so that it shoots and blossoms flow outward in a swift choreography of growth and collapse, twine and coil, release and fade. Close your eyes and music paints light vines and calligraphy on the darkness within you.

Yeah? Okay," she said, staring up into the stars. "Let's see. You know how, at the end of Romeo and Juliet, Juliet wakes up in the crypt and Romeo's already dead? He thought she was dead so he killed himself right next to her?" "Yeah. That was awesome." A pause, followed by "Ow," suggested elbow punctuation on the part of Mik. Karou ignored it. "Well, imagine if she woke up and he was still alive, but..." She swallowed, waiting out a tremor in her voice. "But he had killed her whole family. And burned her city. And killed and enslaved her people.

The thing is, you throw brains and souls into an animal and stir, you don’t really know what you’re going to get.

Skip meeting him? The butterflies, the pounding heart, the blushing? The part where you enter each other's magnetic fields for the first time, and it's like invisble lines of energy are drawing you together-

This is the story of the curse and the kiss, the demon and the girl. It's a love story with dancing and death in it, and singing and souls and shadows reeled out on kite strings.

Kizzy wanted it all so bad her soul leaned half out of her body hungering after it, and that was what drove the goblins wild, her soul hanging out there like an untucked shirt.

We only get to be one person; we don't even get to choose that person. By the time we get ahold of ourselves, we are pieces already in play.

But Hazael only said, "I brought you a present." Liraz took the flower, looked at it, and then a Hazael, expressionless. And then she ate it. She chewed the flower and swallowed it. "Hmm," said Hazael. "Not the usual response." "Oh, do you give flowers often?" "Yes," he said. He probably did. Hazael had a way of enjoying life in spite of the many restrictions they lived under, being soldiers, and worse, being Misbegotten. "I hope it wasn't poisonous," he said lightly. Liraz just shrugged. "There are worse ways to die.

...the air seeming to gather around her like held breath. As if this whole place were a story about her.

It was Kizzy's first kiss and maybe it was her last and it was delicious.

Stop squandering yourself, child. Wait for love.

If it's not chocolate, it's not breakfast.

You could look out the window today, see the sky raining fire, and say that it has all been for nothing, everything we've ever done, because now we've lost. But folk were born and lived and knew friendship and music in this city, ugly as it is, and all across this land that we fought for. Some grew old, and others were less lucky. Many bore children and raised them, and had the pleasure of making them, too, and we gave them that for as long as we could. Who has ever done more, my friend?

When you are young, hone your craft and write shorter pieces instead of novels, because it's really hard to finish a novel.

Daughter of my heart,' was the message Brimstone sent just for Karou. She wanted to cry again right here in the court, thinking of it. 'Twice-daughter, my joy. Your dream is my dream, and your name is true. You are all of our hope.

That faeries have forgotten the Tapestry; that is the greatest tragedy of all. It's the fabric of all creation and it's woven of dreams, the dreams of the Djinn. Dreams are real, Magpie. They're seed and water and sun. They're everything.

Have you ever asked yourself,do monsters make war, or does war make monsters? I've seen things, angel. There are guerrilla armies that make little boys kill thier own families. Such acts rip out the soul and make space for beasts to grow inside. Armies need beasts, don't they? Pet beasts, to do their terrible work! And the worst part is, it's almost impossible to retrieve a soul that has been ripped away. Almost." He gave Akiva a keen look."But it can be done, if ever...if ever you decide to go looking for yours."___Izil

What a lovely display of personhood. He's like a good book cover that grabs your gaze. Read me. I'm fun but smart. You won't be able to put me down.

She had been innocent once, a little girl playing with feathers on the floor of a devil's lair. She wasn't innocent now, but she didn't know what to do about it. This was her life: magic and shame and secrets and teeth and a deep, nagging hollow at the center of herself where something was most certainly missing.

Once upon a time, a girl lived in a sandcastle, making monsters to send through a hole in the sky.

It's like all my life I've been this tower standing at the edge of the ocean for some obscure purpose, and only now, almost eighteen years in, has someone thought to flip the switch that reveals that I'm not a tower at all. I'm a lighthouse. It's like waking up. I am incandescent.

I know it's not easy for you, living this life, but try to remember, always try to remember, you're not the only one with troubles.

