Amélie Wen Zhao > Quotes

“But perhaps all monsters were heroes in their own eyes.”
― Amélie Wen Zhao, Blood Heir

“You can achieve everything in this world, but if it’s for someone else, it’s pointless. Live for yourself.”
― Amélie Wen Zhao, Blood Heir

“In the face of fear, one could choose to run, or to rise.”
― Amélie Wen Zhao, Blood Heir

“I never meant to hurt anyone.

Perhaps monsters never meant to hurt others, either. Perhaps monsters didn't even know they were monsters.”
― Amélie Wen Zhao, Blood Heir

“I suppose we are all heroes in our own eyes, and monsters in the eyes of those who are different.”
― Amélie Wen Zhao, Blood Heir

“Choices were for those with privilege and power. When you had none, all you could do was survive.”
― Amélie Wen Zhao, Blood Heir

“Only loss can teach us the true worth of things.” Linn’s clothes rustled as she knelt before Ana and grasped her hands. “There is nothing we can do but go on, one day at a time. We live in their memory, taking the breaths they cannot draw again, catching the warmth of the sunlight that they were meant to feel.”
― Amélie Wen Zhao, Blood Heir

“This world was neither just nor kind nor good, and you chose to keep fighting or to surrender.”
― Amélie Wen Zhao, Blood Heir

“But, in this world, life is a masquerade. Everyone wears masks.”
― Amélie Wen Zhao, Blood Heir

“Grief is for the survivors, and I think that, rather than living my life in pain, I would live it in laughter and love. To the fullest.”
― Amélie Wen Zhao, Song of Silver, Flame Like Night

“This isn’t one of the fairy-tale stories you read in your childhood, where the hero always wins in the end. You’ll have many battles to fight, and you won’t win them all. And at the end of every single day, you’ll always face the same choice: keep fighting, or give up.”
― Amélie Wen Zhao, Blood Heir

“You focused on the battle and lost sight of the war.”
― Amélie Wen Zhao, Blood Heir

“When you walk into a room, you have the grace and gravitas of an empress, and I swear, even the Deities must pause to look at you.”
― Amélie Wen Zhao, Blood Heir

“Is that hood always part of your outfit?”
“Is ignorance always part of your outfit?”
― Amélie Wen Zhao, Blood Heir

“We are but dust and stars.”
― Amélie Wen Zhao, Blood Heir

“If I am not the hunter, then I become the hunted.”
― Amélie Wen Zhao, Blood Heir

“What use are tears? Ying had murmured to her once, back when they had just crossed their twelfth cycle of life and the wounds of Lan’s losses still cut deep every night. The dead will neither feel them nor be called by them. Grief is for the survivors, and I think that, rather than living my life in pain, I would
live it in laughter and love. To the fullest.”
― Amélie Wen Zhao, Song of Silver, Flame Like Night

“Was there a word to describe grief so deep that it cleaved you apart, carved a hole inside of you and left you hollow?”
― Amélie Wen Zhao, Blood Heir

“There is good and bad in everything, Ana. And it is the good of this world that makes it worth saving.”
― Amélie Wen Zhao, Blood Heir

“Power is always borrowed, never created.”
― Amélie Wen Zhao, Song of Silver, Flame Like Night

“And in every iteration of my imagination, Sòng Lián, I am with you.”
― Amélie Wen Zhao, Dark Star Burning, Ash Falls White

“In a conquered land, the only way to win was to survive.”
― Amélie Wen Zhao, Song of Silver, Flame Like Night

“Don’t go where I can’t follow.”
― Amélie Wen Zhao, Blood Heir

“But you must remember that, should you choose to live, you do not live only for yourself.” He made a gesture as though to touch his heart. “You live for those you have lost. You carry their legacies inside you. You see, the Elantians destroyed everything that made the roots of our kingdom: our culture, our education, our families and principles. They wish to take us out on our knees, to subdue us so that we will never lift our heads again.
“But what they do not know is that, so long as we live on, we carry inside us all that they have destroyed. And that is our triumph; that is our rebellion.” Rain clung to his lashes as neither of them broke their gaze. “Do not let them win today.”
― Amélie Wen Zhao, Song of Silver, Flame Like Night

“You want me to be the monster?
I'll be the monster.”
― Amélie Wen Zhao, Blood Heir

“It is the duty of those with power to protect those without.”
― Amélie Wen Zhao, Song of Silver, Flame Like Night

“Papa had once told her, after Mama’s death, that there were two types of grief. One was the type that crushed you, that broke your soul and shattered your heart, and left you an empty shell. The other was a grief that made you stronger. You rose from it, you sharpened it, and you carried it with you as a piece of your armor. And you made yourself better. In that way, you never truly lost that person. You carried them with you.”
― Amélie Wen Zhao, Blood Heir

“Sometimes, Linn thought, bravery was not loud, or grand, or brilliant as the blaze of a thousand fires.
Sometimes it was quite. Unremarkable. Unknown. The resilient wend of water through rocks, year after year after year.”
― Amélie Wen Zhao, Red Tigress

“I know how it feels, to be trapped. But if there is anything I have learned, it is that you can always make a choice.”
― Amélie Wen Zhao, Red Tigress

“There was no honor and there were no rules to the game. You only played to win.”
― Amélie Wen Zhao, Blood Heir