Down Among the Sticks and Bones Quotes

“Some adventures require nothing more than a willing heart and the ability to trip over the cracks in the world.”
― Seanan McGuire, Down Among the Sticks and Bones

“There are worlds built on rainbows and worlds built on rain. There are worlds of pure mathematics, where every number chimes like crystal as it rolls into reality. There are worlds of light and worlds of darkness, worlds of rhyme and worlds of reason, and worlds where the only thing that matters is the goodness in a hero's heart.”
― Seanan McGuire, Down Among the Sticks and Bones

“Every choice feeds every choice that comes after, whether we want those choices or no.”
― Seanan McGuire, Down Among the Sticks and Bones

“She had tried to make sure they knew that there were a hundred, a thousand, a million different ways to be a girl, and that all of them were valid, and that neither of them was doing anything wrong.”
― Seanan McGuire, Down Among the Sticks and Bones

“A single revelation does not change a life. It is a start.”
― Seanan McGuire, Down Among the Sticks and Bones

“Some adventures begin easily. It is not hard, after all, to be sucked up by a tornado or pushed through a particularly porous mirror; there is no skill involved in being swept away by a great wave or pulled down a rabbit hole. Some adventures require nothing more than a willing heart and the ability to trip over the cracks in the world.
Other adventures must be committed to before they have even properly begun. How else will they know the worthy from the unworthy, if they do not require a certain amount of effort on the part of the ones who would undertake them? Some adventures are cruel, because it is the only way they know to be kind.”
― Seanan McGuire, Down Among the Sticks and Bones

“The moon is the friendliest of the celestial bodies, after all, glowing warm and white and welcoming, like a friend who wants only to know that all of us are safe in our narrow worlds, our narrow yards, our narrow, well-considered lives. The moon worries. We may not know how we know that, but we know it all the same: that the moon watches, and the moon worries, and the moon will always love us, no matter what.”
― Seanan McGuire, Down Among the Sticks and Bones

“The Moors exist in eternal twilight, in the pause between the lightning strike and the resurrection. They are a place of endless scientific experimentation, of monstrous beauty, and of terrible consequences.”
― Seanan McGuire, Down Among the Sticks and Bones

“Someone with sharp enough eyes might see the instant where one wounded heart begins to rot while the other starts to heal.”
― Seanan McGuire, Down Among the Sticks and Bones

“Give ten children a toy box, and watch them select ten different toys, regardless of gender or religion or parental expectations. Children have preferences. The danger comes when they, as with any human, are denied those preferences for too long.”
― Seanan McGuire, Down Among the Sticks and Bones

“Time is the alchemy that turns compassion into love...”
― Seanan McGuire, Down Among the Sticks and Bones

“I could give you children,” said Jack, sounding faintly affronted. “You’d have to tell me how many heads you wanted them to have, and what species you’d like them to be, but what’s the point of having all these graveyards if I can’t give you children when you ask for them?”
― Seanan McGuire, Down Among the Sticks and Bones

“This, you see, is the danger of children: they are ambushes, each and every one of them. A person may look at someone else's child and see only the surface, the shiny shoes or the perfect curls. They do not see the tears and the tantrums, the late nights, the sleepless hours, the worry. They do not even really see the love, not really. It can be easy, when looking at children from the outside, the believe that they are things, dolls designed and programmed by their parents to behave in one manner, following one set of rules. It can be easy, when standing on the lofty shores of adulthood, not to remember that every adult was once a child, with ideas and ambitions of their own.

It can be easy, in the end, to forget that children are people, and that people will do what people will do, the consequences be damned.”
― Seanan McGuire, Down Among the Sticks and Bones

“The trouble with denying children the freedom to be themselves—with forcing them into an idea of what they should be, not allowing them to choose their own paths—is that all too often, the one drawing the design knows nothing of the desires of their model.”
― Seanan McGuire, Down Among the Sticks and Bones

“The Moors were beautiful in their own way, and if their beauty was the quiet sort that required time and introspection to be seen, well, there was nothing wrong with that. The best beauty was the sort that took some seeking.”
― Seanan McGuire, Down Among the Sticks and Bones

“How quickly they grow apart, when there is something to be superior about.”
― Seanan McGuire, Down Among the Sticks and Bones

