Top 100 Samantha Shannon Quotes
#1. What I like about Oxford is how small it is; it's really more of a big town than a city.
Samantha Shannon
#3. You saved me, Nick. Sooner or later I would have lost my mind. I had to know, or I would have always felt like an outsider. You made me feel like I was part of something, part of a lot of things actually. I'll never be able to repay you for that.
Samantha Shannon
#4. You told me once that freedom was my right." I held his gaze. "Maybe you should do something with it.
Samantha Shannon
#5. I brought you back because I could not find the strength to fight her without you but for that same reason I will do everything in my power to see you safely to the Citadel
Samantha Shannon
#6. Don't you dare," he said. "Don't you dare let her see it. You are more than that. You are more than what she wants to do to you.
Samantha Shannon
#7. I'm not going to give it the big 'I am' now that I'm a New York Times bestseller.
Samantha Shannon
#8. Isn't it wonderful, how words and paper can embroil us so? We are witnessing a miracle, dear heart.
Samantha Shannon
#9. You cannot kill death. What fire can scald the sun? Who can drown the ocean?
Samantha Shannon
#11. But one day, you will be faced with a choice, as we all are. One day you will have to choose between your own desires, your own darkest impulses, and what you know to be right . . . and it will harden you. You will understand that all of us are devils in the skins of men.
Samantha Shannon
#13. Then there was that awful slogan: no safer place. More like no safe place. Not for us.
Samantha Shannon
#14. I always felt that sci-fi and fantasy were my thing. Bit of a geek, I'm afraid. But I like creating worlds, and I felt it was a genre that gave me more freedom. It just seemed like I belonged there.
Samantha Shannon
#15. I was mostly an indoor girl at university. Where other students did drama or music or sport alongside their degrees, I wrote. I used to work on essays and classwork during the day and 'The Bone Season' in the evenings.
Samantha Shannon
#17. I do not pity you. But I do know what it feels like. To be wanted only for what you are.
Samantha Shannon
#18. I often look at places and kind of mentally convert them to fantasy versions of themselves.
Samantha Shannon
#20. I do." He was clearly amused by my disdain. "We have only been speaking for two minutes, Paige. Try not to waste all your sarcasm in one breath."
I wanted to kill him. As it happened, I couldn't.
Samantha Shannon
#23. You seem to attract injuries in the manner that a flower attracts bees.
Samantha Shannon
#24. With the right reasons, at the right moment, even the most beaten and broken of people could rise up and reclaim themselves.
Samantha Shannon
#25. I imagined, too. And so imagination became my nemesis; my mind created monsters out of nothing.
Samantha Shannon
#26. 'The Bone Season' is violent. There's sex. My little brother keeps asking to read it, and he's 9, so I'm like, 'No, it's not happening.'
Samantha Shannon
#28. I have always been driven; I've always wanted to be published, and I wanted to make that happen, so I worked very hard. 'Perfectionist' would be a word to describe me.
Samantha Shannon
#29. London had so much death in its history, it was hard to find a spot without spirits. They formed a safety net. Still, you had to hope the ones you got were good.
Samantha Shannon
#30. You have risen from the ashes before. The only way to survive, " he said, "is to believe you always will.
Samantha Shannon
#31. She was adamant that any organisation that labelled one group of people as evil would eventually do the same to others. That to treat any one person as less than human was to cheapen the very substance of humanity.' Sorrow
Samantha Shannon
#32. They'd branded me like some kind of animal.
Lower than an animal.
A number.
Samantha Shannon
#33. I had lived in that part of London that used to be called Islington since I was eight. I attended a private school for girls, leaving at sixteen to work. That was in the year 2056. AS 127, if you use the Scion calendar.
Samantha Shannon
#34. I was not a rebellious teenager. I was a sit-in-your-room teenager.
Samantha Shannon
#35. He wouldn't have understood if I'd told him why I spend my time with criminals.
He didn't know that I belonged with them. More than I belonged with him.
Samantha Shannon
#36. I've never had a supernatural experience. I've been tempted to maybe have a tarot-card reading, but I don't know if I'd necessarily want to know.
Samantha Shannon
#37. No, Paige. I am trying to help you."
"Go to hell."
"I already exist on a level of hell."
"Exist on one that isn't near mine.
