“I love bookshelves, and stacks of books, spines, typography, and the feel of pages between my fingertips. I love bookmarks, and old bindings, and stars in margins next to beautiful passages. I love exuberant underlinings that recall to me a swoon of language-love from a long-ago reading, something I hoped to remember. I love book plates, and inscriptions in gifts from loved ones, I love author signatures, and I love books sitting around reminding me of them, being present in my life, being. I love books. Not just for what they contain. I love them as objects too, as ever-present reminders of what they contain, and because they are beautiful. They are one of my favorite things in life, really at the tiptop of the list, easily my favorite inanimate things in existence, and ... I am just not cottoning on to this idea of making them ... not exist anymore. Making them cease to take up space in the world, in my life? No, please do not take away the physical reality of my books.”
Laini Taylor“His shadow splayed out huge before him, and his mind gleamed with ancient wars and winged beings, a mountain of melted demon bones and the city on the far side of it--a city that had vanished in the mists of time.”
Laini Taylor, Strange the Dreamer“He read while he walked. He read while he ate. The other librarians suspected he somehow read while he slept, or perhaps didn't sleep at all.”
Laini Taylor, Strange the Dreamer“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.”
Laini Taylor, Daughter of Smoke & Bone“You really think joy is easier to come by than pain? What have you had more of?”
Laini Taylor, Daughter of Smoke & Bone“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.”
Laini Taylor, Daughter of Smoke & Bone“It was the only lullaby she would ever sing, and it was sung in Hell.”
Laini Taylor, Lips Touch: Three Times“There was darkness, and monsters vast as worlds swam in it.”
Laini Taylor, Dreams of Gods & Monsters“When they had hurried to the train station with their violin cases, they had drawn almost as many stares as they would on any normal day when their hair was to their knees and sheeting behind them like red silk. A poetic fruit-seller had told them once that they looked like dryads, and they did still, only now they looked like dryads who had tired of snagging their hair on brambles and sliced it all off on the edge of a knife.”
Laini Taylor, Lips Touch: Three Times“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.”
Laini Taylor, Lips Touch: Three Times“His lips made a grim twist that was like the joyless cousin of a smile.”
Laini Taylor