Laini Taylor quotes:

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.

Never sit staring at a blank page or screen. If you find yourself stuck, write. Write about the scene you're trying to write. Writing about is easier than writing, and chances are, it will give you your way in.

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.

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.

Nerves," Mik told Karou."Bad?""Terrible." Stepping up behind Zuzana, he bent down to enfold her in a spoon-hugFerociously, dreadfully awful. She's unbearable. You take her. I've had enough."Zuzana batted at him, then squealed as he buried his face in the curve of her throat and made exaggerated kissing noises."

When I turned to writing fantasy, and writing for young people, it was joyous. It was like discovering an underground lake of ideas that went on forever.

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

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.

Where am I and doing what? You might well ask. Freaky chick, you say? You can't imagine. I am priestess of a sandcastle in a land of dust and starlight.

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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

Anyway, since when are you shy? Just talk to him already!' ' 'And say what? Nice fiddling, handsome man?' 'Absolutely.

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.

I think with world building, it's important to create a sense of culture even if it is just a fantasy, and the best way to do that is to look at a real human culture and see what makes it cohesive.

She stabbed him in the armpit, deep, and he dropped his sword. And died. So that's what is feels like, she thought as her boldness gave away to trembling. It feels awful.

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.

And Esme remembered in a rush--the wolfsong, the haunting, lyrical spirals of it in the dawn quiet and the feeling of euphoria that had attended it. Even in recollection the howling uplifted her like the crescendo at the end of a symphony and made her heartbeat quicken.

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.

Beautiful men and women with distorted shadows came and scorched their handprints onto doors before vanishing skyward, drafts of heat billowing behind them with the whumph of unseen wings. Here and there, feathers fell, and they were like tufts of white fire, disintegrating to ash as soon as they touched the ground.

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.

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

War does that, nothing for it. Reality lays siege. Your framed portrait of life is smashed, and a new one thrust upon you. It's ugly, and you don't even want to look at it let alone hang it on the wall, but you have no choice, once you know. Once you really know.

So, he called to her back, Just out of curiosity, you know, purely conversation and all, at what age will you be entertaining offers of marriage?You think it'll be so easy? she called back over her shoulder. No way. There will be tasks. Like in a fairy tale.Sounds dangerous.Very, so think twice.No need, he said. You're worth it.

In one of his darker moments, the irony started him laughing and he couldn't stop, and the sounds that came from him, before finally tapering into sobs, were so far from mirth they might have been the forced inversion of laughter-like a soul pulled inside out to reveal its rawest meats.

Te has preguntado alguna vez si son los monstruos los que provocan la guerra, o si es la guerra la que genera monstruos

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...

So, you wouldn't marry me." "Ridiculous question. I'm eighteen!" "Oh, it's an age thing?" He frowned. "You don't mean wild oats, do you? We're not going to have some stupid break so you can experience other---" Zuzana put a hand over his mouth. "Gross. Don't even say it.

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

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 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.

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.

Happiness wasn't a mystical place to be reached or won--some bright terrain beyond the boundary of misery, a paradise waiting for them to find it--but something to carry doggedly with you through everything, as humble and ordinary as your gear and supplies.

Karou saw them with her human eyes, this army she had rendered more monstrous than ever nature had, and she knew what the world would see in them if they flew to fight the Dominion: demons, nightmares, evil. The sight of the seraphim would be heralded as a miracle. But chimaera? The apocalypse.

These soldiers had done what they had done, and been done unto in return. This was how it went.In the cycle of slaughter, reprisal begat reprisal, forever.

She moved like a poem and smiled like a sphinx.

Your soul sings to mine. My soul is yours, and it always will be, in any world.

Happiness wasn't a mystical place to be reached or won-some bright terrain beyond the boundary of misery, a paradise waiting for them to find it-but something to carry doggedly through everything.

She may have been the one whose name meant music, but his sounded like it. Saying it made her want to sing it, to lean out a window and call him home. To whisper it in the dark.

There was only present, and it was infinite. The past and the future were just blinders we wore so that infinity wouldn't drive us mad.

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.

I am a link in a chain

to stay true in the face of evil is a feat of strength

..and when he let her go, it was as if she had been filled and didn't realize it until he pulled away and the absence rushed back in.

There was darkness, and monsters vast as worlds swam in it.

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

Some kinds of misery make you hate the world, but some kinds make you hate yourself, and--butter and cheese not withstanding--Neve had no question that Spear was the latter.

It was interesting the way a small hate could grow inside a big hate and take it over.