Dialogue is the place that books are most alive and forge the most direct connection with readers. It is also where we as writers discover our characters and allow them to become real.

The audacity to love. Do you know what a gift that is?

Happiness. It was the place where passion, with all its dazzle and drumbeat, met something softer: homecoming and safety and pure sunbeam comfort. It was all those things, intertwined with the heat and the thrill, and it was as bright within her as a swallowed star.

And there's no better way to thaw a face, as it turns out, than with another face.

But he is pretty. God, I hope he's not an asshole. Do you think there's any chance he's both non-orifice and single? I mean, seriously. What are the chances?

She had a sadness that was so deep, but it still could turn to light in a second, and when I saw her smile I wondered what it would be like to make her smile. I thought... I thought it would be like the discovery of smiling.

Boredom is a terrible affliction of the soulless.

Creatures with no dreams of their own can do naught but destroy the dreams of others.

Once upon a time, an angel and a devil fell in love. It did not end well.

You were true to her, even if she was not to you. Never repent of your own goodness, child. To stay true in the face of evil is a feat of great strength.” “Strength,” she said with a little laugh. “I gave her strength, and look what she did with it.

A pause came between them, and it was so full of Akiva that Karou imagined she could smell him.

Have you ever asked yourself, do monsters make war, or does war make monsters?

It's easy to get published once you have written a really good book and the hard part, 99 percent of what you need to worry about, is really finishing it.

Are you saying you don't love me?" Hazael asked Liraz. "Because I love you. I think." He paused in contemplation. "Oh. No. Never mind. That's fear.

If only it were that easy to let go of hate. Just relax your face.

I've always been a reader and a writer.

Light coursed through Karou and darkness chased it-burning through her, chilling her, shimmer and shadow, ice and fire, blood and starlight, rushing, roaring, filling her.

In all that was to happen, there would be that feeling of inevitability and rightness, and the sense that the universe was conspiring in it. It would be easy.

Stars got tangled in her hair whenever she played in the sky.

The two of them were stoic and stone-faced and ten feet apart, currently not even looking at each other, but Zuzana had the impression of a pair of magnets pretending not to be magnets. Which, you know, only works until it doesn't.

Ziri's soul felt like the high roaming wind of the Adelphas Mountains and the beat of stormhunters' wings, like the beautiful, mournful, eternal song of the wind flutes that had filled their caves with music he could not possibly remember. It felt like home.

The biggest challenge for me has been in coping with my perfectionism. I have a stiflingly hard time moving forward in a project if it's not 'just right' all along the way. The trap I so easily fall into is rewriting and rewriting the same scenes over and over to make them perfect, instead of continuing on into the wild unknown of the story.

Like a magpie, I am a scavenger of shiny things: fairy tales, dead languages, weird folk beliefs, fascinating religions, and more.

Hazael rose from his knees. It had to take extraordinary effort, yet somehow he managed a version of his lazy smile when he said, "You know, I've always wanted to be a bath attendant. You should take me instead. I'm nicer than my sister." Jael returned the lazy smile. "You're not my type." "Well, you're not anybody's type," said Hazael. "No, wait. I take it back. My sword says she'd like to know you better." "I'm afraid I must deny her the pleasure. I've been kissed by swords before, you see." "I may have noticed.

Once upon a time, an angel lay dying in the mist. And a devil knelt over him and smiled.

Jael returned the lazy smile. "You're not my type." "Well, you're not anybody's type," said Hazael. "No, wait. I take it back. My sword says she'd like to know you better.

Magic won't save us. The power it would take to conjure on such a scale, the tithe would destroy us. The only hope...is hope. You don't need tokens for it - it's in your heart or nowhere. And in your heart, child, it had been stronger than I have ever seen.

Which is what one always hopes will happen: for life to take over and be bigger and more marvelous than what we can dream up on our own. Life doesn’t need magic to be magical. (But a little bit sure doesn't hurt.)

She knocked and waited, because when the door was opened from within, it had the potential to lead someplace quite different.

Kissing can ruin lives. Lips touch sometimes teeth clash. New hunger is born with a throb and caution falls away. A cursed girl with lips still moist from her first kiss might feel suddenly wild like a little monsoon. She might forget her curse just long enough to get careless and let it come true. She might kill everyone she loves.

