We match each other stroke for stroke until I get a hit on her right arm. She tries to switch sword arms, but I jab my scim at her wrist faster than she can parry. Her scim goes flying, and I tackle her. Her white-blonde hair tumbles free of her bun.“Surrender!” I pin her down at the wrists, but she trashes and rips one arm free, scrabbling for a dagger at her waist. Steel stabs at my ribs, and seconds later, I am on my back with a blade at my throat.“Ha!” She leans down, her hair falling around us like a shimmering silver curtain.

— Sabaa Tahir

Vengeance was one hell of a roommate.

— J.R. Ward

He had seen bigger men than he with mummy's handkerchief clutched in on hand and a bloody dagger in the other.

— Eoin Colfer

Sometimes in life, from out of a myriad of prosaic decisions like what to eat and where to sleep and how to dress, a true crossroads is revealed. In these moments, when the fog of relative irrelevancy lifts and fate rolls out a demand for free will, there is only left or right – no option of four-by-fouring into the underbrush between two paths, no negotiating with the choice that has been presented. You must answer the call and pick your way. And there is no reverse.

— J.R. Ward

He sharpened his flaws and disappointments into daggers.

— Pete Wentz

Fear of change was a weakness.

— J.R. Ward

He drew the dagger and laid it on the table between them; a length of dragonbone and Valyrian steel, as sharp as the difference between right and wrong, between true and false, between life and death.

— George R.R. Martin

A dagger wants flesh, her father would say. Find it.

— Marie Rutkoski