Laini Taylor Quotations

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.

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.

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.

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.

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 main thing I've learned is that we all have to learn to work with - and appreciate - the brain we've been given, and not waste time wishing things were easier.

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.

I've always been a reader and a writer.

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

I started blogging in 2006 when I had sold my first novel but it had not yet been published, in those anxious months in between while I learned the whole process.

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.

Hey! My body may be small, but my soul is large. It’s why I wear platforms. So I can reach the top of my soul.

It was a bold, wild life for a faerie - most never even left their forests - but she was a bold, wild lass, and so were her daughter and granddaughter after her, and their place in the world was everywhere and nowhere, like gypsies on wing. No home had they but their caravans and campfires, and no family but the one they'd cobbled together of crows, creatures and kindred souls they'd met on their endless journey round and round the world.

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.

The thing he wished for most was a thing he had never wished for at all, not until he had discovered her. And it came true that night, and many nights after. A brief and shining span of happiness, it was the pivot point around which his whole life spun.

Some would assert that Providence was at work shaking out its pockets in Humanity's lap. Other would argue for that mindless choreographer, Chance. Either way it was a simple thing: a lost diary fell into the hands of a soul-sick war hero on a train from Bombay to Jaipur just when he'd grown tired of the scenery and needed something to keep his thoughts from the minefield of his wretched thoughts. In such mild ways is the groundwork laid for first kisses and ruined lives.

Once upon a time, a little girl was raised by monsters. But angels burned the doorways to their world, and she was all alone.

I want to touch with my mouth. His mouth, with my mouth. Maybe his neck, too. But first things first: Make him aware I exist. It’s possible that he is already aware, if only in a ‘don't step on the small girl’ kind of way.

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?

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.

... 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.

Like mold on books, grow myths on history.

Skip meeting him? The butterflies, the pounding heart, the blushing? The part where you enter each other's magnetic fields for the first time, and it's like invisble lines of energy are drawing you together-

It's not like there's a law against flying." "Yes there is. The law of gravity.

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?

No, tiny violent one.

She had fallen in love with him twice. She loved him now with both loves, so overpowering it was almost unbearable.

Was there any fate more bitter than to get what you long for most, when it's too late?

Then there were things-- epic, terrible things-- that he didn't tell her but skirted around, like caressing the edges of a wound, hesitant, testing for pain.

This gown, is it cut from shadow?" the general asked. "I can barely feel it between my fingers." Not for want of trying, thought Madrigal. "Perhaps it is a reflection of the night sky," he suggested, "skimmed from a pond?" She supposed that he was being poetic. erotic, even. In return, as unerotically as possible- more like complaining of a stain that wouldn't come out-she said, "Yes, my lord. I went for a dip, and the reflection clung.

It seemed she was in a cathedral—if, that is, the earth itself were to dream a cathedral into being over thousands of years of water weeping through stone.

It was as if she had emitted a pulse of radiation that reached him even where he stood, and it bathed him and it burned him.

So violent. You want to mug and tase everybody these days." "I do," Zuzana agreed. "I swear I hate more poeple every day. Everyone annoys me. If I'm like this now, what am I going to be like when I'm old?" "You'll be the mean old biddy who fires a BB gun at kids from her balcony." "Nah. BBs just rile 'em up. More like a crossbow. Or a bazooka.

A pause came between them, and it was so full of Akiva that Karou imagined she could smell him.

Alas. I am not an option.

She had been innocent once, a little girl playing with feathers on the floor of a devil's lair. She wasn't innocent now, but she didn't know what to do about it. This was her life: magic and shame and secrets and teeth and a deep, nagging hollow at the center of herself where something was most certainly missing.

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?

The thing is, you throw brains and souls into an animal and stir, you don’t really know what you’re going to get.

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.

Kizzy wanted it all so bad her soul leaned half out of her body hungering after it, and that was what drove the goblins wild, her soul hanging out there like an untucked shirt.

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

Staring at her face, she began to fancy her outer layer had begun to melt away while she wasn't paying attention, and something -- some new skeleton -- was emerging from beneath the softness of her accustomed self. With a deep, visceral ache, she wished her true form might prove to be a sleek and shining one, like a stiletto blade slicing free of an ungainly sheath. Like a bird of prey losing its hatchling fluff to hunt in cold, magnificent skies. That she might become something glittering, something startling, something dangerous.

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.

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

I've always imagined that one day the path of your life would unroll at your feet and carry you away from us. As it should, as it must. But I am glad that day is not today.

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...

Heavily and hypnotically,with her soul flattening itself back like the ears of a hissing cat,Kizzy leaned in and drank of Jack Husk's full,moist mouth,and his red,red lips were hungry against hers,drinking her in return.Their eyes closed.Fingers clutched at collars and hair,at the picnic blanket,at the grass.And as they sank down,pinning their shadows beneath them,the horizon tipped on its side,and slowly,thickly,hour by hour,the day spilled out and ebbed away. It was Kizzy's first kiss, and maybe it was her last, and it was delicious.

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

I miss sunrise even more. The green scent of dawn in the forest? The color blushing back into the world, different every day.

We are the beginning ... We always have been. This time, let it be more than a beginning.

