Most Important Quotes
The Moral Turning Point
"I might do something as foolish as freeing the slaves."
Speaker: Celaena Sardothien | Context: After witnessing the slave pens in Skull's Bay in The Assassin and the Pirate Lord, Chapter 5, Celaena admits her plan to Sam on the beach.
Analysis: This is the hinge on which Celaena’s moral arc turns, where swagger gives way to conscience. Calling freedom “foolish” is sharp irony, exposing how thoroughly a life of obedience has warped her sense of risk and righteousness. The decision pushes her into open defiance and sets the long fuse for the series’ rebellion, anchoring the theme of Freedom vs. Servitude. It also signals trust in Sam Cortland, transforming him from rival to partner and redefining what power means to her: not reputation, but responsibility.
A Confession of Love
"Because I love you! ... I have for years. And he hurt you and made me watch because he’s always known how I felt, too. But if I asked you to pick, you’d choose Arobynn, and I. Can’t. Take. It."
Speaker: Sam Cortland | Context: In the Rifthold sewers in The Assassin and the Underworld, Chapter 9, Sam confronts Celaena about leaving, finally voicing the love and jealousy Arobynn has weaponized.
Analysis: Sam’s outburst converts years of subtext into a raw declaration that reframes every prior interaction through Love and Sacrifice. The halting rhythm and emphatic punctuation mirror the choking pressure of long-suppressed feeling, while revealing how Arobynn Hamel orchestrates emotional harm as punishment. This confession forces Celaena to scrutinize her loyalties and name what she wants, accelerating her Loss of Innocence and Coming of Age. The scene’s claustrophobic setting amplifies the sense of entrapment—only honesty can open a way out.
The Ultimate Betrayal
"Because I don’t like sharing my belongings."
Speaker: Arobynn Hamel | Context: In The Assassin and the Empire (after the central conflict), Arobynn admits to Rourke Farran why he arranged Sam’s murder and Celaena’s capture.
Analysis: With chilling simplicity, Arobynn compresses his pathology into a single line: he doesn’t love, he owns. The possessive noun “belongings” erases Celaena’s personhood and reduces her to property, crystallizing the series’ core conflict of Betrayal and Trust. The understatement intensifies the horror—beneath the calm lies jealousy, control, and sadism masquerading as mentorship. Retroactively, every gift and punishment reads as a tether, not training, making this the line that shatters the illusion of the Guild’s “family.”
A Promise of Resilience
"My name is Celaena Sardothien, and I will not be afraid."
Speaker: Celaena Sardothien | Context: At the threshold of the Salt Mines of Endovier in The Assassin and the Empire, Celaena forges an inner vow.
Analysis: This mantra is both identity and shield, a declarative sentence wielded like a blade. After loss and humiliation, the simple syntax and future-tense resolve convert fear into discipline, bridging these novellas to Throne of Glass. The line completes her coming of age: bravado hardens into courage, spectacle into endurance. It’s memorable because it reframes survival as defiance—she cannot control her fate, but she can define her response to it.
Thematic Quotes
Betrayal and Trust
The Cost of Disobedience
"You might be free of me, but you shouldn’t forget who I am. What I’m capable of."
Speaker: Arobynn Hamel | Context: In The Assassin and the Underworld, Chapter 12, after Celaena pays her debts, Arobynn reveals he tricked her into killing an ally.
Analysis: Arobynn’s menace is almost ceremonial here—a reminder that his true weapon is not steel but narrative control. The cold parallelism of “who I am…what I’m capable of” asserts identity as threat, ensuring his power lingers even after financial ties are severed. By turning Celaena’s righteous intent into a moral stain, he poisons her victory and undercuts her agency, deepening Betrayal and Trust. It foreshadows the final treachery, teaching her that freedom on paper is not freedom in practice.
A Friend's Deception
"I’m sorry it had to end this way. The Master said it would be easier to let you go like this, rather than shame you by publicly asking you to leave early."
Speaker: Ansel of Briarcliff (in a letter) | Context: In The Assassin and the Desert, Chapter 10, Celaena awakens drugged and reads Ansel’s note excusing her removal from the fortress.