I'm afraid they're in love," he said, concerned. "They don't want to leave you." He lifted one hand from her waist to gently brush a pair from her neck, where their wings fanned against her jaw. Melancholy, he said, "I know just how they feel.

What can a soldier do when mercy is treason, and he is alone in it?

Yearning for love made her feel like a cat that was always twining around ankles, meowing Pet me, pet me, look at me, love me.

It was brave," countered Issa. "It was rare. It was love, and it was beautiful.

Love is a luxury.""No. Love is an element."An element. Like air to breathe, earth to stand on.

As long as you're alive, there's always a chance things will get better.

I feel liquefied, like a cucumber forgotten in the crisper drawer, and I want to hold myself at arm's length and carry me to the trash. Who is this sack of slush masquerading as me? It's intolerable.

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

Once upon a time, there were two moons, who were sisters. Nitid was the goddess of tears and life, and the sky was hers. No one worshipped Ellai but secret lovers.

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.

Boredom is a terrible affliction of the soulless.

Stop squandering yourself, child. Wait for love.

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.

Once upon a time, an angel and a devil held a wishbone between them. And its snap split the world in two.

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.

I've always been a reader and a writer.

...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.

...I crave a shawl." He was tense with anger but his hands remained gentle at her waist. He said, "I can make you a shawl." She cocked her head. "You knit? Well. That's an unusual accomplishment in a soldier.

...magic was uglyâ??-a hard bargain with the universe, a calculus of pain.

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

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

...they cupped their wings around their happiness and called it a world, though they both knew it was not a world, only a hiding place, which is a very different thing.

...wingsâ??-vast shimmering wings, their reach so great they swept the walls on either side of the alley, each feather like the wind-tugged lick of a candle flame.

A dream dirty and bruised is better than no dream at all.

A man once said, 'All you need in this life is ignorance and confidence; then success is sure.' Mark Twain, you know. He had a fine mustache. Men of wisdom so often do.

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

A wave of weariness took him. How could life be so unrelentingly ugly?

Alas. I am not an option.

All right," sighed Madrigal. "To the baths, then. To make ourselves shiningly clean." Like vegetable, she thought, before they go in the stew.

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.

And I've found that since you can't electrify yourself like a fence, the next best thing is to have murderer's eyes.

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

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.

Around Mik, my powers desert me. I lose basic motor function, like my brain focuses all neural activity on my lips and shifts into kiss preparedness mode way too early, to the detriment of things like speech, and walking.

As for Ellai, she told her sister what had passed, and Nitid wept, and her tears fell to earth and became chimaera, children of regret...

As long as he had life, who deserved it so little, he would use it, wield it, and do whatever he could in its name, even if it was not, was never, enough

As long as you're alive, there's always a chance things will get better." "Or worse," said Liraz. "Yes," he conceded. "Usually worse." Hazael cut in. "My sister, Sunshine, and my brother, Light. You two should rally the ranks. You'll have us killing ourselves by morning.

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.

Because hope comes from in you, and wishes are just magic.

Being near her was like balancing on a tipping world, trying to keep your footing as the ground wanted to roll you forward, hurl you into a spiral from which there was no recovery, only impact, and it was a longed-for impact, a sweet and beckoning collision.

Better to be the cat gazing coolly down from a high wall, its expression inscrutable. The cat that shunned petting, that needed no one. Why couldn't she be that cat?

Bitter, bitter, this desolation of angels.

Brimstone once told me that to stay true in the face of evil is a feat of strength.

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.

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?

But her name was Esmé. She was a girl with long, long, red, red hair. Her mother braided it. The flower shop boy stood behind her and held it in his hand. Her mother cut it off and hung it from a chandelier. She was Queen. Mazishta. Her hair was black and her handmaidens dressed it with pearls and silver pins. Her flesh was golden like the desert. Her flesh was pale like cream. Her eyes were blue. Brown.

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.

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

Creamy and leggy, with long azure hair and the eyes of a silent-movie star, she moved like a poem and smiled like a sphinx.

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

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.

Dead souls dream only of death. Small dreams for small men. It is life that expands to fill worlds. Life is your master, or death is

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.

Did you know that mako shark fetuses eat each other in the womb?... Its true. Only cannibal fetuses survive to be born. Can you imagine if people were like that?

Don't I deserve to finally be free of you?

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.

For the way loneliness is worse when you return to it after a reprieveâ??like the soulâ??s version of putting on a wet bathing suit, clammy and miserable.

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

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

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.

He actually listened, rather than pretending to listen while waiting a suitable interval before it was his time to talk again...