I’ve always been a fan of dystopian novels, but this summer I fell down a rabbit hole of the most popular young adult and fantasy novels in the past decade, and I have no regrets. My TikTok feed is made up of purely book recommendations and fandom jokes! So, in honor of my newfound love of all things Sarah J. Maas and Leigh Bardugo, here are some of my favorite quotes!
Spoiler warning!!
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Siege and Storm by Leigh Bardugo
– Shadow and Bone trilogy
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“So many men had tried to make her a queen. Now she understood that she was meant for something more. The Darkling had told her he was destined to rule. He had claimed his throne, and a part of her too. He was welcome to it. For the living and the dead, she would make herself a reckoning. She would rise.”
- The Cruel Prince by Holly Black – The Folk of the Air trilogy
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“‘I am going to keep on defying you. I am going to shame you with my defiance. You remind me that I am a mere mortal and you are a prince of Faerie. Well, let me remind you that means you have much to lose and I have nothing. You may win in the end, you may ensorcell me and hurt me and humiliate me, but I will make sure you lose everything I can take from you on the way down. I promise you this’—I throw his own words back at him—‘this is the least of what I can do.’”
- Queen of Shadows by Sarah J. Maas – Throne of Glass series
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“‘What if we go on,’ he said, ‘only to more pain and despair? What if we go on, only to find a horrible end waiting for us?’ Aelin looked northward, as if she could see all the way to Terrasen. ‘Then it is not the end.’”
- Queen of Nothing by Holly Black – The Folk of the Air trilogy
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“‘It’s you I love,’ he says. ‘I spent much of my lifeguarding my heart. I guarded it so well that I could behave as though I didn’t have one at all. Even now, it is a shabby, worm-eaten, and scabrous thing. But it is yours.’ He walks to the door of the royal chambers, as though to end the conversation. ‘You probably guessed as much,’ he says. ‘But just in case you didn’t.’”
- Shadow and Bone by Leigh Bardugo – Shadow and Bone trilogy
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“‘Fine,’ he said with a weary shrug. ‘Make me your villain.’”
Bonus: “You might make me a better man.” “And you might make me a monster.”
- Red Queen by Victoria Aveyard – Red Queen series
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“The truth is what I make it. I could set this world on fire and call it rain.”
- Red Queen by Victoria Aveyard – Red Queen series
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“In school, we learned about the world before ours, about the angels and gods that lived in the sky, ruling the earth with kind and loving hands. Some say those are just stories, but I don’t believe that. The gods rule us still. They have come down from the stars. And they are no longer kind.”
- Heir of Fire by Sarah J. Maas – Throne of Glass series
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“She was Aelin Ashryver Galathynius—and she would not be afraid.”
- Six of Crows by Leigh Bardugo – Six of Crows duology
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“I have been made to protect you. Only in death will I be kept from this oath.”
- A Court of Mist and Fury by Sarah J. Maas – A Court of Thorns and Roses series
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“And so Tamlin unwittingly led the High Lady of the Night Court into the heart of his territory.”