Quotes by Leigh Bardugo

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

“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!”

“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 po...”

“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.”

“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.”

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

“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 sa...”

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

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

“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.”

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

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

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

“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 inhe...”

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

“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”

“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”

“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 v...”

“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.”

“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.”