Analysis: Ansel’s letter wraps betrayal in the language of mercy, a rhetorical mask that mirrors her veiled armor. Appealing to the Mute Master’s honor lets her piggyback on institutional trust to justify personal ambition, turning courtesy into cover. The dramatic irony stings: the audience suspects the ruse before Celaena does, sharpening the eventual reveal of the blank approval. This moment widens Celaena’s world from enemies at the gate to duplicity at her side, pushing her toward a more guarded maturity.
Freedom vs. Servitude
The Price of Freedom
"As of this moment, Sam’s debt to you is paid. From right now until forever, he’s a free man."
Speaker: Celaena Sardothien | Context: In The Assassin and the Underworld, Chapter 12, Celaena announces she has sold her Asterion mare to buy Sam’s freedom from Arobynn.
Analysis: Freedom is treated like currency here—counted, exchanged, and redeemed—and Celaena pays with something symbolic of her own wildness. The cadence of “from right now until forever” is contractual and ceremonial, transforming a transaction into a vow that rebukes Arobynn’s psychic hold. It affirms loyalty to Sam Cortland over the Guild, reframing love as liberation rather than dependency. Even as Arobynn undercuts the triumph, the scene marks a shift: Celaena’s power is measured not by fear she inspires, but by chains she breaks.
A Healer's Dream
"I was on my way to Antica to join their healers’ academy and ran out of money. ... I guess staying here became … easier. Simpler."
Speaker: Yrene Towers | Context: In The Assassin and the Healer, Chapter 4, Yrene explains why she remains a barmaid in Innish instead of pursuing Antica.
Analysis: Yrene’s concession to “easier” and “simpler” names the quiet gravity that keeps people in cages without locks. Her dream of Antica functions as a beacon of purpose that dims under scarcity, paralleling Celaena’s entanglement with Arobynn Hamel on a humbler scale. The ellipses enact hesitation on the page, dramatizing how hope falters in the face of routine. Celaena’s later choice to fund Yrene’s escape becomes a mirror act of reclamation, passing forward the lesson that freedom often begins with one person’s resolve to risk.
Love and Sacrifice
The Unspoken Price
"You want to know what price I asked for forgiving Arobynn, Celaena? My price was his oath that he’d never lay a hand on you again. I told him I’d forgive him in exchange for that."
Speaker: Sam Cortland | Context: In The Assassin and the Underworld, Chapter 2, Sam reveals how he bartered his forgiveness to protect Celaena after Arobynn’s beating.
Analysis: Sam’s “price” reframes forgiveness as a shield, not surrender, exposing love as an economy of protections rather than pleasures. The repetition of “price” and “oath” gives the moment the weight of a binding contract, inverting Arobynn’s transactional cruelty into care. Positioned against Arobynn Hamel, Sam’s choice models a love that absorbs harm to divert it from another. The revelation forces Celaena to recalibrate her judgments of him—and herself—so their romance can grow on humility, not pride.
A Future Together
"I love you. And from today onward, I want to never be separated from you. Wherever you go, I go. Even if that means going to Hell itself, wherever you are, that’s where I want to be. Forever."
Speaker: Sam Cortland | Context: On the rooftop of their new apartment in The Assassin and the Underworld, Chapter 12, Sam pledges his future to Celaena.
Analysis: The anaphora of “Wherever you go, I go” lifts this vow into liturgy, sanctifying a bond forged in hardship. Its radiant hope is steeped in tragic irony, foreshadowing the separation death will enforce and the “Hell” Celaena will endure. The absolute “Forever” dramatizes the youthful audacity of promising beyond one’s power, yet that intensity is exactly what makes the scene unforgettable. The line distills Love and Sacrifice into devotion that refuses to measure the cost.
Character-Defining Quotes
Celaena Sardothien
"If I’d been there, I would have killed all of them to get Ben’s body back!"
Speaker: Celaena Sardothien | Context: In The Assassin and the Pirate Lord, Chapter 1, reeling from Ben’s death, Celaena erupts at Sam and the others for leaving Ben’s body.