Samantha Shannon
#38. I was born in 1991, and 'Harry Potter' came out in '97, so, you know, I was really obsessed. I used to read them in one night.
Samantha Shannon
#39. I do take this insane pleasure in world-building. I get the world in my head, but I have to make sure everyone else gets it.
Samantha Shannon
#40. All will go to plan, Paige. You should not give up hope." He looked at the stage. "Hope is the one thing that might still save us all." I followed his gaze. The bell jar and the lifeless flowers stood on a covered plinth. "Hope for what?" "Change.
Samantha Shannon
#41. There was no normal. There never had been. "Normal" and "natural" were the biggest lies we'd ever created.
Samantha Shannon
#42. Permission to disregard your orders, Underqueen."
"Permission not granted. Permission categorically denied.
Samantha Shannon
#43. I don't know. I just want you with me.' I had never said those words aloud. Now that I could taste my freedom I wanted him to share it with me. But he couldn't change his life for me. And I couldn't sacrifice my life to be with him.
Samantha Shannon
#44. I worry that people think you have to go to a university to be a good writer, which is categorically untrue. I don't think I learned how to write at Oxford. I did not go to any creative writing classes or anything.
Samantha Shannon
#45. His thumbs ran over my cheeks. Our foreheads touched. My dreamscape scorched. He set fire to the poppies
Samantha Shannon
#46. J. K. Rowling is one of my favourite authors, and I really admire how she created this big wizarding world. But I think our books are very, very different, and I don't think there can be a next J. K. Rowling. She is one of a kind.
Samantha Shannon
#47. I fell even more deeply in love with Tolkien's legendarium after studying Old English literature at uni, as I got a sense of the historical events and cultures that Tolkien used to create his world. My favourite of his imaginary locations is Lothlorien.
Samantha Shannon
#48. I wanted to write a sci-fi story that would appeal to young women. Loads of girls like sci-fi, but it's more culturally associated with guys.
Samantha Shannon
#49. I brought you back," he said, "because I could not find the strength to fight her without you.
Samantha Shannon
#50. War has often been called a game, with good reason. Both have combatants. Both have sides. Both carry the risk of losing.
Samantha Shannon
#51. Words are everything. Words give wings even to those who have been stamped upon, broken beyond all hope of repair.
Samantha Shannon
#52. She'd known I was coming, known what I was after, and she'd only started to speak English after seeing me. She was one of them. The scarred ones.
Samantha Shannon
#53. My father thought I would lead a simple life; that I was bright but unambitious, complacant with whatever work life threw at me.
My father, as usual, was wrong.
Samantha Shannon
#54. Paige, you will have two tasks tonight,' he said, turning to face me. 'Both will test the limits of your sanity. Will you believe me if I tell you that they will help you?'
'Not likely,' I said 'but let's get on with it.
Samantha Shannon
#56. You may not believe it, but it is what I desire the most in the world. This place has afflicted me with a terrible wanderlust. I long for the fire, for the sights you have seen. Yet here I am, two hundred years after I arrived. Still a prisoner, though I masquerade as a king.
Samantha Shannon
#58. I was a hacker of sorts. Not a mind 'reader,' exactly; more a mind 'radar,' in tune with the workings of the aether. I could sense the nuances of dreamscapes and rogue spirits. Things outside myself. Things the average voyant wouldn't feel.
Samantha Shannon
#59. Every revolution begins with breakfast,' I quoted as they left. 'Is this your revolution, Jaxon?
Samantha Shannon
#60. My silver cord - the link between my body and my spirit - was extremely sensitive. It was what allowed me to sense dreamscapes at a distance. It could also snap me back into my skin.
Samantha Shannon
#61. We like to think we're brave, but in the end, we're only human.
Samantha Shannon
#63. We sat with our arms around each other, holding too tightly and not tightly enough.
Samantha Shannon
#64. I do not know what I can do for this world but I will not let any harm come to you
Samantha Shannon
#66. I was not really aware of the dystopian genre before I read 'The Handmaid's Tale.' Many poets as well, like John Donne and Emily Dickinson, would be the influences; I specialized in Emily Dickinson at university. Both of those poets have really interesting ways of looking at life and death.
Samantha Shannon
#67. I couldn't stop. I'd never felt anything like this in my life- this rising in my chest, this need to touch.
