Seanan McGuire Quotes

“My name is Lord of the Forest,” said the stag.
Regan nodded. Every stag she’d ever met had been named Lord of the Forest, even when there was another stag only a few feet away. Deer didn’t understand irony.

If your friends would stop wanting you around because you’re not exactly like them, they’re not very good friends.

Quests were a lot like dogs, Cora thought. They were much more attractive when seen from a distance, and not barking in the middle of the night or pooping all over the house. She had been there for every terrible, wearying, bone-breaking moment of this quest, and it held no magic for her. She knew it too well.

Mysteries in books were the best kind. The real world was absolutely full of boring mysteries, questions that never got answered and lost things that never got found. That wasn’t allowed, in books. In books, mysteries were always interesting and exciting, packed with daring and danger, and in the end, the good guys found the clues and the bad guys got their comeuppance. Best of all, nothing was ever lost forever. If something mattered enough for the author to write it down, it would come back before the last page was turned. It would always come back.

Then Angela turned on Kade, and said, “I meant what I said. It’s sick, how you pretend like you’re something you’re not.”
“I was about to say the same thing to you,” said Christopher. “I mean, you always did a pretty good job of pretending to be a decent human being. You had me fooled.”

Hope hurts. That's what you need to learn, and fast, if you don't want it to cut you open from the inside out. Hope is bad. Hope means you keep on holding to things that won't ever be so again, and so you bleed an inch at a time until there's nothing left. Ely-Eleanor is always saying 'don't use this word' and 'don't use that word,' but she never bans the ones that are really bad. She never bans hope.

There would be time to grab something from the dining hall before she had to go to English class. The thought of having to analyze the poetry of Emily Dickinson without calories was enough to make her want to cry. Why adults constantly wanted to know what centuries-old poems meant was beyond her. Shouldn’t someone have found the right answer by now? Or at least an answer good enough to accept?

Of course this was all real. She had had her share of wild and beautiful dreams, but never anything like this. And if she hadn’t dreamed it, it had to be real, and if it was real, of course they were still there. Real places didn’t go away just because you’d had a nap.

Back where I come from, mothers and fathers live together most of the time. Unless they're divorced."
"What's 'divorced' mean?"
"It means they were married and now they're not anymore, so their kids get double Christmas.

Cora was very good at ignoring people who told her to do foolish things.

Her accusations had been met with reality, and they didn’t have anyplace else to go.

I’d banter, but I haven’t the time, and you haven’t the wit to keep up.

That’s the trouble with gods. They don’t care much how poorly they treat their toys.

Destiny wasn’t real. Destiny was for people like Laurel, who could pin everything they had to an idea that the world was supposed to work in a certain way, and refuse to let it change.

"I don't believe in destiny."
"Destiny believes in you." The fawn took a breath. "I really am sorry we had to hit you."
"I'm sorry too," said Regan.
"You understand this was for your own good."
"I understand you think this was for my own good."