A thousand things might have stopped me from being here right now, but instead, a thousand things brought me here.

Cesky Krumlov, the little jewel box of a city in southern Bohemia.

It’s not stalking if you don't follow them home, right?

Her courage was a guise. She wondered if courage always was, or if there were those who truly felt no fear.

Wishes are false. Hope is true. Hope makes its own magic.

It's all a quilt of fairy tales with a patch here and there of truth.

I don't know many rules to live by,' he'd said. 'But here's one. It's simple. Don't put anything unnecessary into yourself. No poisons or chemicals, no fumes or smoke or alcohol, no sharp objects, no inessential needles--drug or tattoo--and...no inessential penises either.' 'Inessential penises?' Karou had repeated, delighted with the phrase in spite of her grief. 'Is there any such thing as an essential one?' 'When an essential one comes along, you'll know,' he'd replied.

She craved a presence beside her, solid. Fingertips light at the nape of her neck and a voice meeting hers in the dark. Someone who would wait with an umbrella to walk her home in the rain, and smile like sunshine when he saw her coming. Who would dance with her on her balcony, keep his promises and know her secrets, and make a tiny world wherever he was, with just her and his arms and his whisper and her trust.

I might try that one thing, you know, that thing people do when their eyes get all wet and stupid—what’s it called? Crying? Or NOT. I might PUNCH you instead and trust that you won’t punch me back because of my endearing smallness. It would be like punching a child.

Is it good or bad?" she asked Issa. The wrong question, she knew. She just couldn't help herself. "It's both, sweet girl," said Issa. "like everything.

I am one of billions. I am stardust gathered fleetingly into form. I will be ungathered. The stardust will go on to be other things someday and I will be free.

The main thing I've learned is that we all have to learn to work with - and appreciate - the brain we've been given, and not waste time wishing things were easier.

It didn't escape Karou's notice that he found subtle ways of touching her.

Everything lined up. It has been easy, as if it were meant-" "Meant!" she said, amazed. She spun to face him, which, in the crush, brought her against his chest as if they were still dancing. She fought backward for space. As if what were meant?" "You," he said. "And me.

Peace is more than the absence of war. Peace is accord. Harmony.

The sooner you learn to finish things, and as a matter of course finish your creative endeavors, the better. It took me a long time to learn that.

She had said she didn't feel fear, but it was a lie; this was her fear: being left alone. Because of one thing she was certain, and it was that she could never love, not like that. Trust a stranger with her flesh? The closeness, the quiet. She couldn't imagine it. Breathing someone else's breath as they breathed yours, touching someone, opening for them? The vulnerability of it made her flush. It would mean submission, letting down her guard, and she wouldn't. Ever. Just the thought made her feel small and weak as a child.

Just then, lit only by the flicker of his wings,the sight of him was so..right somehow. He was right. It made no sense at all, but the feeling flooded through Karou

Like mold on books, grow myths on history.

Alas. I am not an option.

You have only to begin, Lir. Mercy breeds mercy as slaughter breeds slaughter. We can’t expect the world to be better than we make it.

During my second draft pass on my last book I made 20,000 words happen in a week, which is practically supernatural for me, and it would never have been possible without three nights in a hotel in my own city.

The goblins want girls who dream so hard about being pretty their yearning leaves a palpable trail, a scent goblins can follow like sharks on a soft bloom of blood. The girls with hungry eyes who pray each night to wake up as someone else. Urgent, unkissed, wishful girls. Like Kizzy.

You just mingled saliva with the most beautiful boy ever to tread the hallways of Saint Pock's. Saliva. There's DNA in saliva. You're like carrying his cells in your mouth like one of those weird frogs that incubates its eggs in its cheeks

Once upon a time, the sky knew the weight of angel armies on the move, and the wind blew infernal with the fire of their wings.

With the infinite patience of one who has learned to live broken, he awaited her return.

I will give them nightmares to haunt their dreams long after I'm gone.

It was funny, she thought, but her smile turned wistful because she had nobody to tell.

Your soul sings to mine. My soul is yours, and it always will be, in any world. No matter what happens. I need you to remember that I love you.

