Leigh Bardugo

“I want to be really clear about something: I think we kind of fetishize the creative life. We have the vision of what it means to be an author, where you sit in your garret or looking out at your view and you give everything to your art and you commit fully to it. But the reality is that most of us have bills to pay.”

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

“I've gotten very used to falling off of things. It's almost like that's my skill! I'm great at falling down and getting back up.”

“He doesn’t need a donkey,” says Ana Kuya. “He has a wife.”

“'Shadow and Bone' is a fantasy set in a country inspired by Tsarist Russia that has been literally torn apart by a swathe of nearly impenetrable darkness.”

“Making the New York Times' list is the kind of thing you don't even let yourself imagine because it seems so unlikely, so it was incredible to actually see my name there.”

“There is no pain like the pain of transformation.”

“I need someone who can be invisible, who can become a ghost. Do you think you can do that?"I'm already a ghost, she thought. I died in the hold of a slaver ship."i think so.”

“I just know there's no way to live without pain - no matter how long or short your life is. People let you down. You get hurt and do damage in return.”

“He looked down at his boots. "That berth belongs to you too. It will always be there when―if you want to come back."Inej could not speak. Her heart felt too full, a dry creek bed ill-prepared for such rain. "I don't know what to say.”

“I think we often hold heroines to an absurd standard. Be brave! Be wise! Always know what's in your heart and speak the truth of it! No and no and no. We fight to be brave. We learn to be wise. We struggle to know ourselves and voice what we want.”

“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.”

“When you start dictating culture, money gets involved and people take notice.”

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

“I think there's tremendous power in the images we associate with Russian culture and history, these extremes of beauty and brutality that lend themselves to fantasy.”

“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.”

“This goes to show you that sometimes the unseen is not to be feared and that those meant to love us most are not always ones who do.”

“I may not have been completely honest about that.""You? Less than truthful? I'm shocked, Nikolai. Shocked and horrified.”

“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.”

“The person she liked best didn't like her enough to want more of her, and she didn't want to pretend that wasn't awful.”