This batch of quotes is from some December 2025 and January 2026 reading – picture books, middle grade novels, adult novels, short stories, and nonfiction.

1.  “I understand how being pleasant can keep the peace, but how will it win a war?” (A Rogue of One’s Own by Evie Dunmore)
2. Tiph never knew how to be herself. She never knew which part of herself she should be. (The Winter of the Dollhouse by Laura Amy Schlitz)
3. “The more you know about someone’s life, the harder it is not to like them.” (Fanny’s Big Idea: How Jewish Book Week Was Born by Richard Michelson)
4. I am not naive she said….It’s just that my stubborn belief in the goodness of people has been so hard to finally and utterly kill off. And it repairs itself like a slowly mending heart. (We Had It Coming and other fictions by Luke O’Neil)
5.  “All wardrobe and no Narnia” (a variant of “all talk and no action) (The Wheel Is Spinning But the Hamster Is Dead by Adam Sharp)
6.  “…anybody who tells you to stop asking questions has something to hide. Anybody who tries to keep you from knowing something is afraid of what that knowledge’ll give you. Anybody who tries to make you hate who you are – that’s the only way they’ll stay on top, if you believe you’re weak and small.”(A Time Traveler’s History of Tomorrow by Kendall Kulper)
7. And she supposed that fear was a thing you got used to in the same way as anything else. Like grief or anger or shame – you either moved past it or you lived with it for so long that you didn’t know the difference anymore. (The Coast Road by Alan Murrin)
8. Dex realized with a stomach-souring thud that they were standing on the wrong side of the vast gulf between having read about doing a thing and doing the thing. (A Psalm for the Wild-Built by Becky Chambers)
9. The way you teach yourself to write a novel is by writing a novel. No other art form is like this. (A Long Game: Notes on Writing Fiction by Elizabeth McCracken)
10. The human mind is a very strange thing. It can get used to anything, even continual mortal peril. (The Forest of a Thousand Eyes by Frances Hardinge)