In Other Lands Quotes

“And he did not want to be loved as a second choice, as a surrender. He had spent his whole life not being loved at all, and he had thought being loved enough would satisfy him. It would not. He did not want to be loved enough. He wanted to be loved overwhelmingly. (...) He had never been chosen, so he had never had a chance to know this about himself before now: he wanted to be chosen first.”
― Sarah Rees Brennan, In Other Lands

“You will never find me in trouble. You will find me in the library. If you can remember where that is.”
― Sarah Rees Brennan, In Other Lands

“I am not winning any arguments because I know how to hurt someone. How does that prove that you're right? How does being stronger or more vicious prove anything, except that all this talk about honor is stupid? Where's the honor in being better at hurting somebody? Telling me I have to do this is insulting, as if I can't win any other way. As if I can't win in a better way.”
― Sarah Rees Brennan, In Other Lands

“Elliot was trying to teach himself trollish via a two-hundred-year-old book by a man who’d had a traumatic break-up with a troll. This meant a lot of commentary along the lines of “This is how trolls say I love you. FOOTNOTE: BUT THEY DON’T MEAN IT!”
― Sarah Rees Brennan, In Other Lands

“If you must know, she is the one soul destined for my own, and we are going to be together forever,” he declared loftily. “That’s weird,” Luke told him. “We’re thirteen.”
― Sarah Rees Brennan, In Other Lands

“I don’t need you to explain to me the concept of a magical land filled with fantastic creatures that only certain special children can enter. I am acquainted with the last several centuries of popular culture. There are books. And cartoons, for the illiterate.”
― Sarah Rees Brennan, In Other Lands

“Oh no,” Elliot moaned, and sat down heavily on his bunk bed. “This is magic Sparta.”
― Sarah Rees Brennan, In Other Lands

“All over the gray facade of his father's house in scarlet letters he wrote: ELLIOT SCHAFER. He almost added:" was here "but did not, partly because it was a little too cliched vandal for him, and partly because it did not encompass all he wanted to say: was here, is no longer here, is somewhere almost unimaginably different, is all right.”
― Sarah Rees Brennan, In Other Lands

“There isn’t any kind of relationship that’s all problem-free delightful unicorns. You can’t have a relationship without issues and prejudices. The way to be equals is if both people agree to be equals, and treat themselves and each other as equals, despite all that.”
― Sarah Rees Brennan, In Other Lands

“Elliot finished his book in bed and pondered going to get another one. He only had so much time left, and he had so many books to get through.”
― Sarah Rees Brennan, In Other Lands

“The murderous, man-hating elf girl, and the intense gay kid?' asked the medic. 'You’re the weirdo table.”
― Sarah Rees Brennan, In Other Lands

“Violence was like that, Elliot had noticed. One move toward it and all at once everything was allowed: anyone could be hurt, out of a mix of pride and anger and stupid disregard for the fact that you could be hurt as easily as someone else.”
― Sarah Rees Brennan, In Other Lands

“One of the boringly human pair of boys, the obvious leader, was tall and broad-shouldered, with golden hair, as if Nature has said, 'No worries, buddy, I gotcha, no nasty tiring thinking will ever be necessary, also have a crown.”
― Sarah Rees Brennan, In Other Lands

“You should wear whatever clothing you feel most comfortable in. Being comfortable in yourself is the best way to be attractive to others.”
― Sarah Rees Brennan, In Other Lands

“Really, Sunborn? No, really. All right then. Tell me about computers.” “Well...” Luke said, and looked shifty about the eyes. “They’re boxes... but you can write things in them. And read things in them. And there are cats in them who are funny for some reason. They’re like—boxes of infinity. And! You keep the wikipedia in them!”
― Sarah Rees Brennan, In Other Lands

“I do not know if you are not interested, or protecting yourself, but you cannot guard yourself against the whole world. You only succeed in placing a barrier between yourself from the world." He hesitated. "I know that from personal experience.”
― Sarah Rees Brennan, In Other Lands

“He could change something, maybe, even if he could not change enough.”
― Sarah Rees Brennan, In Other Lands

“Maybe both our societies are messed up, and they each only think one type of person is really a person. And the type of person they think is really a person is allowed to show imperfections and age... whereas the type of person they think is an object should show no signs of being a person. We’re socialized to see the imperfections in those objects.”
― Sarah Rees Brennan, In Other Lands

“Why is language in the Borderlands so weird? Some of it’s modern, and some of it’s medieval, and I guess that makes sense with the influx of a certain amount of new blood to the training camp every year, but how do some words and phrases transfer, while others don’t? Why do you know the word ‘jerk’ and not the word ‘bisexual’?”
“I guess people say the first word more,” said Luke.”
― Sarah Rees Brennan, In Other Lands

“What's your name?'
'Serene.'
'Serene?' Elliot asked.
'Serene-Heart-in-the-Chaos-of-Battle.'
Elliot's mouth fell open. 'That is badass.”
― Sarah Rees Brennan, In Other Lands

“I'm not saying this to upset you. I'm trying to tell you what you absolutely have to do. What if we were both dead?' asked Luke.
Elliot looked at his pudding and was very sad about his life and his choices. How had he wound up here, in a place where all he had was pudding - Elliot would have sold his soul for a chocolate bar - and awful people who at the age of thirteen asked questions like 'What if we were both dead.”
― Sarah Rees Brennan, In Other Lands

“Elliot was left to trail behind. As he did, he thought about Luke talking about literary tropes—the fearless hero, the valiant heroine, and where did it all leave him? Sidekick: a horrible indignity, Elliot refused to accept it. And the other idea was some sort of lurking, jealous figure: an Iago, a pathetic pseudo-villain waiting in the wings to plot and bring the hero down. He wasn’t going to plot against Luke, who had dumb daffodil hair and said “tropez,” for God’s sake.”
― Sarah Rees Brennan, In Other Lands

“Magic lands in books had always seemed close to nature, but in a nice way, without all the unpleasant details.”
― Sarah Rees Brennan, In Other Lands

“Two harpies, one stone,” he added, and then saw the way Serene was looking at him. “A diplomatic stone! A diplomatic stone.”
― Sarah Rees Brennan, In Other Lands

“Fourteen wasn't horrible, but it was more complicated, and sometimes that felt like the same thing.”
― Sarah Rees Brennan, In Other Lands

“So far magic school was total rubbish.”
― Sarah Rees Brennan, In Other Lands

“You should want to have gifted students who may excel in both courses, and you should be encouraging students when they show interest in their studies. Do you not want warriors who are brilliant, and diplomats who are brave?”
― Sarah Rees Brennan, In Other Lands

“Keeping everything very cool and professional, I see, Cadet,” remarked Commander Woodsinger as he went by. Elliot did not know why the two most important women in his life had to be deadpan snarkers.”
― Sarah Rees Brennan, In Other Lands

“I don't like wizard stories all that much. Stories about witches are better, because witches are morally ambiguous and traditionally disempowered.”
― Sarah Rees Brennan, In Other Lands

“It wasn't her fault if Elliot had expressed his feelings wrong. He always did that, as if life were a dance where everybody else knew the moves but Elliot was constantly and fatally out of step.”
― Sarah Rees Brennan, In Other Lands