The Priory of the Orange Tree Quotes

“No woman should be made to fear that she was not enough.”
― Samantha Shannon, The Priory of the Orange Tree

“We may be small, and we may be young, but we will shake the world for our beliefs.”
― Samantha Shannon, The Priory of the Orange Tree

“Reading,' Ead said lightly. 'A dangerous pastime.”
― Samantha Shannon, The Priory of the Orange Tree

“I do not sleep because I am not only afraid of the monsters at my door, but also of the monsters my own mind can conjure. The ones that live within.”
― Samantha Shannon, The Priory of the Orange Tree

“I would live alone for fifty years to have one day with you.”
― Samantha Shannon, The Priory of the Orange Tree

“All the world is a cage in a young girl's eyes.”
― Samantha Shannon, The Priory of the Orange Tree

“To be kin to a dragon, you must not only have a soul of water. You must have the blood of the sea, and the sea is not always pure. It is not any one thing. There is darkness in it, and danger, and cruelty. It can raze great cities with its rage. Its depths are unknowable; they do not see the touch of the sun. To be a Miduchi is not to be pure, Tané. It is to be the living sea. That is why I chose you. You have a dragon’s heart.”
― Samantha Shannon, The Priory of the Orange Tree

“Some truths are safest buried. Some castles best kept in the sky. There's promise in tales that are yet to be spoken.”
― Samantha Shannon, The Priory of the Orange Tree

“When history fails to shed light on the truth, myth creates its own.”
― Samantha Shannon, The Priory of the Orange Tree

“But when the heart grows too full, it overflows. And mine, inevitably, overflows on to a page.”
― Samantha Shannon, The Priory of the Orange Tree

“You wear so much armour by daylight that, by night, you can carry it no longer. By night, you are only flesh. And even the flesh of a queen is prone to fear.
In darkness, we are naked. Our truest selves. Night is when fear comes to us at its fullest, when we have no way to fight it. It will do everything it can to seep inside you. Sometimes it may succeed - but never think that you are the night.”
― Samantha Shannon, The Priory of the Orange Tree

“Just because something has always been done does not mean that it ought to be done.”
― Samantha Shannon, The Priory of the Orange Tree

“That is the problem with stories, child. The truth in them cannot be weighed.”
― Samantha Shannon, The Priory of the Orange Tree

“My heart knows your song, as yours knows mine. And I will always come back to you.”
― Samantha Shannon, The Priory of the Orange Tree

“You know I take the Knight of Courage as my patron. There is courage, I think, in open-mindedness, and thinking for oneself. If you are a witch, then perhaps witches are not so wicked after all.”
― Samantha Shannon, The Priory of the Orange Tree

“Her feelings had come like a flower on a tree. A bud, gently forming - and just like that, an undying blossom.”
― Samantha Shannon, The Priory of the Orange Tree

“Do you not see that this is a divine mission?

No, I do not, you witless cabbage.”
― Samantha Shannon, The Priory of the Orange Tree

“I realized, that she had been spoon-fed a story from the day she was born. She had been taught no other way to be. And yet, I saw that despite everything, some part of her was self-made. This part, small as it appeared at first, was forged in the fire of her own strength, and resisted her cage. And I understood...that this part was made of steel. The part who she truly was.”
― Samantha Shannon, The Priory of the Orange Tree

“You have not seen death, my lord. You have only seen the mask we put on it.”
― Samantha Shannon, The Priory of the Orange Tree

“Art is not one great act of creation, but many small ones. When you read one of my poems, you fail to see the weeks of careful work it took me to build it--the thinking, the scratched-out words, the pages I burned in disgust. All you see, in the end, is what I want you to see.”
― Samantha Shannon, The Priory of the Orange Tree

“You have ambition, Tané. Never apologise for that.”
― Samantha Shannon, The Priory of the Orange Tree

“Ead knew the scent of a secret. She wore it like a perfume.”
― Samantha Shannon, The Priory of the Orange Tree

“In darkness, we are naked. Our truest selves. Night is when fear comes to us at its fullest, when we have no way to fight it," Ead continued. "It will do everything it can to seep inside you. Sometimes it may succeed - but never think that you are the night.”
― Samantha Shannon, The Priory of the Orange Tree

“The one who wears the chains is a thousand times greater than the one who wields them,”
― Samantha Shannon, The Priory of the Orange Tree

“Piety can turn the power-hungry into monsters,’ Ead said. ‘They can twist any teaching to justify their actions.”
― Samantha Shannon, The Priory of the Orange Tree

“That one day, you will forgive yourself. You are in the spring of your life, child, and have much to learn about this world. Do not deny yourself the privilege of living.”
― Samantha Shannon, The Priory of the Orange Tree

“Arteloth, we are courtiers. We have no useful instincts.”
― Samantha Shannon, The Priory of the Orange Tree

“All stories grow from a seed of truth,’ Truyde said. ‘They are knowledge after figuration.”
― Samantha Shannon, The Priory of the Orange Tree

“Our thanks to you, Mistress Melaugo. Your kindness will not be forgotten.

Please forget it. I've a reputation to uphold.”
― Samantha Shannon, The Priory of the Orange Tree

“Black doves and white crows flew to her, for she was mother to the outcasts.”
― Samantha Shannon, The Priory of the Orange Tree