“Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster. And if you gaze long enough into an abyss, the abyss will gaze back into you.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche

“Will looked horrified. "What kind of monster could possibly hate chocolate?”
― Cassandra Clare, Clockwork Angel

“The real world is where the monsters are.”
― Rick Riordan, The Lightning Thief

“Oh, monsters are scared," said Lettie. "That's why they're monsters.”
― Neil Gaiman, The Ocean at the End of the Lane

“Sometimes human places, create inhuman monsters.”
― Stephen King, The Shining

“But these words people threw around - humans, monsters, heroes, villains - to Victor it was all just a matter of semantics. Someone could call themselves a hero and still walk around killing dozens. Someone else could be labeled a villain for trying to stop them. Plenty of humans were monstrous, and plenty of monsters knew how to play at being human.”
― V.E. Schwab, Vicious

“But perhaps the monsters needed to look out for each other every now and then.”
― Sarah J. Maas, Queen of Shadows

“If I can't be beautiful, I want to be invisible.”
― Chuck Palahniuk, Invisible Monsters

“Murderers are not monsters, they're men. And that's the most frightening thing about them.”
― Alice Sebold, The Lovely Bones

“There are no heroes...in life, the monsters win.”
― George R. R. Martin

“Monsters exist, but they are too few in number to be truly dangerous. More dangerous are the common men, the functionaries ready to believe and to act without asking questions.”
― Primo Levi

“What would an ocean be without a monster lurking in the dark? It would be like sleep without dreams.”
― Werner Herzog

“O, beware, my lord, of jealousy;
It is the green-ey'd monster, which doth mock
The meat it feeds on. That cuckold lives in bliss,
Who, certain of his fate, loves not his wronger:
But O, what damnèd minutes tells he o'er
Who dotes, yet doubts, suspects, yet strongly loves!”
― William Shakespeare, Othello

“It is the first day of November and so, today, someone will die.”
― Maggie Stiefvater, The Scorpio Races

“The monsters were never
under my bed.
Because the monsters
were inside my head.


I fear no monsters,
for no monsters I see.
Because all this time
the monster has been me.”
― Nikita Gill

“Sometimes mortals can be more horrible than monsters.”
― Rick Riordan

“What strange phenomena we find in a great city, all we need do is stroll about with our eyes open. Life swarms with innocent monsters.”
― Charles Baudelaire

“Broken people don't hide from their monsters. Broken people let themselves be eaten.”
― Francesca Zappia, Eliza and Her Monsters

“Monsters cannot be announced. One cannot say: 'Here are our monsters,' without immediately turning the monsters into pets.”
― Jacques Derrida

“Tell me what I must slay, what I must steal, tell me the riddle I must solve or the hag I must trick. Only tell me the way, and I will do it, no matter the danger, no matter the hardship, no matter the cost.”
― Holly Black, The Queen of Nothing

“Because all the monsters have been let out of their cages tonight, no matter what court they belong to. So I may roam wherever I wish until the dawn.”
― Sarah J. Maas, A Court of Thorns and Roses

“We were all monsters and bastards, and we were all beautiful.”
― Rachel Hartman

“There were two kinds of monsters, the kind that hunted the streets and the kind that lived in your head. She could fight the first, but the second was more dangerous. It was always, always, always a step ahead.”
― Victoria Schwab, Our Dark Duet

“You guys know about vampires? … You know, vampires have no reflections in a mirror? There’s this idea that monsters don’t have reflections in a mirror. And what I’ve always thought isn’t that monsters don’t have reflections in a mirror. It’s that if you want to make a human being into a monster, deny them, at the cultural level, any reflection of themselves. And growing up, I felt like a monster in some ways. I didn’t see myself reflected at all. I was like, “Yo, is something wrong with me? That the whole society seems to think that people like me don’t exist?" And part of what inspired me, was this deep desire that before I died, I would make a couple of mirrors. That I would make some mirrors so that kids like me might see themselves reflected back and might not feel so monstrous for it.”
― Junot Díaz

“But these weren't the kind of monsters that had tentacles and rotting skin, the kind a seven-year-old might be able to wrap his mind around--they were monsters with human faces, in crisp uniforms, marching in lockstep, so banal you don't recognize them for what they are until it's too late.”
― Ransom Riggs, Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children

“You don’t think monster girls and wicked boys deserve love?”
― Holly Black, How the King of Elfhame Learned to Hate Stories

“Oh," the girl said, shaking her head. "Don't be so simple. People adore monsters. They fill their songs and stories with them. They define themselves in relation to them. You know what a monster is, young shade? Power. Power and choice. Monsters make choices. Monsters shape the world. Monsters force us to become stronger, smarter, better. They sift the weak from the strong and provide a forge for the steeling of souls. Even as we curse monsters, we admire them. Seek to become them, in some ways." Her eyes became distant. "There are far, far worse things to be than a monster.”
― Jim Butcher, Ghost Story

“We make our own monsters, then fear them for what they show us about ourselves.”
― Mike Carey & Peter Gross, The Unwritten, Vol. 1: Tommy Taylor and the Bogus Identity

“Even from the beginning, that was the problem. People liked pretty things. People even liked pretty things that wanted to kill and eat them.”
― Holly Black, The Coldest Girl in Coldtown

“A monster that refused, sometimes, to behave like a monster. When a monster stopped behaving like a monster, did it stop being a monster? Did it become something else?”
― Kristin Cashore, Graceling