Sabaa Tahir Quotes

So you've made a few bad decisions. So have I. So has Elias. So has everyone attempting to do something difficult. That doesn't mean that you give up, you fool. Do you understand?
Sabaa Tahir
Children are born to break their mothers’ hearts, my boy.
Sabaa Tahir
You—you were like me. You were a child. A normal child. And that was taken from you.”“Does that bother you?”“Well, it certainly makes you harder to hate.
Sabaa Tahir
She's still clinging to the side of her mountain, just like I'm still wandering lost in my battlefield.
Sabaa Tahir
We match each other stroke for stroke until I get a hit on her right arm. She tries to switch sword arms, but I jab my scim at her wrist faster than she can parry. Her scim goes flying, and I tackle her. Her white-blonde hair tumbles free of her bun.“Surrender!” I pin her down at the wrists, but she trashes and rips one arm free, scrabbling for a dagger at her waist. Steel stabs at my ribs, and seconds later, I am on my back with a blade at my throat.“Ha!” She leans down, her hair falling around us like a shimmering silver curtain.
Sabaa Tahir
Are the Trials starting?” The girl claps her hands over her mouth. “I'm sorry,” she whispers. “I—”“It's all right.” I don't smile at her. It will only scare her. For a female slave, a smile from a Mask is not usually a good thing. “I'm actually wondering the same thing. What's your name?”“S-slave-Girl.” Of course. My mother would already have scourged her name out of existence.“Right. You work for the Commandant?” I want her to say no. I want her to say that my mother roped her into this. I want her to say she's assigned to the kitchens or infirmary, where slaves aren't scarred or missing body p
Sabaa Tahir
The rest is just wishes and hope, the most fragile of things.
Sabaa Tahir
Disappear! I scream the word in my mind, queen of the desolate landscape therein, ordering her ragged troops to a last stand.
Sabaa Tahir
There are two kinds of guilt: the kind that drowns you until you’re useless, and the kind that fires your soul to purpose.
Sabaa Tahir
Elias and Laia are each other’s countermelodies. I am just a dissonant note.
Sabaa Tahir
Fight back, Laia. For Darin. For Izzi. For every Scholar this beast has abused. Fight. A scream bursts from me, and I claw at Marcus’s face, but a punch to my stomach takes the wind out of my lungs. I double over, retching, and his knee comer up into my forehead. The hallway spins, and I drop to my knees. Then I hear him laughting, a sadistic chuckle that stokes my defiance.Sluggishly, I throw myself at his legs. It won’t be like before, like during the raid when I let that Mask drag me about my own house like some dead thing.This time, I’ll fight. Tooth and nail, I’ll fight.
Sabaa Tahir
I don't smile at her. It will only scare her. For a female slave, a smile from a Mask is not usually a good thing.
Sabaa Tahir
Failure doesn't define you. It's what you do after the failure that determines whether you are a leader or a waste of perfectly good air.
Sabaa Tahir
You’re sure this is what you want?” I search her eyes for doubt, fear, uncertainty, but all I see is that fire. Ten hells“I’m sure”“Then I’ll find a way
Sabaa Tahir
Don't lock yourself away from those who care about you because you think you'll hurt them or they'll hurt you. What point is there in being human if you don't let yourself feel anything?
Sabaa Tahir
Rage colors her every movement. Rage that has nothing to do with her so-called bodyguards and everything to do with me and her and the confusion rolling around inside the both of us. This should be interesting
Sabaa Tahir
The voice is deep and soft, not a sound so much as a feeling. It is storm and wind and leaves twisting in the night. It is roots sucking deep at the earth, and the pale, sightless creatures that live below the ground. But there’s something wrong with this voice, something diseased at its core.
Sabaa Tahir