Poisoned Quotes

“Kindness is many things,” he said. “It is gentle. Tender. Tolerant. It is born of patience and faith. And sometimes, yes, it’s dangerous. Helping a wounded animal that’s likely to lash out, standing up for someone who’s being taunted by bullies... these things are all dangerous. But to try to understand another creature, to put ourselves in their place, to help them - even when it costs us - that shows strength, Sophie, not weakness.”
― Jennifer Donnelly, Poisoned

“Love is a soft thing. It smells like woodsmoke and sounds like rain. It tastes like sugared apples. It costs nothing to give yet is more precious than a sea of diamonds.”
― Jennifer Donnelly, Poisoned

“Mirror, mirror on the wall... who will bring about my fall?”
― Jennifer Donnelly, Poisoned

“And that lesson was perfectly clear: There is nothing more dangerous than kindness.”
― Jennifer Donnelly, Poisoned

“You gave those people hope, girl, and that’s a dangerous thing. There’s no greater weapon in the whole world than hope. It’s dangerous because it’s powerful.”
― Jennifer Donnelly, Poisoned

“There are many ways to take a heart.
And the King of Crows uses all methods; he shies from none.
He’s happy to have it cut out all at once as I, the huntsman, did.
He’s happy to have it taken piece by piece, year by year, like a miser hoarding coins, with punishing silences, biting glances, and love served cold.
Poisonous words do the job, too. They are as sharp as knives and leave their victims hollow.”
― Jennifer Donnelly, Poisoned

“We must not run from our unhappiness. We must listen to it. It has much to tell us.”
― Jennifer Donnelly, Poisoned

“What an incredible metaphor for what fear does to us—it devours our hearts. Hollows us out. Leaves us empty.”
― Jennifer Donnelly, Poisoned

“Watch a child die for the lack of a few coins. Do that, and you might start to understand a few things, like the difference between a theft and a crime.”
― Jennifer Donnelly, Poisoned

“People come out of the woods and pretend to be your friends. They offer you something—laces, a comb—and you take them. Stop it. Stop taking poison from fake friends. It’ll kill you.”
― Jennifer Donnelly, Poisoned

“A powerful king has taken my heart, she thought. But a penniless boy has stolen it.”
― Jennifer Donnelly, Poisoned

“Sometimes the things that make us all wrong is the thing that make us perfect”
― Jennifer Donnelly, Poisoned

“Nothing scares a weak man more than a strong woman.”
― Jennifer Donnelly, Poisoned

“Venom can be drawn from flesh, but poisoned words lodge deep in our hearts, where no antidote can reach.”
― Jennifer Donnelly, Poisoned

“She was foolish and weak. She’d trusted Haakon, because he was beautiful and dazzling, because he’d spoken a few romantic words to her and made her believe that he loved her.”
― Jennifer Donnelly, Poisoned

“Love is a fearsome thing. It is braver than generals, stronger than fortresses. It opens graves and pulls rings off corpses. It sits up through the long, lonely night with a failing child. It fashions hearts out of scraps and bits and rusty things and makes them beat on, no matter how many times they break.”
― Jennifer Donnelly, Poisoned

“Cowardice is like a plague; it spreads. One sick individual can infect an entire population.”
― Jennifer Donnelly, Poisoned

“am the huntsman. Dead now, but that’s no matter. The dead speak. With tongues blackened by time and regret. You can hear us if you listen.”
― Jennifer Donnelly, Poisoned

“They can tell you everything you're not but they can't make you believe it.- only you can do that.”
― Jennifer Donnelly, Poisoned

“There is nothing more dangerous than kindness.”
― Jennifer Donnelly, Poisoned

“Absolutely. It’s the unhappy people who get things done. Have you ever noticed that? They build things. And discover things. And invent things. Like calculus. Only a very unhappy person could have come up with that. The happy ones just sit around eating strudel.”
― Jennifer Donnelly, Poisoned

“let Corvus into my heart the day Edward’s soldiers came, and he’s been there ever since. Devouring it bit by bit. Every decision I made was led by Corvus. Every cruelty I inflicted. Every life I took. He convinced me that mercy was weakness. That kindness would be repaid with treachery. And I believed him. And now?”
― Jennifer Donnelly, Poisoned

“The cuts were the truth, written in blood, and no one must ever read it. Rulers were ruthless. They did not show weakness or fear. They did not cry. They made others cry. Hadn’t her stepmother told her that a thousand times?”
― Jennifer Donnelly, Poisoned

“Sophie lowered her head into her hands, feeling as if she were made of the thinnest glass, so brittle and fragile that the softest tap could shatter her. She had escaped death only to come face-to-face with it once more.”
― Jennifer Donnelly, Poisoned

“Didn’t Adelaide see what she was doing? Didn’t she understand that her brutal actions carried terrible consequences for her people? She was so vigilant, so worried about threats from her enemies. She raised armies, built warships—all to keep her people”
― Jennifer Donnelly, Poisoned

“It's damned hard to kill a princess.”
― Jennifer Donnelly, Poisoned

“It's the unhappy people who get things done. Have you ever noticed that? They build things. And discover things. And invent things. Like calculus. Only a very unhappy person could have come up with that. The happy ones just sit around eating strudel. They seldom amount to much”
― Jennifer Donnelly, Poisoned

“Then he smiled and said, "A big, beautiful brand-new castle.”
― Jennifer Donnelly, Poisoned

“She wrapped her hands around the bars, tears welling in her eyes. She’d been wrong, so wrong. Captain Krause and his men hadn’t been pursuing her to hurt her; they’d been trying to rescue her,”
― Jennifer Donnelly, Poisoned

“She believes the king of the Hinterlands is going to attack her. Her fear of this is so great, she talks of nothing else. I promised to defend the Greenlands with the full might of Skandinay’s army—if she promised that I would inherit her crown. But now I have a problem—you’re not dead after all. How can I be heir to the Greenlands’s throne if you’re still alive?”
― Jennifer Donnelly, Poisoned