Heavily and hypnotically,with her soul flattening itself back like the ears of a hissing cat,Kizzy leaned in and drank of Jack Husk's full,moist mouth,and his red,red lips were hungry against hers,drinking her in return.Their eyes closed.Fingers clutched at collars and hair,at the picnic blanket,at the grass.And as they sank down,pinning their shadows beneath them,the horizon tipped on its side,and slowly,thickly,hour by hour,the day spilled out and ebbed away. It was Kizzy's first kiss, and maybe it was her last, and it was delicious.

I love bookshelves, and stacks of books, spines, typography, and the feel of pages between my fingertips. I love bookmarks, and old bindings, and stars in margins next to beautiful passages. I love exuberant underlinings that recall to me a swoon of language-love from a long-ago reading, something I hoped to remember. I love book plates, and inscriptions in gifts from loved ones, I love author signatures, and I love books sitting around reminding me of them, being present in my life, being. I love books.

James often wondered at the chain of flukes it must have taken to bring him through with his own life and limbs intact. Once he might have believed it to be the work of Providence but it seemed to him now that to thank God for his life would be to suggest God had shrugged off all the others flicked them away like cigarette butts by the thousands and that seemed like abominable conceit. James Dorsey took no credit for being alive. His higher power these days was Chance.

Love affair. Doesn't that sound so middle-aged? And also ill-fated. Like ill-fated is an understood prefix to love affair. Well, ill-fated is fine, as long as it's a meaty and fraught ill-fated love affair, not a pale and insipid one.

It was a bold, wild life for a faerie - most never even left their forests - but she was a bold, wild lass, and so were her daughter and granddaughter after her, and their place in the world was everywhere and nowhere, like gypsies on wing. No home had they but their caravans and campfires, and no family but the one they'd cobbled together of crows, creatures and kindred souls they'd met on their endless journey round and round the world.

Hope can be a powerful force. Maybe there's no actual magic in it, but when you know what you hope for most and hold it like a light within you, you can make things happen, almost like magic.

Be your own place of safety, she told herself, straightening. No crossbar in the world could protect her from what lay ahead, and neither could a tiny knife ticked in her boot - though there her tiny knife would most certainly remain - and neither could a man, not even Akiva. She had to be her own strength, complete unto herself.

I know. Life is so unfair. I'm still not going to pee on Karou's ex-boyfriend for you." "What? I wasn't even going to ask you to." In her most reasonable tone, Zuzana explained explained, "I just want you to pee in a balloon so I can drop it on him.

Mercy, she had discovered, made mad alchemy: a drop of it could dilute a lake of hate.

It’s like losing gravity and falling into space – the moment of pitching headlong when the endlessness of space asserts itself and there is no more down, only an eternity of up, and you realize you can fall forever and never run out of stars.

And just so you know, the invaders are always the bad guys. Always.

Nothing made you feel so useless as another person's grief.

There’s a long pause. But it’s not a bad pause, because Mik is looking at me like I’m the treasure from the high shelf that someone’s just taken down and put into his hands. I find I don’t mind being looked at like this. I don’t mind it at all.

There is the past, and there is the future. The present is never more than the single second dividing one from the other. We live poised on that second as it's hurtling forward-toward what?

Bitter, bitter, this desolation of angels.

Cats and ghosts both partook of the saucers of milk and that was okay. They consumed different parts of it: the cats its substance, the ghosts its essence, and none went to waste.

Staring at her face, she began to fancy her outer layer had begun to melt away while she wasn't paying attention, and something -- some new skeleton -- was emerging from beneath the softness of her accustomed self. With a deep, visceral ache, she wished her true form might prove to be a sleek and shining one, like a stiletto blade slicing free of an ungainly sheath. Like a bird of prey losing its hatchling fluff to hunt in cold, magnificent skies. That she might become something glittering, something startling, something dangerous.

There are boys you look at and want to touch with your mouth, and there are boys you look at and want to wear one of those surgical masks everyone in China had during bird flu. There are a lot more bird-flu boys at large.

I'm going to be the scariest grandma in the world.

She tastes like nectar and salt. Nectar and salt and apples. Pollen and stars and hinges. She tastes like fairy tales. Swan maiden at midnight. Cream on the tip of a fox’s tongue. She tastes like hope.

She tasted of fairytales

For the way loneliness is worse when you return to it after a reprieve—like the soul’s version of putting on a wet bathing suit, clammy and miserable.