I don't know many rules to live by,' he'd said. 'But here's one. It's simple. Don't put anything unnecessary into yourself. No poisons or chemicals, no fumes or smoke or alcohol, no sharp objects, no inessential needles--drug or tattoo--and...no inessential penises either.' 'Inessential penises?' Karou had repeated, delighted with the phrase in spite of her grief. 'Is there any such thing as an essential one?' 'When an essential one comes along, you'll know,' he'd replied.

How could you tell if your instincts were just hope in disguise, and if your hope was really desperation parading as possibility?

Stop squandering yourself, child. Wait for love.

Boredom is a terrible affliction of the soulless.

Once upon a time, an angel lay dying in the mist. And a devil knelt over him and smiled.

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

The choice I mean is to protect our own innocents from the seraphim, instead of slaughtering theirs." "There are no innocent seraphim, said the wolf." "That's what they say when they kill our children.

Madrigal sniffed herself. "I'm almost sure I don't smell." "Maybe not, but between shining cleanliness and not smelling, there is a vast gray area.

Zuzana arched an eyebrow. She was a master of the eyebrow arch, and Karou envied her for it. Her own eyebrows did not function independently of each other, which handicapped her expressions of suspicion and disdain.

She could smell the boy spice beneath the thrift-store aroma of his jacket, and the rubbing and the smell began to work to soften her -- like butter before you add sugar, in the first steps of making something sweet. It was her first experience of how bodies could meld together, how breath could slip naturally into rhythm. It was hypnotic. Heady. And she wanted more.

This is the story of the curse and the kiss, the demon and the girl. It's a love story with dancing and death in it, and singing and souls and shadows reeled out on kite strings.

Humanity, perhaps, that quality of benevolence that humans have, without irony, named after themselves.

Take up a weapon and you become an instrument with as pure a purpose as the weapon itself: to find arteries and open them, limbs and sever them; to take what is alive and deliver it unto death.

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

...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.

That is your legend?" Akiva asked, incredulous. Madrigal had told him the story of the sun and Ellai while they flew. "That seraphim are the blood of a rapist sun?

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

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

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.

You have only to begin, Lir. Mercy breeds mercy as slaughter breeds slaughter. We can’t expect the world to be better than we make it.

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.

Soon, everything else would come rushing at him. Like the ground to a falling man, it would come rushing up and hit him all at once - the place, the company, her words; one implication would lead to another and shatter him - but around that intake of breath the world hung silent and bright, so bright, and Akiva only knew this one thing, and held on to it and wanted to live inside of it and stay there forever. Karou was alive.

Perhaps Fate laid out your life for you like a dress on a bed, and you could either wear it or go naked.

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.

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

I am one of billions. I am stardust gathered fleetingly into form. I will be ungathered. The stardust will go on to be other things someday and I will be free.

He wanted to tell her that everything he had done he had done because he was broken, because watching her die had destroyed him, but there was no way to say it that didn’t sound like he was trying to pin the blame outside himself

She was a girl and she was a queen and back in the mists she was a woman who had seized the moon from the sky and drunk its light so that she would never die. And she never had.

Is that all souls are for? For when we die?" "No. They're for living, too.

When a street musician lowered his violin to inquire, 'Hey lovely, what you got there?' she said, 'Musicians who ask questions,' and kept on dragging.

Rapture cults had packed their suitcases and were massing together in great vigils, waiting for the end. "All bogus," she'd told Zuzana. "Just a bunch of crackpots waiting for the Apocalypse." "Because, fun, right?" Zuzana rubbed her hands together in mock glee. "Oh, boy. The Apocalypse!" "Right? I know. How much does your life have to suck to want the Apocalypse?

It was sadness, lostness, and the worst thing about it was the way it seemed like a default—like it was there all the time, and all her other expressions were just an array of masks she used to cover it up.

My tiny scary friend is coming

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.

Yeah? Okay," she said, staring up into the stars. "Let's see. You know how, at the end of Romeo and Juliet, Juliet wakes up in the crypt and Romeo's already dead? He thought she was dead so he killed himself right next to her?" "Yeah. That was awesome." A pause, followed by "Ow," suggested elbow punctuation on the part of Mik. Karou ignored it. "Well, imagine if she woke up and he was still alive, but..." She swallowed, waiting out a tremor in her voice. "But he had killed her whole family. And burned her city. And killed and enslaved her people.

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

You were true to her, even if she was not to you. Never repent of your own goodness, child. To stay true in the face of evil is a feat of great strength.” “Strength,” she said with a little laugh. “I gave her strength, and look what she did with it.

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...

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

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

...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.

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

How much does your life have to suck to want the Apocalypse?

In all that was to happen, there would be that feeling of inevitability and rightness, and the sense that the universe was conspiring in it. It would be easy.

I want.." she said, knowing what she wanted, feeling pulled toward it, arching toward it, but hardly knowing how to say it.

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.

Just then, lit only by the flicker of his wings,the sight of him was so..right somehow. He was right. It made no sense at all, but the feeling flooded through Karou

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.

We only get to be one person; we don't even get to choose that person. By the time we get ahold of ourselves, we are pieces already in play.

With the infinite patience of one who has learned to live broken, he awaited her return.