Top 127 Quotes & Sayings by Leigh Bardugo - Page 2

I think - I hope - I became a better writer as I've worked.

In Shadow and Bone,' Alina's race is never specified. But that entire book is basically built on a white default. My life has never been entirely white or entirely straight, so I had to really step back and question why I'd chosen to write my first novel that way.

The two genres that probably take the most flack in literature - they are young adult and romance right now. I don't think it's a coincidence that these are genres that provide places for women to express desire and love for adventure, for the opportunity to be placed to heroic roles.

I like alphas. I like bad boys. I like a guy with a protective streak.

It wasn't until I picked up Neil Gaiman, Diana Wynne Jones and Stephen King that I found there were people who were like me.

The characters in Six of Crows' aren't kings or queens; they don't have grand destinies. They're just six kids desperate enough to attempt the impossible.

'Shadow and Bone' was the first. Siege and Storm' was challenge and surprise. Ruin and Rising' was the opportunity to see a story through to its end.

It's all well and good to turn in a beautiful poetic phrase that ends up on a pillow but I want there to be a visceral response to what I write.

'Shadow and Bone' was my first book, and I think I was unconsciously echoing a lot of the fantasy that I had grown up with, which sets a kind of default for straight white characters. And that's something I've tried to improve on as I write, to write more authentically and reflect the people around me in the world, around me more realistically.

Netflix was like, 'We want all the books!' So, thank you, Eric Heisserer. But I was really nervous at first. It's one thing to hand over the keys to one trilogy, but it's quite another to hand over the keys to 10 years of work.

YA fiction tends to have a finite quality. You're looking toward a goal - prom or graduation or revolution - and we leave these characters after a moment of tremendous transformation.

I write very much from what I want to see, and the hardest projects are projects where you lose track of that.

I cannot shapeshift into an animal. But I can shapeshift into a drunker person.

Books are in a constant battle for attention in a very crowded media scape.

Third books are a scary thing. They come with the weight of so much expectation, and I've been keenly aware of that.

A lot of my favorite books have been adapted horribly.

Publishing and film are such different worlds for writers.

In our lives, we will all have a moment where we have to learn to hustle.

When I was a kid, I was pretty obsessed with 'The Princess and the Pea.' I'm still not sure why. Something about that image of twenty featherbeds and twenty mattresses? It's not a story with a lot of psychological resonance so apparently kid me just wanted a magical trip to Ikea.

I think in YA there's sometimes a temptation to create heroines who are infinitely resilient and wise and confident because those are the behaviors we want to see teens embrace and maybe we want to see those things in ourselves.

I was a huge theater nerd when I was younger, so I was in a bunch of school musicals - Working,' South Pacific,' Fiddler on the Roof,' a very weird little operetta called Charlotte Sweet,' Nine,' The Wiz.'

My great heartbreak was completely botching my callback for Herod in Jesus Christ Superstar' in college.

I was 35 when I started writing Shadow and Bone,' and my only goal was to finish a book because I had never managed to do it.

When I was writing Shadow and Bone,' I really had no confidence as a writer. I had never finished a book before and I desperately wanted to finish a book for the first time.

I think Ruin and Rising' is the best written of the three and the most structurally sound, but each book means something different to me.

Most of the female characters I admire come from science fiction and fantasy, maybe because there's more permission to shake up gender roles in genre.

Fantasy novels give this illusion that the stakes are as high as they feel when you're a teenager. But I think for teenagers they actually are that high. I think you really are dealing in a world of tremendous cruelty and intensity, and YA gives truth to that.

I'm hesitant to ascribe too much to luck because I think women have a bad habit of doing that. At the same time, there's no question that I entered the market at the right moment.

There is this really tight relationship between horror and shame. And shame is in all of my books as the biggest monster. And horror is all about creating a metaphor for something you can't face That connection is super powerful for me.

There were times in the writing of Ninth House' where I thought, have I gone too far?'

YA readers are just not rigid about genre. They're all for the mash-up.

I didn't publish my book until I was 37. So the ability to pay my bills, pay my rent, make a life for myself, and become a working writer was a puzzle that took me a while to solve.

If you were to just slap together Six of Crows' and Shadow and Bone,' it really wouldn't work.

I think being a freelancer really taught me to hustle and gave me respect for anyone who puts it on the line every day for something creative.

Even if you are lucky enough to sell a trilogy, you don't know if you'll ever get to write that whole trilogy. I have many friends who had very long arcs planned in multi-book series that they never got to write because the first book didn't perform.

I was one of those kids who looks really good on paper, I tested very well, I went to a fancy college, won some prizes. When I came out of school, I had many horrible jobs, but I didn't know what the path was to a creative life or the life of a writer.

We aren't always comfortable witnessing real frailty or vulnerability in our heroines, but I like characters who struggle, and doubt, and who don't always do the wise thing.

If you're a particular kind of kid who hasn't found your tribe, which most of us don't until later, that's what books become.

The one part of the Wonder Woman' story that never really did much for me was Steve Trevor.

To me, beauty is a commodity and that's the way it's treated in my books. It has power, and though that power is limited, some characters understand that better than others.

The ox feels the yoke, but does the bird feel the weight of its wings?

There’s no such thing as too much champagne. Though your head will try to tell you otherwise tomorrow.

When people say impossible, they usually mean improbable.

Na razrusha'ya.? I am not ruined. ?E'ya razrushost?. I am ruination.

And there's nothing wrong with being a lizard either. Unless you were born to be a hawk.

Yuyeh sesh. Despise your heart. Ni weh sesh. I have no heart.

What is infinite? The universe and the greed of men.

I wanted to believe anything so that I wouldn’t have to face the future alone. The problem with wanting is that it makes us weak.

Maybe love was superstition, a prayer we said to keep the truth of loneliness at bay. I tilted my head back. The stars looked like they were close together, when really they were millions of miles apart. In the end, maybe love just meant longing for something impossibly bright and forever out of reach.

Grief had its own life, took its own sustenance.

My stories usually begin with the characters and some elements of how power (personal, political, magical) functions in the world. The rest develops as I write, and research helps a great deal with that. If you're going to write about an agrarian economy, research agrarian economies. If your main character is starving, then you should know what it means for a malnourished body to break down.

I like to have powerful enemies. Makes me feel important.

I had spared the stag's life. The power of that life belonged to me as surely as it belonged to the man who had taken it.

Don't wish for bricks when you can build from stone.

I think the first trick to writing a feminist work is to write plenty of women. That way you get to write characters, instead of worrying about paradigms.

Anything worth doing always starts as a bad idea.

Weakness is a guise. Wear it when they need to know you're human, but never when you feel it.

I'm perfectly capable of being stupid on my own.

The less you say, the more weight your words will carry.

Don't argue. Never deign to deny. Meet insults with laughter.