Leigh Bardugo Quotes

I've always known that whatever marriage I made would be political. It would be about power, not love. But we might get lucky. In time, we might have both.''Or the third amplifier will turn me into a power-mad dictator and you'll have to kill me.''Yes, that would make for an awkward honeymoon.

~ Leigh Bardugo

He doesn’t need a donkey,” says Ana Kuya. “He has a wife.

~ Leigh Bardugo

I opened my mouth, but the same words came to me again and again.I will not scream. I will not scream. I will not scream.

~ Leigh Bardugo

If you don't care about money, Nina dear, call it by its other names.Kruge? Scrub? Kaz's one true love?Freedom, security, retribution.

~ Leigh Bardugo

He looked down at his boots. That berth belongs to you too. It will always be there when―if you want to come back.Inej could not speak. Her heart felt too full, a dry creek bed ill-prepared for such rain. I don't know what to say.

~ Leigh Bardugo

Her heart felt too full, a dry creek bed ill-prepared for such rain.

~ Leigh Bardugo

Where are you going? she called after me, her voice mocking. What's waiting for you out there? Nothing! I shouted at her. No one!

~ Leigh Bardugo

I thought the love I'd had for him belonged to the past, to the foolish, lonely girl I never wanted to be again. I'd tried to bury that girl and the love she'd felt, just as I'd tried to bury my power. But I wouldn't make that mistake again.

~ Leigh Bardugo

Van Eck raised a brow. How old are you, girl? Sixteen? Seventeen? Nations rise and fall. Markets are made and unmade. When power shifts, someone always suffers.

~ Leigh Bardugo

Human courage was different from Amazon bravery. She saw that now. For all the suspicion and derision she'd heard from her mother and her sisters about the mortal world, Diana couldn't help but admire the people with whom she traveled. Their lives were violent, precarious, fragile, but they fought for them anyway, and held to the hope that their brief stay on this earth might count for something. That faith was worth preserving.

~ Leigh Bardugo

I was just a girl again, but this girl didn’t owe her strength to fate or chance or a grand destiny. I’d been born with my power; the rest I’d earned.

~ Leigh Bardugo

Nina, you taught me to be something better. They could be taught, too.

~ Leigh Bardugo

You see, some people are born with a piece of night inside, and that hollow place can never be filled - not with all the good food or sunshine in the world. That emptiness cannot be banished, and so some days we wake with the feeling of the wind blowing through, and we must simply endure it as the boy did.

~ Leigh Bardugo

But when someone does wrong, when we make mistakes, we don’t say we’re sorry. We promise to make amends.”“I will.”“Mati en sheva yelu. This action will have no echo. It means we won’t repeat the same mistakes, that we won’t continue to do harm.

~ Leigh Bardugo

You don't ask for forgiveness, Kaz. You earn it.

~ Leigh Bardugo

The ox feels the yoke, but does the bird feel the weight of its wings?

~ Leigh Bardugo

When had she stopped being a child? The first time a guy had whistled at her out of a car window when she was walking to school? The moment she started wondering how she looked when she ran, what jiggled or bounced, instead of the pace she was setting? The first time she’d kept from raising her hand because she didn’t want to seem too smart or too eager?

~ Leigh Bardugo

I think we often hold heroines to an absurd standard. Be brave! Be wise! Always know what's in your heart and speak the truth of it! No and no and no. We fight to be brave. We learn to be wise. We struggle to know ourselves and voice what we want.

~ Leigh Bardugo

Despise your heart. I wanted to. I didn't want to grieve anymore, to feel loss or guilt, or worry. I wanted to be hard, calculating. I wanted to be fearless.

~ Leigh Bardugo

I’d learned to avoid mirrors. They never seemed to show me what I wanted to see.

~ Leigh Bardugo

I think the hard work of writing is just how long a book is terrible before it's good.

~ Leigh Bardugo

Because I am a doll, and a servant. Because I am a pretty thing and a soldier all the same.

~ Leigh Bardugo

Of course I'm jealous. I thought I was going to get to punch him. That isn't the point.

~ Leigh Bardugo

She’d shown him in a thousand ways that she was honorable and strong and generous and very human, maybe even more vividly human than anyone he’d ever known. And if she was, then Grisha weren’t inherently evil. They were like anyone else—full of the potential to do great good, and also great harm. To ignore that would make Matthias the monster.

~ Leigh Bardugo

They fear as I once feared you,” he said. “As you once feared me. We are all someone’s monster, Nina

~ Leigh Bardugo

David looked at me, then, the regret plain on his face. No matter what I said, we both knew the hard truth. We do our best. We try. And usually, it makes no difference at all

~ Leigh Bardugo

I will tell you a story, one I used to tell to a little boy with dark hair. A silent boy who rarely laughs, who listened more closely than I realized. A boy who had a name and not a title

~ Leigh Bardugo

The person she liked best didn't like her enough to want more of her, and she didn't want to pretend that wasn't awful.

~ Leigh Bardugo

She'd hurt him, but she'd attempted everything in her power to make things right. She'd shown him in a thousand ways that she was honorable and strong and generous and very human, maybe even more vividly human than anyone he'd ever known.

~ Leigh Bardugo

She knew she should say something profound, something beautiful in response. Instead, she spoke the truth. If we make it out of here alive, I'm going to kiss you unconscious.

~ Leigh Bardugo

She rested her head on his shoulder. You're better than waffles, Matthias Helvar. A small smile curled the Fjerdan's lips. Let's not say things we don't mean, my love.

~ Leigh Bardugo

Sometimes, the only way to get justice is to take it for yourself.

~ Leigh Bardugo

I tilted my head back, breathing deeply. It was a clear, moonless night, and after those long months underground, the sight of all that sky was dizzying. And so many stars—a glittering, tangled mass that seemed close enough to touch. I let their light fall over me like a balm, grateful for the air in my lungs, the night all around me.

~ Leigh Bardugo

Survival wasn't nearly as hard as he'd thought once he left decency behind.

~ Leigh Bardugo

Mal was quiet for a long moment. Then he said, “I’m not sure who my first kill was. We were hunting the stag when we ran into a Fjerdan patrol on the northern border. I don’t think the fight lasted more than a few minutes, but I killed three men. They were doing a job, same as I was, trying to get through one day to the next, then they were bleeding in the snow. No way to tell who was the first to fall, and I’m not sure it matters. You keep them at a distance. The faces start to blur.”“Really?”“No.

~ Leigh Bardugo

i prefer to think of the good times. Like when you held my hair as I was vomiting into a bucket.

~ Leigh Bardugo

Abruptly, Adrik snarled, 'I'm glad Sergei's dead. I'm just sorry I didn't get to wring his neck myself.''You'd need two hands for that,' said

~ Leigh Bardugo

Kaz had always kept himself at a remove from everyone. They’d wanted camaraderie, friendship, but he had never agreed to play their game, only his own.

~ Leigh Bardugo

A wise warrior learns from her mistakes.

~ Leigh Bardugo

The names they gave were false ones, though the vows they made were true.

~ Leigh Bardugo