Samantha Shannon
#69. Our lifelines will meet only when the aether sees fit. That may not be often. It can never to always.
Samantha Shannon
#71. But Warden cared if I laughed. He cared if I lived or died. He had seen me as I was, not as the world saw me. And that meant something. It had to. Didn't it?
Samantha Shannon
#72. People question what I thought of Oxford. Students used to talk about the 'Oxford bubble' because the place can make you feel cut off from the rest of the world. I would forget there were places like London that were not centred round libraries and essays.
Samantha Shannon
#73. We canna grieve for those who've gone. Not before we've fought to change the world that took them.
Samantha Shannon
#74. What I will tell you is that you cannot force yourself to mourn. Sometimes, the best way to honour the dead is to simply keep living.
Samantha Shannon
#75. She was adamant that any organization that labelled one group of people as evil would eventually do the same to others. That to treat any one person as less than human was to cheapen the very substance of humanity.
Samantha Shannon
#76. This was what my spirit longed to do, to wander in strange lands. It couldn't stand being trapped in one body all the time. It had wanderlust.
Samantha Shannon
#77. If I never returned-if you never see me again-it will mean that everything is alright. That I have ended her. But if I return, it will mean I have failed. That there is still danger. And then I will find you
Samantha Shannon
#78. But if there was a heaven this is what it would have felt like. Touching the aether with my bare hands I could never have anticipated this, not from him
Samantha Shannon
#79. I was always more interested in my books and my writing than going out. It's OK to say I'm a nerd. That's me.
Samantha Shannon
#80. Knowledge is dangerous. Once you know something, you can't get rid of it. You have to carry it. Always.
Samantha Shannon
#81. I have studied many books on human history, and if there is one thing I have learned from them, it is that it is not always possible to find reason in tradition. It is the same for Rephaim.
Samantha Shannon
#83. My English teachers gave me a copy of Atwood's 'The Handmaid's Tale' when I left high school, which has always been very special to me - it was the novel that introduced me to dystopian fiction. I'm also influenced by Edgar Allan Poe, Dickens, John Wyndham and Middle English dream-visions.
Samantha Shannon
#84. I am never not thinking about stories. 'The Bone Season' is 90% of my brain - 10% is interacting with the rest of the world.
Samantha Shannon
#85. Rowling is a luminous storyteller. I love her sense of humor and the intricate wizarding world she built around Hogwarts. I think all writers aspire to be like her, to capture readers like she does. But I didn't think about 'Harry Potter' when I wrote 'The Bone Season.'
Samantha Shannon
#86. I would never see him again.
But as I watched the tunnel race before my eyes, I was certain of one thing: I did trust him.
Now I had only to trust in myself.
Samantha Shannon
#87. Whenever anyone calls me 'The new J..K. Rowling,' I think, 'What's wrong with the old one?'
Samantha Shannon
#88. Hope is the lifeblood of revolution. Without it, we are nothing but ash, waiting for the wind to take us.
Samantha Shannon
#89. Because I don't know whether honesty is better than happiness. Do we sacrifice honesty in order to be happy?
Samantha Shannon
#90. I am sure you know what an angel is: a soul that returns to this plane to protect the person they died to save,
Samantha Shannon
#91. I know what I want to achieve in each book and the major points, but I don't plan right down to the chapters. I think that the characters write themselves in some degree.
Samantha Shannon
#93. We call these decadal harvests Bone Seasons. This is Bone Season XX.
Samantha Shannon
#94. Writing didn't carry the same risks as speaking. You couldn't be shouted down or stared at. The page was both a proxy and a shield.
Samantha Shannon
#96. I looked at him and he looked at me. A moment. A choice. My choice. His choice.
Samantha Shannon
#97. Change a word or two, even a single letter, and you change the entire story.
Samantha Shannon
#98. His touch had felt strange. Warmer. It was only when I saw his hands that I realized.
He wasn't wearing gloves.
Samantha Shannon
#99. I've been writing since I was about thirteen but didn't start a book until 2007. I spent four years writing a sci-fi novel before I wrote 'The Bone Season' at nineteen.
Samantha Shannon
#100. It is a strange world, Oxford - quite claustrophobic. I was often glad I was only there for eight weeks at a time.
Samantha Shannon
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