“There are moments that change everything, mired in the mass of more ordinary time like insects caught in amber. Without them, life would be a tame, predictable thing. But with them, ah. With them, life does as it will, like lightning, like the wind that blows across the castle battlements, and none may stop it, and none may tell it “no”.”
― Seanan McGuire, Down Among the Sticks and Bones

“Hope only got you hurt. Hope was her least favourite thing, of all the things.”
― Seanan McGuire, Down Among the Sticks and Bones

“I think the rules were different there. It was all about science, but the science was magical. It didn’t care about whether something could be done. It was about whether it should be done, and the answer was always, always yes.”
― Seanan McGuire, Down Among the Sticks and Bones

“The thought that babies would become children, and children would become people, never occurred to them. The concept that perhaps biology was not destiny, and that not all little girls would be pretty princesses, and not all little boys would be brave soldiers, also never occurred to them. Things might have been easier if those ideas had ever slithered into their heads, unwanted but undeniably important. Alas, their minds were made up, and left no room for such revolutionary opinions.”
― Seanan McGuire, Down Among the Sticks and Bones

“Jacqueline and Jillian, who were crying for some of the many reasons that babies cry—they were cold, they were distressed, they were offended by the existence of gravity—continued to wail.”
― Seanan McGuire, Down Among the Sticks and Bones

“We will leave them there.
There are some things that do not need to be seen to be understood; things that can be encompassed by a single sharp scream, and by a spray of blood painting the heather, red as roses, red as apples, red as the lips of the vampire's only child.
There is nothing here for us now.”
― Seanan McGuire, Down Among the Sticks and Bones

“Just because something was unfamiliar, that didn’t mean it had sharper teeth or crueler claws than the monster they already knew.”
― Seanan McGuire, Down Among the Sticks and Bones

“Cleverness was a boy's attribute, and would only get in the way of sitting quietly and being mindful.”
― Seanan McGuire, Down Among the Sticks and Bones

“I am what I am, and there's much about me that won't be changed with any amount of wishing or wanting. I'm sorry for that. I'd trade a great deal to share an afternoon in the hay with you, dust in the air and sweat on our skins and neither of us caring. But I'm afraid the experience would drive me mad. I am a creature of sterile environments. It's too late for me to change.”
― Seanan McGuire, Down Among the Sticks and Bones

“It can be easy, in the end, to forget that children are people, and that people will do what people will do, the consequences be damned.”
― Seanan McGuire, Down Among the Sticks and Bones

“Louise Wolcott slipped out of her granddaughters’ lives as easily as she had slipped into them, becoming a distant name that sent birthday cards and the occasional gift (most confiscated by her son and daughter-in-law), and was one more piece of final, irrefutable proof that adults, in the end, were not and never to be trusted. There were worse lessons for the girls to learn.”
― Seanan McGuire, Down Among the Sticks and Bones

“The trouble with denying children the freedom to be themselves—with forcing them into an idea of what they should be, not allowing them to choose their own paths—is that all too often, the one drawing the design knows nothing of the desires of their model. Children are not formless clay, to be shaped according to the sculptor’s whim, nor are they blank but identical dolls, waiting to be slipped into the mode that suits them best. Give ten children a toy box, and watch them select ten different toys, regardless of gender or religion or parental expectations. Children have preferences. The danger comes when they, as with any human, are denied those preferences for too long.”
― Seanan McGuire, Down Among the Sticks and Bones

“Hearts that have been stopped without being damaged can sometimes start again, under the right circumstances. When the right circumstances cannot be arranged, lightning can make a surprisingly good substitute.”
― Seanan McGuire, Down Among the Sticks and Bones

“Jacqueline ran like she had been saving all her running for this moment, for this place where no one could see her, or scold her, or tell her that ladies didn't behave that way, sit down, slow down, you'll rip your dress, you'll stain your tights, be good. She was getting grass stains on her knees and mud under her fingernails, and she knew she'd regret both those things later, but in the moment, she didn't care. She was finally running. She was finally free.
Jillian ran more slowly, careful not to trample the flowers, slowing down whenever she felt like it to look around herself in wide-eyed wonder. No one was telling her to go faster, to run harder, to keep her eyes on the ball; no one wanted this to be a competition. For the first time in years, she was running solely for the joy of running, and when she tripped and fell into the flowers, she went down laughing.”
― Seanan McGuire, Down Among the Sticks and Bones