ReRead–Favorite Quotes: Shadow and Bone (Grisha #1) by Leigh Bardugo

“I hope you don’t expect fairness from me, Alina. It isn’t one of my specialties.”

“I’ve been waiting for you a long time, Alina,” he said. “You and I are going to change the world.”

“Alina, if I tell you that I still believe we can find the stag, would you think I’m mad?” “Why would you care what I think?” He looked genuinely baffled. “I don’t know,” he said. “But I do.” And then he kissed me.

The moment his lips met mine, the connection between us opened and I felt his power flood through me. I could feel how much he wanted me—but behind that desire, I could feel something else, something that felt like anger. I drew back, startled. “You don’t want to be doing this.” “This is the only thing I want to be doing,” he growled, and I could hear the bitterness and desire all tangled up in his voice. “And you hate that,” I said with a sudden flash of comprehension. He sighed and leaned against me, brushing my hair back from my neck. “Maybe I do,” he murmured, his lips grazing my ear, my throat, my collarbone.

“The problem with wanting,” he whispered, his mouth trailing along my jaw until it hovered over my lips, “is that it makes us weak.”

He slumped back in his chair. “Fine,” he said with a weary shrug. “Make me your villain.”

Then the smile disappeared, replaced by something I didn’t recognize, something that looked almost like longing. “Mercy.” He said the word as if he were tasting something unfamiliar. “I could be merciful.” He raised his other hand to cup my face and kissed me softly, gently, and though everything in me rebelled, I let him. I hated him. I feared him. But still I felt the strange tug of his power, and I couldn’t stop the hungry response of my own treacherous heart.

This is the truth of him, I thought as I squinted in the dazzling light. Like calls to like. This was his soul made flesh, the truth of him laid bare in the blazing sun, shorn of mystery and shadow.

The grounding principle of the Small Science was “like calls to like,” but then it got complicated. Odinakovost was the “thisness” of a thing that made it the same as everything else. Etovost was the “thatness” of a thing that made it different from everything else. Odinakovost connected Grisha to the world, but it was etovost that gave them an affinity for something like air, or blood, or in my case, light.

the word the philosophers used to describe people born without Grisha gifts, otkazat’sya, “the abandoned.” It was another word for orphan.

“Why can a Grisha possess but one amplifier? I will answer this question instead: What is infinite? The universe and the greed of men.”

What else do you have to do with your days? Make maps? Fetch inks for some old cartographer?” “There’s nothing wrong with being a mapmaker.” “Of course not. And there’s nothing wrong with being a lizard either. Unless you were born to be a hawk.

Do you ask your heart to beat or your lungs to breathe? Your power serves you because that is its purpose, because it cannot help but serve you.

“Not good enough!” “I’m doing my best,” I muttered in exasperation. “Pah!” she spat. “Do you think the world cares if you do your best? Do it again and do it right.”

Labels: quotes, reread