Analysis: The hyperbole of “killed all of them” showcases both her ferocious loyalty and her reckless hubris. Grief strips away her cultivated poise to reveal a teenager’s absolutist moral code: family is sacred, and desecration demands blood. This impulse fuels her later “foolish” heroism, linking her compassion to her arrogance as two faces of the same intensity. The line frames her as a character who loves hard, errs boldly, and learns only by burning.
Sam Cortland
"We have a choice. Maybe not when we were children—when it was Arobynn or death—but now … Now you and I have a choice in the things we do."
Speaker: Sam Cortland | Context: On Skull’s Bay’s shore in The Assassin and the Pirate Lord, Chapter 5, Sam reminds Celaena they are no longer powerless.
Analysis: Sam asserts agency as a moral thesis, cutting through fatalism with the declarative “We have a choice.” By naming the past—“Arobynn or death”—he acknowledges trauma without letting it dictate the present, modeling the courage necessary for Freedom vs. Servitude. The repetition and pause create a steadying rhythm, a counterpoint to Celaena’s volatile passion. In claiming choice for them both, he becomes her compass, not her leash.
Arobynn Hamel
"I did all of those things because I was angry with you for picking Sam."
Speaker: Arobynn Hamel | Context: In The Assassin and the Empire, Chapter 4, Arobynn frames his abuse as jealousy when he visits Celaena’s new apartment.
Analysis: Arobynn recasts violence as romance, a classic abuser’s alchemy that tries to make cruelty sound like care. The line’s bland confession is chilling precisely because it is so ordinary—petty emotion dressing up monstrous acts. It confirms his narcissism: Celaena’s autonomy affronts him because it reveals he does not own what he thought he made. By translating harm into “anger” over her “choice,” he exposes his governing belief that her heart—and body—should be his to direct.
Memorable Lines
The Assassin and the Healer
"The world needs more healers."
Speaker: Celaena Sardothien (in a note) | Context: In The Assassin and the Healer, Chapter 6, Celaena leaves gold and encouragement for Yrene Towers to pursue Antica.
Analysis: From an assassin, this line glows with paradox: someone trained to end lives champions those who mend them. Its aphoristic simplicity makes it portable—a belief Yrene can carry out of Innish—while quietly indicting a world that creates more wounds than cures. The gift that accompanies it converts sentiment into strategy, aligning Celaena’s growth with Morality and Justice. Small kindness becomes plot-catalyst, echoing far beyond this quiet inn.
A Coward's Confession
"Deep down, I’m a coward. ... I’m scared all the time. Always."
Speaker: Celaena Sardothien | Context: In The Assassin and the Empire, Chapter 4, Celaena confides her constant fear to Sam in their apartment.
Analysis: The repetition of “always” turns fear into an ever-present drumbeat, dismantling the myth of the fearless prodigy. By naming cowardice, she performs courage, allowing intimacy to replace performance in her bond with Sam Cortland. The ellipses enact hesitation, showing how hard-won the admission is for someone trained to weaponize composure. This moment humanizes her legend and explains the mask: bravado is not false, but forged against terror.
Opening and Closing Lines
Opening Line
"It’s past four in the morning... This had better be important."
Speaker: Celaena Sardothien | Context: The Assassin and the Pirate Lord, Chapter 1, as Celaena is roused for a pre-dawn summons.
Analysis: With one sardonic complaint, the novellas introduce a heroine who expects the world to meet her on her terms. The nocturnal hour and sharp impatience sketch the Assassins’ Guild’s glamor and danger while spotlighting Celaena’s entitlement. This breezy arrogance becomes the baseline against which her later humility and grit will be measured. It’s a tonal promise: wit, swagger, and a fall coming.
Closing Line
"Celaena Sardothien lifted her chin and walked into the Salt Mines of Endovier."
Speaker: Narrator | Context: The Assassin and the Empire, transition into the series timeline.
Analysis: The gesture is small but declarative: lifting her chin converts defeat into posture, shame into stance. The active verb “walked” denies the image of a dragged prisoner and insists on a thread of agency within captivity. As a bookend to the opening’s swagger, it reframes pride as resilience, not vanity. It closes the prequels on quiet steel, the exact alloy she’ll need to survive what comes next.