The biggest challenge for me has been in coping with my perfectionism. I have a stiflingly hard time moving forward in a project if it's not 'just right' all along the way. The trap I so easily fall into is rewriting and rewriting the same scenes over and over to make them perfect, instead of continuing on into the wild unknown of the story.

Laini Taylor

Categorized in : Moving Fall Hard Times

She moved like a poem and smiled like a sphinx.

Laini Taylor

azure sphinx moved

Happiness. It was the place where passion, with all its dazzle and drumbeat, met something softer: homecoming and safety and pure sunbeam comfort. It was all those things, intertwined with the heat and the thrill, and it was as bright within her as a swallowed star.

Laini Taylor

passion stars happiness

Hope can be a powerful force. Maybe there's no actual magic in it, but when you know what you hope for most and hold it like a light within you, you can make things happen, almost like magic.

Laini Taylor

powerful hope heart

Bitter, bitter, this desolation of angels.

Laini Taylor

bitter desolation angel

It’s like losing gravity and falling into space – the moment of pitching headlong when the endlessness of space asserts itself and there is no more down, only an eternity of up, and you realize you can fall forever and never run out of stars.

Laini Taylor

stars running love

She tastes like nectar and salt. Nectar and salt and apples. Pollen and stars and hinges. She tastes like fairy tales. Swan maiden at midnight. Cream on the tip of a fox’s tongue. She tastes like hope.

Laini Taylor

swans apples stars

I am one of billions. I am stardust gathered fleetingly into form. I will be ungathered. The stardust will go on to be other things someday and I will be free.

Laini Taylor

stardust goes-on life

Wishes are false. Hope is true. Hope makes its own magic.

Laini Taylor

false-hope magic wish

It’s not stalking if you don't follow them home, right?

Laini Taylor

stalking ifs home

Like a magpie, I am a scavenger of shiny things: fairy tales, dead languages, weird folk beliefs, fascinating religions, and more.

Laini Taylor

fairy-tale language belief

I love bookshelves, and stacks of books, spines, typography, and the feel of pages between my fingertips. I love bookmarks, and old bindings, and stars in margins next to beautiful passages. I love exuberant underlinings that recall to me a swoon of language-love from a long-ago reading, something I hoped to remember. I love book plates, and inscriptions in gifts from loved ones, I love author signatures, and I love books sitting around reminding me of them, being present in my life, being. I love books.

Laini Taylor

stars beautiful book

Hazael rose from his knees. It had to take extraordinary effort, yet somehow he managed a version of his lazy smile when he said, "You know, I've always wanted to be a bath attendant. You should take me instead. I'm nicer than my sister." Jael returned the lazy smile. "You're not my type." "Well, you're not anybody's type," said Hazael. "No, wait. I take it back. My sword says she'd like to know you better." "I'm afraid I must deny her the pleasure. I've been kissed by swords before, you see." "I may have noticed.

Laini Taylor

effort waiting rose

...something was starting to take shape, out of magic and will. Smoke and bone.

Laini Taylor

bones magic shapes

Her courage was a guise. She wondered if courage always was, or if there were those who truly felt no fear.

Laini Taylor

guise felt no-fear

She knocked and waited, because when the door was opened from within, it had the potential to lead someplace quite different.

Laini Taylor

different doors

It is a condition of monsters that they do not perceive themselves as such. The dragon, you know, hunkered in the village devouring maidens, heard the townsfolk cry 'Monster!' and looked behind him.

Laini Taylor

village dragons monsters

She craved a presence beside her, solid. Fingertips light at the nape of her neck and a voice meeting hers in the dark. Someone who would wait with an umbrella to walk her home in the rain, and smile like sunshine when he saw her coming. Who would dance with her on her balcony, keep his promises and know her secrets, and make a tiny world wherever he was, with just her and his arms and his whisper and her trust.

Laini Taylor

sunshine rain home

Peace is more than the absence of war. Peace is accord. Harmony.

Laini Taylor

respect war peace

Your heart is not wrong. Your heart is your strength. You don't have to be ashamed.

Laini Taylor

ashamed heart

That faeries have forgotten the Tapestry; that is the greatest tragedy of all. It's the fabric of all creation and it's woven of dreams, the dreams of the Djinn. Dreams are real, Magpie. They're seed and water and sun. They're everything.

Laini Taylor

real dream water